World’s largest nuclear fusion reactor

China recently created the world’s first fully high-temperature superconducting tokamak device, while the International Fusion Energy Project (ITER) fusion reactor completed full coil installation.

About International Fusion Energy Project (ITER):

• The International Fusion Energy Project (ITER) fusion reactor, consists of 19 massive coils looped into multiple toroidal magnets.
• The world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor is the product of collaboration between 35 countries including the European Union, Russia, China, India and the U.S.
• ITER contains the world’s most powerful magnet, making it capable of producing a magnetic field 280,000 times as strong as the one shielding Earth.
• The reactor’s impressive design is slated to cost around $5 billion, under construction on the the world’s biggest tokamak reactor.
• At the heart of this experimental machine, which is based on a Soviet model developed in the 60s, is a torus-shaped vacuum chamber.
• The vacuum chamber weighs 5,200 tonnes and a volume of 1,400 m³, so that the physicists can operate it to control the reactions needed to generate viable fusion power.
• Hydrogen fuel containing deuterium and tritium is subjected to immense heat and pressure, turning it into the hot, electrically charged gas known as plasma.
• This vacuum environment provides radiation shielding and supports plasma stability, while cooling water systems safely remove the heat generated while the reactor is active.
• This is vitally important as extreme temperatures of between 150 and 300 million °C are required for fusion.
• ITER’s tokamak is at the forefront, is very unlikely to arrive in time to be a solution for the climate crisis.
• It was originally slated to begin its first full test in 2020, but scientists stated that it would run its first final trail by 2039.