ITER Organization
🇫🇷 Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, FR · Active
The ITER Organization is the intergovernmental body, established in 2007 under an agreement signed in November 2006, that is building and will operate ITER, an experimental tokamak at Saint-Paul-lez-Durance in southern France, next to the Cadarache research centre. Its seven members are China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. ITER's goal is a plasma that releases ten times more fusion power than the heating power injected into it (a plasma gain of 10) and 500 MW of fusion heat. Under the revised schedule published in 2024, operation with deuterium–deuterium plasma is to start in 2035 and deuterium–tritium operation in 2039.
- Sector
- Fusion
- Technology
- Tokamak
- Fuel
- Deuterium–tritium
- Role
- Consortium, Operator
It is the operator of record for ITER (under construction). ITER carries only planned figures, which are targets rather than results.
Terms
- Tokamak
- Doughnut-shaped magnetic confinement using a strong toroidal field plus a current driven through the plasma itself. The most-studied configuration, and the one ITER uses. Its main open problem is heat exhaust at the divertor, where the plasma edge concentrates power onto a small area, together with the risk of disruptions: sudden, uncontrolled losses of the plasma current.
- Deuterium–tritium
- Lowest ignition threshold; 80% of energy in 14.1 MeV neutrons. The reference fuel for every near-term net-gain claim.
Results
Plasma gain (Qplasma)
Fusion power produced ÷ External heating power coupled into the plasma
planned
Fusion triple product (nTτE)
planned
Continuing progress toward fusion energy breakeven and gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
Ion temperature (peak)
planned
Continuing progress toward fusion energy breakeven and gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
Plasma density
planned
Continuing progress toward fusion energy breakeven and gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
Energy confinement time (τE)
planned
Continuing progress toward fusion energy breakeven and gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
Design values
| Device | Parameter | Value | Unit | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ITER | Major radius | 6.2 | m | design valueplanned |
| ITER | Minor radius | 2 | m | design valueplanned |
| ITER | On-axis magnetic field | 5.3 | T | design valueplanned |
| ITER | Plasma current | 15 | MA | design valueplanned |
| ITER | Plasma duration (nominal) | 3,000 | s | design valueplanned |
Devices
Related companies
- Commonwealth Fusion Systems
- Maritime Fusion
- Energy Singularity
- Firefly Fusion
- General Atomics
- Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Korea Institute of Fusion Energy
- Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
- MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center
- National Nuclear Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan
- Pranos Fusion
- UK Atomic Energy Authority
Sources
- ITER - the way to new energyoperator
- ITER (Wikipedia)aggregator