ITER postponed by a decade in €5bn overhaul

ITER Organization

INTERNATIONAL fusion project ITER has been pushed back by almost ten years after leaders decided to revamp its original roadmap, in a move that could drive up costs by an additional €5bn (US$5.4bn).

Members of the ITER Organisation have proposed a new project baseline to the ITER Council, with many targets for the construction of what will be the world’s largest tokamak expected to be delayed.

The team initially expected to start operations on ITER in 2025, with a goal to reach “First Plasma”, a state where the fusion reaction relies mostly on internal heating rather than external, by that time.

This target has now been rescheduled, with ITER’s new roadmap expecting research activities to begin in 2034, and work on deuterium-deuterium plasmas with full magnetic energy in 2036 – around a decade later than originally planned.

Operations involving deuterium-tritium fuel have also been pushed back by four years to 2039.

The organisation, which represents China, the US, Russia, India, South Korea, and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), said the original roadmap had been marred by supply chain disruption and equipment faults, rendering it “neither realistic, nor achievable, nor optimal.”

Pietro Barabaschi, the director general of ITER, said: “We are immediately entering a real research phase leading to the demonstration of the feasibility of an integrated commissioning, with maximum magnetic field intensity and plasma current.”

He added: “This ‘robust’ and scientifically consistent startup will allow us to catch up on some of the accumulated delay but also to limit technical risks as we progress towards the programme objectives.”

Since the project’s launch in 2006, its budget has ballooned from €5bn to €20bn, with around a quarter invested by the EU alone.

'Ten times larger'

ITER have said that the new start date will put the project in a better starting position with a tokamak that is closer to being finalised.

The project boasts that it will operate a tokamak “ten times larger than the largest existing tokamaks”.

Currently, the largest operational tokomak is the JT-60SA, operated by the European Union and Japan as part of their Broader Approach agreement.

JT-60SA has a plasma radius of 3 m and a plasma volume of 130 m³, ITER’s tokomak is expected to have a plasma radius of 6.2 m and a plasma volume of 840 m³.

ITER has had several equipment issues with the construction of the tokomak. In the last two years, the organisation identified two major problems with the machines vacuum vessel thermal shields.

The thermal shields prevent heat from the fusion reaction transferring to the ultra-cold magnets outside the reaction which help hold the plasma in place. In 2021, cracks were found in the piping of three thermal shields.

ITER believed it was a systemic issue with the equipment and has replaced shield parts.

The organisation also contributed roadmap issues to the Covid pandemic and its disruptive effect on the supply chain.

ITER said in a statement: “The Covid-19 pandemic shut down some factories supplying ITER components, reduced the associated workforce, and triggered other impacts such as

backlogs in maritime shipping, challenges in conducting quality control inspections, etc.”

A necessary extension

Although the roadmap has stretched ITER’s timeline by around ten years, experts say that this does not diminish the progress the project has made in fusion research.

Stephen Wheeler, the executive director of the UKAEA, said: “Some of the engineering they are delivering at ITER is truly amazing, and if you only ever hear or read about delays and budgets, you can get the wrong impression of what they have achieved there.”

He added: “You can make the contrast between ITER and that to the faster pace of privately funded projects, but they are typically going for smaller concepts, and have to, by necessity, deliver at pace because of funding. ITER of course is not a power plant, it is a research device, and it will generate data which will be of value to the whole community.”

The new roadmap will focus more on testing and installing systems that would reduce disruption to the project. Additions to the tokomak include a new heating system and swapping out the beryllium used for the plasma facing walls of the tokamak with tungsten, which ITER said will be more commercially transferrable.