More than 30 private fusion companies from around the world attended ITER's inaugural Private Sector Fusion Workshop in May 2024. Four of them participated in a panel discussion on innovative fusion approaches, offering a sampling of the alternative solutions to magnetic and inertial confinement fusion that are being trialled today. Each one cited specific areas where ITER experience could help. As representatives of fusion startups and industry gathered together with ITER staff members for the first day of the Private Sector Fusion Workshop in May, ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi declared that ITER was embarking on an ambitious initiative to accelerate the global fusion industry by sharing knowledge.  'ITER has largely completed the monumental task of designing and manufacturing the most powerful fusion device ever conceived and is presently in the process of assembling it. During this decades-long process, a formidable mass of experience has been accumulated, which ITER is eager to share in order to accelerate global progress,' stated a follow-up report to the event. Over two days, in panel after panel, startups took to the stage to describe their work and to articulate an answer to 'How can ITER help?' TAE Technologies, a startup from California, was the first to present itself as part of the panel on innovative fusion approaches. Founded in 1998, TAE describes its technology as 'advanced accelerator beam-driven field-reversed configuration' (learn more about it here). "We have demonstrated steady state, stable operation with beta equal to 1, driven by continuous neutral beam injection," said Sergei Putvinski, senior vice president. "We also developed scenarios to start the plasma, fuel it, and control it—and we tested the diagnostic equipment that measures the main plasma parameters. The plasma lasts as long as the neutral beam is running." The company is designing its sixth-generation machine now and says it could benefit from ITER's experience in the design of plasma-facing components, remote handling for component maintenance, and superconducting coils. 'And we definitely need an exchange of data—for example, databases on material properties,' said Putvinski. Michel Laberge of the Canadian firm General Fusion, agreed that the sharing of ITER-specific knowledge would be valuable to his firm. His company's innovative approach is magnetized target fusion—a technique that compresses a magnetically confined plasma using pneumatic pistons, collapsing a cavity formed in liquid metal that contains a magnetized plasma target (learn more about it here). 'Our design has several advantages. First, our liquid metal wall solves the first-wall problem, eliminating the need for a complex blanket system to protect the vessel. Additionally, tritium breeding and power extraction are simplified by the pure liquid lithium wall—for example, the lithium can be routed directly into a steam exchanger to produce the steam that will drive the turbines.' Laberge, who had travelled to ITER once before, is interested in ITER's diagnostic development. "Anybody that does this fusion business knows that diagnostic systems are quite difficult. You spend probably 30% of your resources developing them; for example, we built our own Thomson scattering device and our own interferometer. ITER has been working with diagnostics for a long time and we could benefit from its experience, in particular with neutron time-of-flight spectrometry." Access to modelling and simulation codes, help validating models, and access to ITER knowledge sharing in the areas of material science, heating technologies, waste handling and magnets were cited by the Swedish company Novatron Fusion as prime examples of areas where ITER's decades of experience could facilitate its research and development. The company is currently building an open-field line confinement device with an innovative shape designed for stability (read more here). "We have a very simple solution with clear advantages," says co-founder and chairman Erik Oden. "It's low-cost with easy fuelling and no need for a divertor to get rid of excess heat caused by neutron flux. It offers continuous steady state operation and a very high beta. All the magnets are circular, so it's easy to produce, and it's easy to mechanically stabilize." In addition to ITER's experience in fusion technology, the company says it could benefit from access to the supply chain the project has developed, and to its experience with regulatory compliance and environment/health/safety issues. The final participant in the innovative fusion approaches panel was LPP Fusion, which has been developing a dense plasma focus device in New Jersey (USA) since 2008. According to Eric Lerner, the company's president and chief scientist, dense plasma focus devices are very compact and inexpensive, and have the advantage of using aneutronic proton-boron (p-B11) fuel. 'Moreover, because the energy comes out in the form of moving electrically charged particles, there is no need for expensive equipment to convert heat to electricity.' (Read more about LPP's technology here). Lerner would like to learn more about ITER's liquid helium cooling systems, as compressed helium could be the solution for cooling the anode at the centre of the focus fusion generator. Just like the tokamak and inertial confinement panel participants before them, the panelists on innovative fusion approaches agreed that, fundamentally, the time is right for ITER's knowledge-sharing initiative. Following the workshop, ITER conducted a two-part follow-up survey with all participants to ask for recommendations on the channels and platforms that private fusion initiatives would find most useful for engaging with ITER, as well as the prioritized list of topics that would be of most interest. This feedback, together with inputs from the Fusion Industry Association and other groups, is being incorporated into a coherent program. Considerable attention has been focused on developing efficient processes, making the best use of limited resources, and appropriate measures for protecting intellectual property. The ITER Private Sector Fusion Engagement project will launch soon.

Robert Aymar, who played a key role in the development of fusion research in France and worldwide, and who headed the ITER project for 10 years (1993-2003) before serving as CERN Director General from 2004 to 2008, passed away last week at age 88. For all those who knew him, Aymar was an inspiring figure. 'He was the most consequential leader that the ITER project ever had,' wrote ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi in an email to ITER staff. 'He was a man who combined technical knowledge, sense of duty, humanity, and political skills.' The two men had worked closely together in the early 2000s. A graduate of the elite École Polytechnique, Robert Aymar joined the French Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA) in 1959 at age 23. Fusion research was in its infancy, but the young physicist believed in its formidable potential and devoted the whole of his professional life to achieving it. He initiated the Tore Supra (now WEST) project in 1977 and headed it through construction and early operation (1988) before being appointed director of the Sciences of Matter Department at CEA. Until then, French fusion research had been scattered over several sites in the Paris region, Grenoble and Cadarache. Pursuing a mighty vision, Aymar decided to bring it all to Cadarache and to gather it around Tore Supra—at the time one of the largest tokamaks in the world. The vision was ITER, then a frail 'paper project' initiated in 1985 by the Soviet Union and the United States and backed by Europe and Japan. Aymar believed in this unique international collaboration 'for the benefit of all mankind' and knew, as he explained later during a visit to the ITER site in 2011, that 'one day' ITER would need a home and that Cadarache had what it took to provide it. In the mid-1990s, when the 'paper project' was moving from conceptual to engineering design, Robert Aymar was appointed to lead the teams that operated from Naka (Japan), San Diego (USA) and Munich-Garching (Germany). It is under his stewardship that a first final design was completed—a design that ended up being considered too ambitious and that was eventually resized to the ITER as we know it. Aymar headed ITER for 10 years, from 1993 to 2003, and remained close to the project throughout the rest of his career as CERN Director General and later as the 'grandfather' of the French fusion community and extended ITER family. In one of his last visits to Cadarache to celebrate WEST's first plasma, in May 2017, he played the part well, telling the 'story of our family,' praising the "vision turned into reality" and celebrating the "building of human capital" that would one day take fusion into the industrial age. For all those who knew him, Robert Aymar will remain a larger-than-life figure with, in the words of Director-General Barabaschi, a 'broad knowledge of engineering, technology, and physics, as well as a strong intellect.' And a strong sense of humour. He will be remembered with respect and affection.

Gathered on the ITER platform for a group photo (the first one since 2019, in pre-Covid times) the crowd looks impressive. Although several hundred strong, it represents only a portion of all the men and women involved in the daily progress of the ITER project. ITER Organization directly employed staff numbered 1,102 at the end of 2023. The community at work on the ITER site in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France, greatly exceeds this figure. ITER Project Associates, interim personnel, contractors, and staff from Fusion for Energy and the other Members' Domestic Agencies detached to the ITER site add many more to the total, many of whom were present for this photo opportunity. All in all, 6,500 people—a unique cosmopolitan community—united in the common goal of building the scientific installation that will demonstrate the feasibility of fusion energy. (Photo Gérard Lesenechal) Click here to download a full-resolution version of the ITER staff photo (Password: Staff_Photo)

The ITER assembly teams are gearing up to receive a 440-tonne machine component shipped from Italy—sector #5, the first of five vacuum vessel sectors expected from the European Domestic Agency over the next two years. In a ceremony held on 24 September in Westinghouse's Monfalcone facility, the European Domestic Agency and its industrial partners celebrated ten years of collaboration on a critical component—the plasma chamber that houses the fusion reactions and acts as a first safety containment barrier. Europe is responsible for delivering five of the ITER vacuum vessel's nine sectors, while Korea has delivered four (the last Korean sector is travelling now to ITER). In Europe, the complex series of industrial steps required to manufacture the sectors has involved 150 people in Italy and at least 15 companies and their teams across Europe. A vacuum vessel sector is built from four sub-segments; for sector #5, two of the four segments were manufactured by Westinghouse, while the other two were produced by Walter Tosto. From initial cutting activities to the final product, manufacturing required at least 20,000 hours of machining and 100,000 hours of welding (to complete 150 km of welds). "Our commitment to deliver, the teamwork, and innovative thinking have been the driving forces of this impressive achievement," said Marc Lachaise, director of Fusion for Energy. "It is a testament to European knowhow in engineering that we can be proud of and proof of our determination to harness the potential of fusion energy. ITER has also been instrumental in boosting Europe's competitiveness and raising the benchmark in manufacturing.' Sector #5 was loaded on a trailer on Saturday 28 September at Monfalcone; today, it will transfer to a ship for a short five-day voyage to the French port of Fos-sur-Mer. The sector is expected on site at ITER at the end of the month. Europe's four remaining sectors are in production and will be delivered to ITER over the next two years. See a related article on the Fusion for Energy website.

Nestled in the residential suburb of Glasnevin, Dublin City University is a fairly young academic institution. When it opened its doors in 1980 it had just 200 students; 44 years later it is the academic home of 19,000 students and features among the top 100 universities worldwide. Its event and conference centre—The Helix—was the venue of the 33rd Symposium of Fusion Technologies (SOFT 2024), hosted by the university's National Centre for Plasma Science & Technology. SOFT, the largest and most important fusion technology conference in Europe, brought together 1,000 scientists, researchers and engineers from all over the world for its thirty-fourth session from 22 to 27 September. The latest in fusion technology developments was presented in 98 talks and roughly 700 poster presentations. Naturally, ITER was one of the dominating themes of the conference. At the same time, post-ITER fusion projects were also represented—including DEMO (Europe's demonstration power plant), the fusion materials irradiation facility IFMIF-DONES, and the divertor tokamak test facility DTT. Beyond Europe, participants received updates on fusion programs in China, Japan, Korea and the United States. Private fusion initiatives were also featured at the conference including Gauss Fusion, which drew a crowd of more than 300 to its satellite event. Gianfranco Federici, from the European Consortium for the Development of Fusion Energy EUROfusion, presented the technological issues that still require solving before fusion can be harnessed as a practical energy source. ITER will contribute to addressing each of them, in an integrated manner, but further R&D is a prerequisite to delivering a credible design for a next-phase demonstration reactor. 'There are still important plasma physics and technology uncertainties that strongly impact the design [of a commercial fusion reactor],' he said, listing tritium breeding, power exhaust management, remote maintenance, neutron-hardened materials, and heat extraction and conversion as the most important outstanding technical challenges. He also emphasized the shortage of engineering skills in the fusion workforce—an issue that is repeated as a concern at all fusion energy conferences. 'Fusion engineering education needs to be strengthened,' he said as the concluding point of his contribution. 'We are at an exploratory time,' said Sehila Gonzalez of the Clean Air Task Force while speaking on the topic of regulating fusion energy devices. Future fusion power plants need to protect the safety of the workers, the public and the environment, but simply applying the regulatory framework of nuclear power plants would be disproportionate and would not address the specificities of fusion power plants, she said. After presenting some of the different approaches being followed around the world, Gonzalez called for an 'early international alignment or harmonization on fusion energy regulatory requirements' which would 'simplify and accelerate the export and international deployment of fusion energy.' The symposium also featured a strong industrial component, with many suppliers setting up stands in the halls of the conference venue to present their capabilities. Industry Day on Tuesday 24 September provided ITER's Head of Procurement Mack Stanley the opportunity to present upcoming business opportunities in the areas of engineering; machine assembly; controls and integrated commissioning; buildings and site management; and diagnostics. Stanley forecasted procurement at ITER in the value of EUR 700 million for 2024 and 2025 combined. A highlight at every SOFT conference is the announcement of the SOFT Innovation Prize winners. The prestigious prize, funded by the European Union's Euratom Research and Training Programme, is awarded for groundbreaking and innovative fusion research projects with market potential. The first prize went to Petra Jenus of Slovenia for the development of a tungsten carbide-reinforced material ideal for DEMO divertor applications. Alexander Feichtmayer of Germany won the second prize for a novel facility enabling real-time testing of fusion materials under simulated reactor conditions. The third prize went to Stephane Gazzotti of France for creating a ventilated immersive suit with extended reality technology for use in nuclear simulations. In his opening talk, ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi had invited conference participants to visit ITER. None of them could have known at that point that they will have a good chance of seeing ITER with their own eyes at the 34th Symposium of Fusion Technology, which will be hosted in 2026 by the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (IRFM) in Aix-en-Provence, France—just 35 km south of the ITER site. A visit to the ITER worksite will definitely be a key part of the program.

New results from the JET tokamak offer positive news for tokamak reactor designs based on deuterium-tritium fuel, according to the European Consortium for the Development of Fusion Energy, EUROfusion. Reporting on experiments run in deuterium-tritium (DT) during JET's record-breaking campaign in 2021—and comparing them to control experiments performed in pure deuterium (DD)—EUROfusion researchers found that future fusion power plants using DT fuel may experience fewer energy losses in their burning plasma due to instabilities than previously anticipated. 'Our goal was to study whether our earlier findings on turbulence reduction in tokamak plasmas with high-energy ions could be replicated in DT plasmas, the primary fuel for the international ITER project and future fusion power plants,' explain Jeronimo Garcia (CEA-IRFM, France) and Yevgen Kazakov (LPP-ERM/KMS, Belgium), the leading authors of a paper* published in Nature Communications.   What they found in experiments that replicated ITER conditions as closely as possible was that, with tritium in the mix, core plasma conditions actually improved. They also observed "a new beneficial state' at the edge of the plasma, without unwanted energy bursts. 'Our results demonstrate that the addition of heavier tritium ions has a calming effect on the plasma, reducing turbulence,' says Garcia. This is good news for ITER and future magnetic confinement fusion reactors. Alberto Loarte, head of the ITER Science Division, had this reaction: "The results in these studies show that there is better-than-expected performance in DT plasmas compared with DD plasmas; in particular, instabilities triggered by fast particles in DT plasmas such as those expected for fast helium produced by fusion in ITER can reduce energy losses from the plasma and increase fusion performance. The studies show that if instabilities remain at low levels they actually increase performance, whereas we had formerly assumed that they would most likely decrease it. The results also show that in conditions that are relevant to ITER, it might be possible to replace the intermittent burst of plasma energy through edge localized modes (ELMs) through a much more benign continuous outflow more easily handled by the wall in ITER.' See the original story on the EUROfusion website here. *J. Garcia, Y. Kazakov et al., Nature Communications 15, 7846 (2024) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52182-z --Image: D-T plasma in JET pulse #99896, together with the computed zonal poloidal flows. Credits — plasma photo: UKAEA; flow calculation: FAR3D code

Speaking at a round table on the green energy transition at the Forum Aix-Marseille economic conference, head of the ITER Science & Integration Department Alain Bécoulet said the fusion ecosystem was developing rapidly but wouldn't be ready to meet short-term decarbonization goals. 'This is an important moment for humanity because the technology is coming out of the research laboratory and being demonstrated,' noted Bécoulet. 'ITER is part of a flotilla of advances in fusion research, industrial testing, and private-sector investment. This is creating the ecosystem and supply chain that will be needed to roll out this energy source on a planetary scale.' However, Bécoulet warned that even after the first fusion power plant is successfully demonstrated, it will take decades to build the thousands of plants required for a global energy transition. He added that in the meantime, broader use of conventional fission plants or new SMRs (small modular reactors) could reduce carbon emissions. The conclusions of the day's debates and discussions will be shared at the national Cercle des Etats de la France conference, which helps shape France's economic policies.