Most of the USD 7 billion in investment in private fusion initiatives has gone to companies that are building devices from the ground up. But recently, another breed of entrepreneur has come onto the scene: industrial players that offer some of the building blocks. The challenge for the companies laying the groundwork for what will eventually become a supply chain for commercial reactors is that it is still a very early market. As long as the industry remains in an experimental phase, startups that develop supporting technology and services have to look for commonality among the different approaches and bet their business on the small number of technologies that will prevail. Several of these supply chain innovators visited ITER for the Private Sector Fusion Workshop in May 2024. Chang Ho Choi, Chief Technology Officer of EnableFusion, told the audience that his company aims to export technological experience gained on the Korean tokamak KSTAR, which achieved its first plasma in June 2008. Since then, KSTAR has been operating continuously with no major pauses—a successful demonstration of the engineering and project management practiced by national and international partners in the Korean ecosystem, according to Choi. As a private-public partnership supported by the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy, universities, and private investors, EnableFusion, where Choi works with former ITER Deputy Director-General Gyung-Su Lee, targets as potential clients all fusion startups in the world that don't have the manufacturing capacity to build a reactor themselves. 'We want to apply not only conventional design and manufacturing methods, but also digital twins and virtual simulators that use empirical data to allow scientists and engineers to explore new architectures with minimal trial and error.' Another company representing supply chain innovators at the ITER workshop was Kyoto Fusioneering, which has a three-phase approach to the fusion supply chain. First, they seek to establish partnerships with the academic community to gain early access to new ideas. 'Once we see something that works, we make it into a reliable industrial component,' said Christian Day, Senior Vice President and head of fuel cycle for the company. 'That's our second stage. But knowing a component works is not sufficient; for that, integration testing is needed. Our third phase is designed to show a technology works in a given environment.' The company operates a platform for integration testing, called UNITY-1, at their research centre in Kyoto. They are also planning a second integration centre, UNITY-2, which will be built and operated through a joint partnership with Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) and will concentrate on fuel cycle systems. UNITY-2 will run at Chalk River in Canada, where a tritium facility is already available to store tritium by-products from the Canadian CANDU reactor fleet. Kyoto Fusioneering has three particular areas of technical expertise: plasma heating with gyrotrons, thermal cycle systems, and fuel cycle systems. 'We want to act as enablers providing technology from these three areas to anybody who wants to build a power plant,' said Day. ExoFusion, a third company sharing its story at ITER, is a spinoff from the University of Texas at Austin, whose founders developed some of the first simulation-based transport models used to predict plasma profiles. 'We've been actively involved in the development of groundbreaking gyrokinetic codes, including GS2 and GENE,' said David Hatch, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. The company views simulation design using AI and machine learning as a low capital, high intellectual property business with the potential for big returns on investment. 'Even though most of the fusion occurs in the core of the plasma, the core is very sensitive to what happens on the scrape off layer, which could be as small as a few centimetres wide in a plasma on the scale of metres,' said Hatch. 'Our focus is on the edge of the plasma, and this has resulted in a growing portfolio of innovations, including a new divertor concept.' Hatch's colleagues, Mike Kotschenreuther and Swadesh Mahajan invented the Super X divertor, which was among the first innovations in advanced divertors. This prompted a major upgrade of the UK-based MAST project, where the SuperX divertor was experimentally verified in 2021. ExoFusion also has innovations in liquid metal alloys that are much more conducive to fusion performance than other alloys, in core edge integration for both tokamaks and stellarators, and in transport barrier initiation, control, and optimization. 'Our business model is licensing and intellectual property,' said Hatch. 'We bring many of our own innovations to the table, but also consult. We're happy to take your concept and work with you to maximize its performance.' As public and private initiatives continue to experiment with different ways of harnessing the power of nuclear fusion, an industry is starting to take shape. A few entrepreneurs are making a business out of supplying the current generation of experiments—and those who pick the right approach to nuclear fusion will be very well positioned for what is likely to become a big industry.

Every October, before schools pause for two weeks of holiday, towns and cities in France open their municipal spaces to scientific experts of all stripes who are eager to share their areas of expertise with the general public ... especially school children. Through stands, displays, posters, hands-on experiments and dialogue, institutes, laboratories and large science projects present their activities in an entertaining and easily accessible fashion. The annual Fête de la Science attracts millions of participants across the country. The ITER Project has taken part every year since 2011. For this edition, ITER teams set up booths in Villeneuve Loubet, near Nice; Manosque, near ITER; and Marseille. The different areas of specialization of the volunteers—ranging from science and engineering to information technology, transport, communication, design, and security—meant that interaction with the public was always varied and interesting. A walk-in cinema with ITER videos, a holobox suspending 3D components in mid-air, and hands-on fusion experiments also drew crowds to the stands. Across the three events, thousands of members of the public gained a better understanding of fusion and ITER.

The ITER Director-General was in Russia last week, meeting with stakeholders and holding technical meetings with colleagues in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. As Director-General of the ITER Organization, Pietro Barabaschi has the occasion to meet with representatives of the ITER Members on site, for example during biannual ITER Council meetings, but also travels abroad to make sure he is available to stakeholders to answer questions directly about the status of the project. Last week he was in Russia, where he visited with Alexey Likhachev, Director General of Rosatom on 8 October, and his team. They discussed the progress of the international efforts to construct the ITER project, focusing specifically on Russia's commitments to manufacturing and delivering equipment. The press conference that followed the meeting was widely covered on Russian TV. Mr Barabaschi also visited some of the institutes closely involved with procurement and manufacturing for ITER—the Efremov Institute of Electrophysical Apparatus (JSC 'NIIEFA'), the Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute (FTI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, and the Troitsk Laboratory Complex. Finally, he sat down for an interview on the history and future of the ITER project with Sergey Brilev, president of The Global Energy Association—an association that supports research and innovation in the field of energy and promotes energy cooperation. You can watch the full interview here.

The JT-60SA experiment has been officially recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's largest tokamak, as measured in terms of plasma volume. On 4 September 2024 the device, built and exploited by Japan's National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology (QST) in conjunction with Europe's Fusion for Energy (F4E), achieved a plasma volume of 160 cubic metres, exceeding the previous world record of 100 cubic metres. A certification ceremony is planned on Saturday 19 October at the Naka Institute for Fusion Science and Technology. JT-60SA has been designed to support the operation of ITER by following a complementary research and development program, and to investigate how best to optimize the operation of fusion power plants that are built after ITER. Further details of its experimental program are explained in the JT-60SA Research Plan. -- Photo: Fusion for Energy

This month, ITER will be launching a new version of its public website. The change was compelled for technical reasons, including the need to ensure reliability for a website that has grown considerably over the past 10 years. The ITER Organization took advantage of the opportunity to update and modernize the design. Readers will see new branding, faster data retrieval, and a more dynamic interface. The navigation will remain similar to the existing site, for familiarity. Look out for the change on Saturday 19 October. We look forward to your feedback at ITERCommunications@iter.org.