Seminar

JT-60SA team shares experience with ITER

JT-60SA, a collaboration between Europe and Japan, began operating last year as the world's largest tokamak. This week, the JT-60SA integrated project team is holding a technical coordination meeting at ITER—and taking advantage of its presence on site to share the lessons learned during the assembly and integrated commissioning phases with the broader ITER community.
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Since November 2019, the ITER Organization has been benefitting from the experience gained in fusion activities under the Broader Approach Agreement—and in particular the assembly, installation, integrated commissioning and operation of the tokamak JT-60SA—based on the terms of a collaboration arrangement signed in November 2019 with Japan's QST (National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology) and Fusion for Energy (the European Domestic Agency for ITER).

Since the first collaboration activity was launched in 2020, ITER scientists have travelled to the JT-60SA site in Naka, Japan, and participated in integrated commissioning activities. The device achieved first plasma in October 2023, and celebrated the start of operation during a ceremony in December attended by ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi and Deputy Director-General for Science and Technology Yutaka Kamada.

For its first Technical Coordination Meeting since JT-60SA became an operational tokamak, the team has chosen to gather at ITER Headquarters, and to kick off the week with a two-hour seminar for the broader ITER community (photo). With hundreds of people in attendance, in person or on line, the team went over the important lessons learned during the integrated commissioning period, and fielded technical questions from the audience. Other public talks are planned this week.