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According to Fórum Magazine, the ITER reactor has received the final components of the largest magnet ever built to confine plasma ten times hotter than the center of the Sun, in a nuclear fusion endeavor funded by the US, China, Russia, and four other powers, which promises to pave the way for clean and virtually unlimited energy if the magnetic field works as designed.
The largest energy experiment in modern history has just crossed a milestone that seemed distant. The ITER reactor, located in Cadarache, southern France, has received the last module of the gigantic magnet that will form the heart of the most ambitious nuclear fusion system ever attempted by humanity. Seven world powers, including the United States, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, and South Korea, are splitting the 22 billion euro bill for this project, which aims to demonstrate something no facility has achieved to date: generating more energy than it consumes by replicating the process that powers the Sun.
The scale of the undertaking is proportional to the ambition of the goal. The reactor needs to confine plasma at temperatures exceeding 150 million degrees Celsius, a level ten times higher than that recorded at the center of the Sun, using a magnetic field so powerful it could lift an entire aircraft carrier. No known solid material can withstand direct contact with this environment, which is why the plasma must float magnetically suspended inside the machine, never touching its walls.
What is ITER and why are seven powers splitting the bill
ITER, an acronym for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, was conceived in the 1980s, a period when diplomacy between the United States and the Soviet Union sought common ground even at the height of geopolitical tensions. Nuclear fusion emerged as one such common ground: a technology with transformative potential too great to be developed by a single nation. Physical construction, however, only began in 2007, after decades of negotiations, project revisions, and the accession of new partners.
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Today, the consortium that funds and operates the reactor brings together seven members who, together, represent more than half of the world’s population and an even larger share of global GDP. Each partner contributes specific components manufactured in their own territories, which distributes costs but also multiplies logistical complexity. The central magnetic field, for example, relies on modules produced in the United States, while other critical parts come from Europe, Asia, and Russia. The projected total budget of 22 billion euros makes ITER the most expensive scientific engineering project ever undertaken in the field of energy, surpassing even CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
Nuclear fusion: the reaction that powers the stars
To understand what the reactor attempts to replicate, one must look to the Sun. Inside the star, atomic hydrogen nuclei collide under colossal pressure and temperature, fusing into heavier nuclei and releasing extraordinary amounts of energy in the process. This nuclear fusion reaction is the source that has kept the Sun shining for about 4.6 billion years, and replicating it in a controlled manner on Earth is ITER’s central objective.
The reactor’s approach uses two isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, as fuel. When heated to extreme temperatures, these light nuclei overcome the natural electrical repulsion between positive particles and fuse, generating helium and a high-energy neutron. Nuclear fusion differs radically from fission, the process used in conventional nuclear power plants, because it does not produce long-lived radioactive waste or emit greenhouse gases. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a few grams of this fuel could generate energy equivalent to tons of coal or oil, which makes the promise of clean and virtually inexhaustible energy more than just rhetoric.
Plasma at 150 million degrees and the magnetic field that traps it
Plasma is the fourth state of matter, formed when a gas is heated to such extreme temperatures that its atoms lose electrons and convert into a cloud of electrically charged particles. Inside the ITER reactor, this plasma needs to reach over 150 million degrees Celsius for nuclear fusion to occur. This temperature is about ten times hotter than the core of the Sun, and confining it is the engineering challenge that defines the entire architecture of the project.
The solution found was the tokamak, a toroidal-shaped device originally conceived by Soviet physicists during the Cold War. Inside the tokamak, superconducting coils generate a magnetic field of colossal intensity that keeps the plasma floating in the center of the chamber, preventing any contact with the metallic walls. The magnetic field designed for ITER will be powerful enough to suspend an aircraft carrier, an analogy that the project’s own engineers use to convey the scale of the invisible force needed to contain a cloud hotter than any nearby star.
The central solenoid: the missing piece in the reactor
The component that completed the puzzle is the so-called central solenoid, developed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, affiliated with the United States Department of Energy. The piece is approximately 18 meters tall and 4.2 meters wide, composed of six independent modules weighing over 122 tons each. There are more than six kilometers of superconducting cables made from a niobium-tin superalloy that run through the interior of the structure.
These superconducting cables operate at extremely low cryogenic temperatures, a condition that allows them to conduct gigantic electrical currents without resistance. It is this property that enables the magnetic field necessary to trap the plasma in the heart of the reactor. With the delivery of the last module, ITER completes the central piece of its magnetic system, and the project advances to the final assembly phase preceding the first operational tests of the tokamak with real plasma.
The 500-megawatt goal and the path to unlimited energy
The technical objective of the ITER reactor is to demonstrate that nuclear fusion can produce significantly more energy than it consumes. The projected numbers are ambitious: generate 500 megawatts of thermal energy while consuming only 50 megawatts to heat the plasma, a ten-to-one ratio that no previous experiment has achieved. If this goal is met, ITER will prove that nuclear fusion is commercially viable, paving the way for the construction of power plants capable of supplying entire cities with clean energy.
The potential impact of this result transcends physics. An energy source that emits no greenhouse gases, does not depend on weather conditions, and uses abundant fuel from the oceans would represent a structural transformation in the global energy matrix. The plasma confined by the reactor’s magnetic field would cease to be an experiment and would become the foundation of a new energy era, in which virtually infinite electricity could be distributed with no carbon footprint. The 22 billion euros invested by the seven powers would, in this scenario, be one of the best returns science has ever provided to humanity.
And you, do you believe the ITER reactor will deliver on its promises? Will nuclear fusion truly be the energy of the future, or will plasma at 150 million degrees remain confined only to laboratories? Leave your comment and say whether this billion-dollar magnetic field is worth the investment by the seven powers.
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