Fusion for Energy

During the decision-making phase for the 6th Framework Programme for technological research and development, the European Council of Ministers made the following declaration: “Fusion energy could contribute in the second half of the century to the emission-free large-scale production of base-load electricity. The advances made in fusion energy research justify the further pursuit of a vigorous effort towards the long-term objective of a fusion power plant.”

ITER (which means “the path” in Latin) represents the next step towards achieving this objective. Featuring the participation of Europe, China, India, Japan and South Korea, Russia and the United States (over half of the world's population), ITER is one of the largest scientific projects ever conceived. Furthermore, the ITER project is a symbol of international cooperation in research and development, established in order to tackle the scientific and technological challenges presented by fusion through magnetic confinement, and in particular the most advanced channel, called “tokamak”. In a “tokamak”, intense magnetic fields created internally and externally are used to confine the plasma in a vacuum chamber, with the aim of taking it up to temperatures of nuclear fusion, and thereby recreating the process that provides the energy of the stars.

The construction of the ITER project in Cadarache (France) is already under way. Each of the seven partners has agreed to work together to develop and manufacture the different components for the reactor. Europe, which is the partner hosting the mechanism, is supplying approximately half of the components. This challenge that has been fully undertaken by “Fusion for Energy”, the new European organisation, which has its headquarters in Barcelona and administrates Europe's contribution to the ITER project through the participation of European industry and support from complementary R+D activities in fusion research centres. The objective of “Fusion for Energy” is to become a centre of knowledge excellence for future fusion reactors devised to form part of the energy solutions of the future, thereby offering the possibility of having a huge scale energy source available; one which is safe and efficient, with low environmental impact and abundant fuel distributed throughout the planet.