Contents: Return to Home Page
Fusion Concepts Controlled Fusion Methods Modern Research Efforts
Conceptual Overview Inertial Confinement Reactors Internal Confinement Research
Conditions for Fusion Magnetic Confinement Reactors Tokamak and Stellerator Research


ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor)

The most cutting-edge research into the tokamak design will be carried out at the ITER facility in France. ITER is a highly funded international project to develop and construct a massive tokamak reactor that yields an energy output ten times greater than its input developing. This accomplishment will assess the effectiveness of nuclear fusion power. The project exists as a collabaration effort between member nations from the European Union, the United States, China, Korea, Japan, India, and Russia. As a proposal, ITER has existed since the mid-1980's, but had been officially signed and begun until 2006. The ongoing construction of the facility began in 2007 and is expected to be completed by 2019.
Regardless of whether or not the ITER facility accomplishes it's goal, the reactor will never be connected to any electrical grid. Instead, the success of the project will signal that fusion reactors have been brought to a working state. This will prompt the construction of several demonstrational fusion reactors based on ITER's design that would provide commercially available fusion energy to existing power grids. These reactors would have to wait until sometime in the middle of the 20th century, according to the project's frequently delayed projections.

Large Helical Device

Design of the Large Helical Device The world's current largest stellerator design was first run in Japan during 1998 and is called the Large Helical Device. Although stellerator designs are generally not as successful as their tokamak counterparts, the LHC is capable of reaching energies and temperatures similar to those of rival designs. Also, there is no toroidal field or current present in the LHC. Instead, magnetic fields originate from large superconducting devices which surround the reactor. Data gained by the LHC has gone to improve other Helical devices and to understand fusion as a whole.