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ITER and China's SWIP partner for the future
18 Dec 2023
The ITER Organization has signed an agreement for academic, scientific and technical cooperation with the Southwestern Institute of Physics (SWIP) in Chengdu, China.
ITER Deputy Director-General for Science & Technology Yutaka Kamada and the Director General of the Southwestern Institute of Physics, SWIP, sign a cooperation implementing agreement on 14 December 2023 for collaboration in fusion science and technology on the HL-3 tokamak device. The HL-3 team achieved high-confinement mode (H-mode) with a plasma current of one million amperes in August of this year and is planning deuterium-tritium burning plasma experiments within the next five years.
Affiliated with China National Nuclear Corporation, the Southwestern Institute of Physics (SWIP) is one of the research institutes in China that is advancing the national program for fusion energy. SWIP has built more than 20 experimental devices for controlled nuclear fusion research, including medium-sized tokamaks HL-1 (1984) and HL-1M (1994), divertor-based tokamak HL-2A (2002), and the advanced-divertor tokamak HL-2M (also called HL-3) that achieved first plasma in 2020 and high-confinement operation (H-mode) in August 2023. SWIP has also been an important contributor for Chinese participation in ITER construction, by providing key technologies and components for ITER.
The agreement signed on 14 December between the ITER Organization and SWIP aims to deepen cooperation in fusion science and technology. HL-3 is planning to conduct burning plasma experiments in deuterium and tritium within the next three to five years. SWIP Director General LIU Ye confirmed that HL-3 is open as a satellite facility to ITER to provide support for physics research and future ITER operation. "I sincerely invite fusion experts from the world over to participate or lead high-level joint experiments on HL-3 together to contribute to our effort for ITER and fusion energy development."