D-shaped, compact, spherical ... tokamaks are one of the avenues of exploration for bringing commercial fusion to the grid. These projects benefit from, and complement, the pioneering work at ITER.
The ITER
During the ITER Private Sector Fusion Workshop in May, a panel on tokamaks moderated by Melanie Windridge (Fusion Energy Insights) brought together, from left, Alex Creely, Director of Tokamak Operations at Commonwealth Fusion Systems; David Kingham, Executive Vice Chairman at Tokamak Energy; David Weisberg, Senior Scientist from General Atomics; and Minsheng Liu, President of the ENN Energy Research Institute.
Kingham stressed the importance of ITER's body of work, citing publicly available information on the design of ITER including a grand database of tokamak experimental data, which was useful to conceptual design studies for spherical tokamaks, and advancements in tritium handling and fuel breeding systems. "ITER has also validated the performance of many important materials and stimulated the development of supply chains for materials and other enabling technologies." Kingham hopes to continue to benefit from ITER knowledge—including (good and bad) lessons learned and more detail about materials selection, and through the support of bi-directional staff secondments.