An ambitious international energy project – and prime example of science diplomacy among the world's major powers – reached a major milestone.
After two decades of design, production and assembly on three continents, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor said on Monday it took hold of 19 massive toroidal field coils from Japan and Europe.
The D-shaped toroidal field coils will go around a vacuum vessel or donut-shaped chamber called a tokamak, where light atomic nuclei is to be fused to form heavier ones, releasing an enormous amount of fusion energy.
Fusion researchers hope to develop abundant sources of carbon-free energy based on the same principle that powers the Sun and stars.
“The completion and delivery of the 19 ITER toroidal field coils is a monumental achievement,” ITER's chief Pietro Barabaschi said.
At the center of Europe's R&D for energy
The toroidal field coils, made from niobium-tin and niobium-titanium, were made in Europe and Japan for ITER's mega-project, which includes more than 30 partner countries: China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
The coils become electromagnets when energized with electricity and they become superconducting when cooled with liquid helium.
The fuel comes from deuterium and tritium, two forms of hydrogen, that will be injected as a gas into the tokamak. With electricity, the gas becomes an ionized plasma that is then heated to temperatures 10 times hotter than the Sun's core.
The light atomic nuclei then reaches a velocity high enough for them to collide and fuse.
The 20 billion euros (US$21.4 billion) experimental fusion project, begun in 2006, is based at Cadarache, Europe's largest technological R&D center for energy in Europe, located in southern France.
Much of the funding is paid by companies like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, ASG Superconductors, Toshiba Energy Systems, SIMIC, and CNIM angling to compete in the anticipated fusion energy marketplace.
