Blue goo, good to go

2025-12-28 - China’s Domestic Agency has announced the successful completion of the ITER correction coils, with the final four coils being prepared for shipment to the project site in France. A total of 18 superconducting correction coils will be installed between the toroidal and poloidal field coils, where they will compensate for magnetic field errors arising from geometrical deviations caused by manufacturing and assembly tolerances.

2025-12-24 - The last superconducting module of the central solenoid procurement program—the seventh module, a spare—has been unloaded from its oceangoing vessel in the French port of Fos-sur-Mer. It will be delivered to the ITER site in January 2026.

2025-12-18 - The talent of the future is welcomed at ITER in December, with the arrival of the prize-winning Turkmenistan team from the 2025 International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) for a special presentation of the project and tour of the site. The Turkmenistan team members are: Nurgeldi Annagurdov (17, second from left), Dovlet Annamyradov (17, fourth from right), and sisters Aysenem Kakamyradova (17) and Mahriban Kakamyradova (18).

2025-12-18 - A toroidal field coil (~300 tonnes) is on its way to the waiting upending tool. Once installed the tool, and the coil, will be lifted to vertical.

2025-12-18 - A huge toroidal field coil is about to be lifted off its staging frame.

2025-12-18 - The new sector in tooling (#4) needs to be paired with a set of toroidal field coils. In this picture, we see one coil already installed in an upending frame (near), and another about to be installed in the second tool (far).

2025-12-15 - Steel-grey toroidal field coil TF07 is lowered into the cryostat chamber of the ITER magnet cold test facility. The facility was designed, procured and assembled in record time to take advantage of a window that opened in the new ITER baseline to test four or five ITER toroidal field coils and one poloidal field coil at 4 K (minus 269 degrees Celsius)

2025-12-15 - Toroidal field coil #7 (TF07) is seen here under a yellow spreader beam on its way to being deposited in the cryostat of the ITER magnet cold test facility. ITER hopes to test four or five toroidal field coils from different suppliers at their operating temperature of 4 K (minus 269 degrees Celsius).

2025-12-15 - First wall panels made of steel-copper alloy are shaped at Alsymex in Tarbes (France). The European Domestic Agency, which is responsible for 212 "normal" heat flux panels ((2 MW/m²), has signed contracts with two firms to produce 27 series panels each. In the photo is a main panel; the armour in tungsten will be joined at a later stage. ©Alsymex-F4E

2025-12-15 - Almost there: the coil is hanging a few centimetres above its actively cooled supports inside the cryostat. Fifty layers of reflective material insulate the cryostat walls from the outside environment.

2025-12-15 - Thierry Schild, leader of the Magnets Cold Test Facility Project (centre), oversees the insertion of toroidal field coil TF07 in the cryostat. He is seen here with a team that includes metrologists, crane operators and various ITER specialists.

2025-12-15 - Once the sardine-box-shaped cryostat is closed and liquid helium starts running inside the coil bringing its temperature down to 4 K (minus 269 degrees Celsius), the cold testing will begin in earnest. It is scheduled to last for one full month.

2025-12-15 - For years, the big red tower crane inside the Poloidal Field Coil Winding Facility handled the ITER ring-shaped coils in the final stages of their fabrication. On 15 December, equipped with a bespoke yellow spreader beam, it carefully deposited TF07 inside the magnet cold test facility’s cryostat.

2025-12-12 - Until the sector modules are welded together to form the torus-shaped plasma chamber they are suspended from radial beams above and supported by gravity supports below.