ITER, popularly known as "Artificial Sun," said it had completed all components for the world's largest, most powerful pulsed superconducting electromagnet system, showcasing what global cooperation can achieve in the pursuit of clean energy.
by Xinhua writers Guo Shuang, Larry Neild, Luo Yu
LONDON/PARIS, May 2 (Xinhua) -- In an era shadowed by climate anxiety and geopolitical division, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) has achieved a milestone that resonates far beyond the scientific community.
On Wednesday, ITER, popularly known as "Artificial Sun," announced that it had completed all components for the world's largest, most powerful pulsed superconducting electromagnet system.
ITER, meaning "the way" in Latin, is one of the largest and most significant international scientific research projects in the world. It brings together more than 30 nations -- including the European Union, China, the United States, Russia, Japan, South Korea and India, aiming to demonstrate nuclear fusion, the power of the sun and stars, as a safe, abundant, and carbon-free energy source for the planet.
Thousands of scientists and engineers assembled this single machine using components from hundreds of factories across three continents to build a single machine, providing a shining example of what global cooperation can achieve when humanity unites to pursue the limitless, clean energy of the stars.
BRIDGING DIVIDES
ITER's achievement is remarkable amid the current global context. As geopolitical tensions and protectionist currents threaten to fragment international cooperation, ITER stands as a rare and powerful testament to what humanity can accomplish when united by common purpose.
"It's a great sign of hope, just to show that mankind at the end can cooperate, for they share a problem, and they try to find shared solutions," ITER Director General Pietro Barabaschi told Xinhua in an exclusive interview. "In the current geopolitical situation in the world, such collaboration is incredible."
Thousands of engineers and scientists have contributed components from hundreds of factories on three continents to build a single machine since the idea for an international joint experiment in fusion was first launched in 1985.
Under the ITER agreement, officially signed on Nov. 21, 2006, Europe, as host member, contributes 45 percent of the cost of the ITER Tokamak and its support systems, while China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the United States each contribute 9 percent. But all members have access to 100 percent of the intellectual property.
In total, ITER's magnet systems will comprise 10,000 tons of superconducting magnets, with a combined stored magnetic energy of 51 gigajoules. The raw material for these magnets consists of more than 100,000 kilometers of superconducting strand, fabricated in nine factories in six countries.
"There was not a single country that could fabricate all these magnets ... there just wasn't enough industrial power," said Barabaschi.
ITER's official spokesperson Laban Coblentz said China's contribution is crucial. "To be specific, China provided around 65 percent of the actual coil material -- the niobium-tin superconducting strands housed in steel jackets that form the ring-shaped poloidal field magnets. These key components, produced in China, were then integrated by Europe and other partners into the ITER system," he explained.
"This is an extremely exciting time to be in fusion," Arun Bhattacharya, chair professor in fusion energy at the University of Birmingham, told Xinhua. "The biggest thing here is that it's not just one or two individuals or one or two countries doing it. You (can) feel it across the globe that people are moving in this direction."
A BEACON OF HOPE
"It is a landmark event for many reasons," Marc LaChaise, director of Fusion for Energy, told Xinhua. "This journey began so long ago that some of my team members were not even born when it started. Now, after decades of effort, it's an end from our side, but it's the beginning of another story."
The ITER project traces its origins to the Geneva Superpower Summit in November 1985, when then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev proposed to U.S. President Ronald Reagan a collaborative international effort to develop fusion energy for peaceful purposes. Conceptual design work began in 1988, progressing through increasingly complex engineering phases until the final design was approved by all members in 2001.
"Our project is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power at industrial scale in a way that we hope will provide safe, abundant, environmentally clean energy for humanity for generations to come," said Coblentz, ITER's official spokesperson.
The final component was the sixth module of the central solenoid, built and tested in the United States. When assembled at the ITER site, the central solenoid will be the system's most powerful magnet, strong enough to lift an aircraft carrier.
The central solenoid will work in tandem with six ring-shaped poloidal field magnets. The fully assembled pulsed magnet system will weigh nearly 3,000 tons, functioning as the electromagnetic heart of ITER's donut-shaped reactor, called a tokamak.
At full operation, ITER is expected to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power from only 50 megawatts of input heating power, a tenfold gain. At this level of efficiency, the fusion reaction largely self-heats, becoming a "burning plasma."
LaChaise highlighted the extraordinary scale and complexity of the project. "Some components are so massive that we had to build factories directly on site in southern France. Transporting them even along major highways would have been impossible."
By integrating all the systems needed for fusion at industrial scale, ITER is serving as a massive, complex research laboratory for its 30-plus member countries, providing the knowledge and data needed to optimize commercial fusion power.
"Fusion is not just for energy, it is an enormous market potential. Fusion is giving birth to spin-off technologies that we didn't even think of it before," said Bhattacharya.
CHARTING UNEXPLORED TERRITORY
The vision of harnessing nuclear fusion -- the very process that powers the sun -- has long been described as the dream of humanity. For ITER's Director General Barabaschi, it's like "setting fire for the second time in the history of mankind."
"But this time, it is not a chemical fire as our ancestors discovered hundreds of thousands of years ago. It is the fire born from the fusion of light nuclei -- nuclear fire," Barabaschi said.
The goal of ITER is to achieve fusion power production at the scale of a commercial power plant, breaking new ground in fusion science and demonstrating the viability of fusion reactor technology.
Yet the journey into this new frontier is anything but simple. At the heart of the big challenge is the need to create and sustain plasma at temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius -- ten times hotter than the core of the sun.
"In a sense, we are recreating the conditions of the sun on Earth," Barabaschi said.
ITER's progress comes at a critical moment for the planet. "Climate change is real, and it's going to happen," said Coblentz. "The longer it takes us to get to effective methods of combating climate change, the more extreme (it is), (thus) the more we will need fusion."
"It's really a frontier of science," he added. "We are witnessing basic science and groundbreaking technology innovation unfold together."
However, Barabaschi emphasized that while the promise of fusion is immense, it is not an immediate solution. He said the development of the ITER project in an age of climate change is significant for the very long run.
"I don't believe that the technologies that we are building will arrive soon enough. When it comes to climate change we need to rush in implementing the technologies that we already have now," he noted.
As ITER forges ahead, its scientific and technological breakthroughs are not only charting new territory for energy, but also offering hope that humanity can unite to overcome its greatest challenges. ■
