Of Interest archive

Sign up before 1 April 2025 for this year's ITER International School on the topic of "Integrated Modelling in Magnetic Fusion Plasmas." The school will take place in Aix-en-Provence, France, from 30 June to 4 July 2025.

The scientific program, with 15 lectures and a half-day planned at ITER, is now available on the School's website. The deadline for pre-registration & abstract submission is 1 April 2025.

See this poster for distribution in your institutes and universities.

The ITER Business Forum 2025 (IBF/25) will take place in Marseille, France, from 23 to 25 April 2025.

Through plenary sessions, workshops, and B2B meetings, expand your network and meet key players in the fusion supply chain, from regional and international companies to innovators shaping the future of energy. Get the latest on the ITER baseline and procurement opportunities, and meet representatives of the private fusion sector and its supply chain needs.

A general overview of the agenda is available now and includes 16 themed workshops bringing together experts from many different horizons. For supply chain companies, the Forum offers the opportunity to learn about a broader range of procurement needs. For startups, it enables concentrated access to a global set of companies with fusion-specific capabilities. Registration is open now. For industrial exhibitors, the deadline for registration is 28 March 2025.

Visit the IBF/25 website for more information.

All interested parties are also welcome at the second Private Sector Fusion Workshop, to be hosted at the ITER site right before IBF/25, on 22-23 April 2025 (priority will be given to participation by private sector fusion initiatives). See all information on this website.

From 19-20 February 2025 the historic city of Aachen, Germany—the main residence of Charlemagne—hosted the first binding.energy¹ conference, an international gathering on nuclear technology. Around 130 experts, 50 of them online, joined the discussions on the latest advancements in both fission and fusion technologies.

Organized by the German company Actimondo, the conference provided a platform to share views on challenges and opportunities in nuclear technology such as material science, political strategy, private sector growth, regulatory framework, emerging markets, supply chain development, radiation protection, as well as workforce development and education.

ITER’s Deputy Director Alain Becoulet presented a comprehensive project update. At its stand in the small exhibition area, ITER was joined by FuseNet whose Executive Officer Dario Cruz also presented education opportunities for young fusion experts in Europe.

¹The name of the conference, binding.energy, stems from a phenomenon in physics which describes the smallest amount of energy required to remove a particle from a system of particles. 

Save the Date! The FuseNet PhD Event 2025 will take place at ITER from 4 to 6 November 2025. 

The annual PhD Event is organized by the European Fusion Education Network, FuseNet, as a network event. Meet and greet fellow fusion researchers from Europe and expand your network. The event features high-profile keynote speakers, a top-notch scientific program and the much anticipate PechaKucha contest, where students present their research in 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide.  

All information will be posted on this page in the coming months. 

On site at ITER in December 2024, Jan Hosan went looking for the human in the technological. 

As a commercial photographer who specializes in technological, industrial and scientific subjects, he says he looks to brings out the "aesthetical and the exciting" in each frame, while remaining true to the subject's function. At ITER he captured the scale and complexity of the undertaking but also—by including people at work in the shadow of giant components—the very human story.

You can scroll through his ITER portfolio here, or contact him here.

We are pleased to announce the launch of an online web-shop, the ITER Boutique: https://shop-iter.org/.

Here you will be able to order ITER-branded clothing, office items, travel accessories and more for delivery to your home or address of choice. Boutique products range from simple pens and umbrellas to a mug featuring the Grad-Shafranov fusion equation, T-shirts illustrating the deuterium-tritium fusion reaction or the architecture of the ITER tokamak, and tote bags and water bottles featuring ITER-specific slogans and technical details.

The boutique is operated by an ITER contractor, Synneo. Questions about products and services can be addressed to their experts, here.  Over time, we will add more items to the inventory.

Many of our followers have requested such a shop in the past. We hope you will enjoy showing your support with ITER-branded merchandise.

In December 2024 Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and Viola Amherd, President of the Swiss Confederation in 2024, confirmed the completion of negotiations on a broad package of agreements that aim to “deepen and expand the EU-Switzerland relationship.”

As part of the agreements, Switzerland will participate in all three pillars of Horizon Europe (the European Union's key funding program for research and innovation) and the Euratom research and training program. It is under this latter program that Switzerland participated in the ITER project through the European Joint Undertaking for ITER (Fusion for Energy) from 2014 to 2020.

The restart of Switzerland's association to the Horizon Europe, Digital Europe, and Euratom Research and Training programs is foreseen in 2025, subject to the signature of the agreement on Union programs. Switzerland's participation in Fusion for Energy is foreseen to start from 2026, and in Erasmus+ from 2027.

Switzerland will again become a full member of Fusion for Energy, taking part in its governance and allowing Swiss companies and research centres to participate in ITER.

See press releases from the European Commission and the Federal Council of the Swiss Confederation.

--European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and President of the Swiss Confederation for 2024 Viola Amherd at a joint press conference in Bern on 20 December 2024 to announce the political agreement. (Photo credit: Keystone-SDA)

The 14th ITER International School (IIS) will be held from 30 June to 4 July in Aix-en-Provence, France, hosted by Aix-Marseille University. The subject of the school is "Integrated Modelling in Magnetic Fusion Plasmas."

Reliable predictions of ITER plasmas—spanning the entire cross-section from the plasma core and scrape-off layer (SOL) to the material surface—are critical for achieving ITER’s fusion power demonstration goals. Such predictions are indispensable for defining and preparing plasma operational scenarios, analyzing the plasma pulses planned for ITER, and evaluating required control schemes via simulations of measurements, actuators, and plasma responses. Given the strongly nonlinear coupling of the processes that govern the behavior of burning plasmas, modeling individual processes or plasma regions in an isolated fashion is not sufficient. A holistic, integrated approach is therefore mandatory. The 2025 school will address these needs and explore the integrated modeling capabilities and validation aspects on existing facilities necessary to prepare ITERs operation and to support ITER’s broader scientific objectives.

All information about IIS 2025 is available at this address.

The ITER Business Forum 2025 (IBF/25) will take place in Marseille, France from 23 to 25 April 2025.

Through plenary sessions, workshops, and B2B meetings, expand your network and meet key players in the fusion supply chain, from regional and international companies to innovators shaping the future of energy. Get the latest on the ITER baseline and procurement opportunities, and meet representatives of the private fusion sector and its supply chain needs.

A general overview of the agenda is available now and includes 16 themed workshops bringing together experts from many different horizons. For supply chain companies, the Forum offers the opportunity to learn about a broader range of procurement needs. For startups, it enables concentrated access to a global set of companies with fusion-specific capabilities.

Registration is open now. For industrial exhibitors, the deadline for registration is 28 March 2025.

Visit the IBF/25 website for more information.

The first documentary film Starmaker was released in 2022 by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority UKAEA. It retraced the journey of the passionate group of men and women working at the JET tokamak to realize the promise of fusion energy.

Starmakers 2 is the exciting sequel, taking us behind the scenes at JET during its final year of groundbreaking scientific operations. The film also takes a step back in time to explore the human stories and legacy of this iconic facility, which continues to pave the way for future advancements in fusion science and technology.

The film premieres on 23 January 2025 at the Cornerstone Arts Centre in Didcot. (See ticketing information here.) Its availability after release on digital platforms will be announced at a later date. 

The 2025 Symposium on Fusion Engineering (SOFE 2025) is planned from 23 to 26 June 2025 in Boston, Massachusetts, hosted by the MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Center. 

Abstract submission has been extended through 24 January 2025.  Early bird conference registration will open on 5 March, the same day abstract acceptance decisions are sent out.

Held biennially since 1965, SOFE is coordinated by the Fusion Technology Committee of the IEEE/NPSS (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers/Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society). It is an international conference open to all engineering, physics and material science disciplines involved in the pursuit of producing the components and systems needed to advance fusion physics and technology. 

Submit your abstract here. 

The ITER Organization has just released a 200-page photobook that covers progress in construction, manufacturing and assembly between 2013 and 2024. 

In 2013, work was ending on the foundations of the Tokamak Complex but no walls were yet built; today civil work has been completed on the 430,000-tonne Complex and efforts have shifted to installing and assembling plant equipment and machine components.

In 2013, only two buildings existed on the ITER site in southern France and mountains of dirt were the most common feature on the platform as contractors worked to install underground drainage networks; today the scientific installation is essentially complete except for the future Hot Cell and the first activities from the control room to manage the plant are scheduled for 19 December 2024.

In 2013, 515 people worked as staff members for the ITER Organization; today, that figure has doubled.

"ITER Progress in Pictures 2013-2024, Construction, Manufacturing & Assembly" covers it all. Visit the Publication Centre on the ITER website (Brochures).

The 360° virtual tour of ITER construction has been updated with drone footage from October 2024. Discover the principal buildings of the ITER worksite, and the equipment inside, by clicking on and rotating the 360° photos.

Accessible from the NEWS & MEDIA pages of the ITER website or by clicking on the link below, the 2D tour requires no special equipment to enjoy. If you do have 3D glasses, click on the yellow goggle symbol at the top of any screen.

Click here to see the latest 360° ITER virtual tour.

The Fusion Industry Association has released The Fusion Workforce: Where it’s heading and how to prepare. It provides a roadmap for addressing fusion workforce and skills needs by giving insights into the current and future fusion industry workforce; projections; and how industry, government, and academia can plan and support. Based on interviews and surveys with the major fusion developers and suppliers, the report details the skills needed for the fusion industry to meet its commercialization challenges. 

The report urges action and synergy by a multitude of players such as governments, fusion developers, suppliers, academia, and trade bodies. Recommended areas of action include: strategic workforce development initiatives, resource centres and skills guidelines, research and technology development programs, and targeted support for workers. It also calls for clear regulatory frameworks, public-private partnerships, and international collaboration to drive the industry’s growth and ensure the development of necessary skills.

Read or download the report on the Fusion Industry Association website here.

The team operating the Korean tokamak KSTAR has announced it is running a new campaign of experiments focused on developing high-performance plasma scenarios. From now through February 2025, experiments will focus on:

* achieving advanced plasma confinement under high-temperature, high-density, and high-current conditions

* testing technologies for instability suppression

* researching tungsten impurity control through tungsten divertor testing and in-depth wall studies

In addition, the KSTAR team is planning over 40 collaborative experiments tackling fusion challenges with international partners, including research teams from DIII-D (USA) and WEST (France), and collaborators in Japan and China. These international partnerships will further expand to include the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, and other nations in the future.

See a full report on the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy website here.

A new report from the non-profit environmental organization Clean Air Task Force (CATF) explores how artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) are accelerating fusion energy development in key areas, including materials selection, high-temperature superconductors, inertial fusion energy, tritium breeding, and advanced diagnostics.

A Survey of Artificial Intelligence and High Performance Computing Applications to Fusion Commercialization was released as the COP29 climate conference was underway in Azerbaijan and introduced at the ITER booth on 15 November by Sehila Gonzalez de Vicente, CATF Global Director for Fusion Energy.

Key findings from the 119-page report include: 

• The arrival of new cloud-based computing tools and AI accelerates prospects for commercialized fusion energy
• The new ecosystem for high-performance computing and AI will be critical in both how we deliver and use fusion energy
• The fusion-tech nexus could deliver revolutionary results in materials science, control systems, and superconductors

From the report's Executive Summary: "Until recently, fusion's rate of progress was set by empirical science: building machines and testing ideas, generating datasets, and then choosing the next design based on empirical scaling. This manual design process could be a years-to-decades-long process. [...] Today, AI and HPC can speed up progress by doing much of the empirical scaling 'in silico.’ HPC-enabled “parameter sweeping,” or determining which design configurations are potentially viable, helps narrow down the nearly infinite range of possible machine parameters. [...] The speed at which these tools work can drastically reduce the time it takes for developers to move from initial exploration to a basic conceptual design suitable for further development. Furthermore, advancements in cloud-based HPC have democratized access to computational tools that were previously limited to dedicated supercomputers. This has broadened access to high-performance computing across the fusion ecosystem, enabling a diverse range of concepts, including less common fusion concepts, to take advantage of modern simulation tools to accelerate the investigation and optimization of their designs. [...] AI and HPC’s ability to change the design process itself could assist with bringing facilities online sooner."

Read the full report and executive summary.

Watch the presentation of the report that was made at the ITER COP29 booth on 15 November.

A new video explores how the WEST tokamak, run and operated by the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (IRFM) at the French Alternatives Energies and Atomic Energy Commission's Cadarache site near ITER, is helping to prepare for ITER operation.

WEST, for W (tungsten) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak, is the former Tore Supra, transformed with a full-tungsten, actively cooled divertor that is based on the same design and technology as the ITER tungsten divertor. Experiments at WEST allow scientists and engineers to address risks both in terms of industrial-scale manufacturing and in the operation of the components. A joint team made up of representatives of the CEA, the ITER Organization and the European Domestic Agency Fusion for Energy meets regularly to coordinate tests and share the lessons learned from the WEST experiments.

WEST is currently running a campaign of tests. Join the team in the control room here.

At the Falling Walls Science Summit in Berlin (7-9 November 2024), global experts gathered to discuss how innovation intersects with societal needs, and how resilient, sustainable systems can be created to bridge science with real-world applications. The ITER Project at the Summit by its Director-General, Pietro Barabaschi, who took part in a plenary table on "Fusion Technology:  Energy for a Sustainable Future." Other participants were moderator Norbert Holtkamp, former ITER Principal Deputy Director-General (2006-2010), Kimberly Budil, Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and Constantin Häfner, Managing Director at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology.

A recording of the plenary table is available at this link (beginning at 2:30:00).

Fourteen years after the start of ITER project construction, the buildings of the scientific installation are nearly complete—except for the Hot Cell Facility, whose construction is not yet underway. Equipment installation is well advanced and a number of plants are operational. ITER's drone videographer spent a week on site in October 2024, filming some of the most unique and unexpected areas. The result? A series of new aerial photos available for download from the ITER image galleries.

See the latest aerial photos here.

At least once a year, the ITER worksite is surveyed by drone from every possible angle—from the widest frame (a kilometre above the platform) to the narrowest (in and out of components staged for assembly). The results of the latest campaign in October 2024 can be viewed in the form of a five-minute video that shows the progress on site since the last time the ITER Organization published a drone video, one year ago. As the drone takes you in and around the main buildings of the ITER scientific installation you'll see the complexity of the ITER industrial plants, ongoing repairs to critical machine elements, components arriving from overseas, and the day-to-day reality for the thousands of workers involved in building ITER.

See the latest video on the ITER YouTube channel or on the website's video page here (select "Drone videos" in the dropdown list).