Programme details

During this century, the world's population will double; from 6 billion people today, it will rise to 10 billion by 2050. Energy consumption will probably be about 2 times higher by the middle of the century with an even stronger increase in electricity consumption.
To meet the future demand, combustion of fossil energies may well be used increasingly - with, as we already know, dramatic consequences on the climate due to emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Under these circumstances, developing and improving new, sustainable and renewable sources of energy is therefore crucial for the future.

What is Fusion?

Fusion is the sun's source of energy. The heat and light we receive on Earth originate from these fusion reactions. Scientists can reproduce this process on Earth:
The nuclear fusion process refers to the merger of two light hydrogen nuclei. This gives an atom of helium. But the two hydrogen nuclei have a positive charge - they don't want to merge. So we force them. When they are very close to each other, they fuse and this gives off an enormous amount of energy.
To force fusion of two nuclei, the use of a device which attempt to reproduce conditions in the sun is necessary.
The first essential step to achieve fusion on Earth is heating the gas to a very high temperature by means of an external supply of energy so that it becomes a plasma.
To prevent the plasma from touching the side of the test tube and cooling down, a system must be developped to keep them from touching the tube.
Therefore the plasma is confined in a very stable way in a doughnut shape called a torus, using a magnetic field to attract the plasma and prevent it from touching the sides.

Advantages of Fusion

The resources required for a future fusion power plant - the fuel if you like - are available everywhere. The two elements most susceptible to fusion on Earth are deuterium and tritium, two hydrogen isotopes. Tritium is generated in the device itself using lithium (which is abundant in the earth's crust). Deuterium is generously present in seawater.
This is the first advantage of fusion.
Other significant advantages are the fact that the fusion of the two isotopes we see here in plasma form does not result in emitting any gases with a greenhouse effect, that chain reactions and related possible accidents are excluded and that long-term radioactivity will be very limited.

How Fusion be triggered on Earth?

Europe, the world leader in this field, has already undertaken several research and development projects dealing with fusion. Among these, the JET project, for Joint European Torus, which is the largest Tokamak experiment in the world, has been constructed between 1978 and 1983 in Culham (United Kingdom). Since then, its exploitation was and still is focused on understanding and developing powerful high performance fusion plasmas, in preparation for the next step in fusion research.

The Future of Fusion

ITER is a unique project now under negotiations and presently embracing the European Union, Japan and Russia, and more recently also China, the Republic of Korea and the United States.
The objective of the ITER project is to prove scientifically and technologically that fusion can be tamed as a source of energy. ITER will be constructed using the results of JET, with the same concepts and the same toroidal shape, but on a much larger scale.
By increasing the size of the device, ITER will not depend exclusively on power supplied from the outside because the internal source of energy resulting from the fusion reactions will compensate losses.

Construction of ITER

First of all, the participants in the ITER negotiations must choose the site for the construction of the device. The construction of ITER, which will last about 10 years, is planned to start in 2005. Until recently, it was considered that the first kW of electricity to be generated by a demonstration-type fusion plant could be supplied by about 2050, but it is hoped that this date could be brought forward.
The last stage will therefore be the construction of an electricity-producing power plant that is connected to the electricity distribution network.