Author: Christophe Rossel

The EPS Technology and Innovation Group (TIG) organized a visit to ITER on the 23 November 2021. Eighteen physicists registered for the visit in Saint Paul-lez-Durance, a location close to Cadarache in southern France, with a large representation of the Swiss Physical Society (SPS). The visitors were welcomed by Alain Bécoulet, Head of Engineering Domain, replacing in the last-minute Bernard Bigot, the Director General of ITER. With a comprehensive presentation of this most ambitious energy project, the present construction status of the world’s largest tokamak was explained to the audience. ITER is an international collaboration of 35 countries and designed to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion at a large scale, with a reactor device, whose plasma is capable of producing a positive net energy for longer periods of time. The main challenges with regards to the physical process, the material science and the integrated technologies are enormous and require an impressive logistic for the construction of the buildings, the infrastructure, and the experimental device itself. After the outstanding presentation and an active QA discussion, the participants were invited to tour the whole worksite, visiting the Poloidal Magnetic Field Coils facility, the Assembly Hall, and the Tokamak itself. Useless to say that the construction site and the large scale of the components of the tokamak highly impressed the visitors, who could ask all their questions to a very competent guiding team.

At the end of the visit the participants were driven back by bus to Aix-en-Provence, where most of them spent the night before.

If you are interested in more information on ITER, please visit the website https://www.iter.org/.
An excellent focus issue on nuclear energy generation, including the ITER fusion project, is also available in English on the website of the SPS: https://www.sps.ch/en/artikel/sps-focus/sps-focus-1

Official welcome at the main building by Mr. Alain Bécoulet (4th from left, picture ITER)

The whole visiting group in the Assembly Hall. In the back one of the 18 superconducting toroidal field coils under construction,
17 m high, 360 tons each  (picture ITER)

ITER Platform drone..jpg: general view of the construction site (picture ITER)

Arrival in front of the ITER headquarters building (picture Antoine Pochelon)

Manufacturing Hall for the superconducting poloidal field coils (picture Antoine Pochelon)

The Tokamak under construction (picture Antoine Pochelon)