Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron visited the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) facility on February 12. This was the first visit by any Head of State or Head of Government to the ITER. During the visit, the leaders appreciated the progress of the ITER.

What is ITER?

• ITER (the Latin word for “the way”) is a large-scale scientific experiment intended to prove the viability of fusion as an energy source. ITER is currently under construction in the south of France. 

• It is one of the most ambitious fusion energy projects in the world, in Cadarache in France.

• Seven partners — China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States — have pooled their financial and scientific resources to build the biggest fusion reactor in history. 

• These nations are collaborating to build the world’s largest tokamak, a magnetic fusion device that has been designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy based on the same principle that powers our Sun and stars.

Origin of ITER

• ITER was set in motion at the Geneva Superpower Summit in November 1985, when the idea of a collaborative international project to develop fusion energy for peaceful purposes was proposed by Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev to the US President Ronald Reagan.

• One year later, an agreement was reached. The European Union (Euratom), Japan, the Soviet Union and the US joined to pursue the design for a large international fusion facility, ITER. Conceptual design work began in 1988, followed by increasingly detailed engineering design phases until the final design for ITER was approved by the members in 2001.

• The ITER members — China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States —  are now engaged in a decades-long collaboration to build and operate the ITER experimental device, and together bring fusion to the point where a demonstration fusion reactor can be designed.

• On-site construction of the scientific facility began in 2010. As the buildings rise at the ITER site in southern France, the fabrication of large-scale mockups and components is underway in the factories of the seven ITER members.

What is fusion?

• Fusion is the energy source of the Sun and stars. In the tremendous heat and gravity at the core of these stellar bodies, hydrogen nuclei collide, fuse into heavier helium atoms and release tremendous amounts of energy in the process.

• This is the opposite of nuclear fission – the reaction that is used in nuclear power stations today – in which energy is released when a nucleus splits apart to form smaller nuclei.

• Three conditions must be fulfilled to achieve fusion in a laboratory: very high temperature (on the order of 150,000,000°C); sufficient plasma particle density (to increase the likelihood that collisions do occur); and sufficient confinement time (to hold the plasma, which has a propensity to expand, within a defined volume).

• At extreme temperatures, electrons are separated from nuclei and a gas becomes a plasma — often referred to as the fourth state of matter. Fusion plasmas provide the environment in which light elements can fuse and yield energy.

• In a tokamak device, powerful magnetic fields are used to confine and control the plasma.

What is a tokamak?

• The tokamak is an experimental machine designed to harness the energy of fusion.

• The term ‘tokamak’ came from a Russian acronym that stands for “toroidal chamber with magnetic coils”.

• First developed by Soviet research in the late 1950s, the tokamak has been adopted around the world as the most promising configuration of magnetic fusion device. ITER will be the world’s largest tokamak.

• Inside a tokamak, the energy produced through the fusion of atoms is absorbed as heat in the walls of the vessel. Just like a conventional power plant, a fusion power plant will use this heat to produce steam and then electricity by way of turbines and generators.

• The heart of a tokamak is its doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber. 

• Inside, under the influence of extreme heat and pressure, gaseous hydrogen fuel becomes a plasma — the very environment in which hydrogen atoms can be brought to fuse and yield energy. 

• The charged particles of the plasma can be shaped and controlled by the massive magnetic coils placed around the vessel. Physicists use this important property to confine the hot plasma away from the vessel walls. 

What is the significance of ITER?

• ITER will not produce electricity, but it will resolve critical scientific and technical issues in order to take fusion to the point where industrial applications can be designed. 

• By producing 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of power injected in the systems that heat the plasma — a “gain factor” of 10 — ITER will open the way to the next step: a demonstration fusion power plant.

• ITER is one of the most complex scientific and engineering projects in the world today. The complexity of the ITER design has already pushed a whole range of leading-edge technologies to new levels of performance. However, further science and technology are needed to bridge the gap to the commercialisation of fusion energy.

• The experimental campaign that will be carried out at the ITER is crucial to advancing fusion science and preparing the way for the fusion power plants of tomorrow.

• The ITER will also test the availability and integration of technologies essential for a fusion reactor (such as superconducting magnets, remote maintenance, and systems to exhaust power from the plasma) and the validity of tritium breeding module concepts that would lead in a future reactor to tritium self-sufficiency.

• As signatories to the ITER Agreement, concluded in 2006, the seven Members will share the cost of project construction, operation and decommissioning. They also share the experimental results and any intellectual property generated by the fabrication, construction and operation phases.

• Europe is responsible for the largest portion of construction costs (45.6 per cent). The remainder is shared equally by China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States (9.1 per cent each).

• Taken together, the ITER members represent three continents, half of the world’s population and 73 per cent of global gross domestic product.

• In the offices of the ITER Organisation and those of the seven domestic agencies, in laboratories and in industry, literally thousands of people are working toward the success of ITER.

India’s role in ITER

• India became a full partner of ITER in December 2005. 

• ITER-India, Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), located in Gandhinagar, Gujarat is the Indian domestic agency to design, build and deliver the contributions to ITER. 

• Around 200 Indian scientists and associates, as well as notable industry players such as L&T, Inox India, TCS, TCE, HCL Technologies among others are engaged in the ITER project.

India is responsible for delivery of the following ITER packages:

• Cryostat

• In-wall Shielding

• Cooling Water System

• Cryogenic System

• Ion-Cyclotron RF Heating System

• Electron Cyclotron RF Heating System

• Diagnostic Neutral Beam System

• Power Supplies

• Diagnostics.

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