World´s first fusion reactor now under way
ITER, or ”International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor”, the first fusion reactor in the world, will be erected at Cadarache, outside Aix-en-Provence in southern France. Formal start of the project took place via a ceremony in Paris on 21 November, as the international agreement was signed by all seven parties involved.
Work on the construction site is expected to begin next year; it is estimated that the reactor may be operable by 2016. However, anyone interested in working with this giant project is welcome to apply for posts in it even now.
About one-half of the reactor´s components will be supplied by EU member countries; this will be co-ordinated by the Barcelona-based office of “European Joint Undertaking for ITER and the Development of Fusion Energy”. For this great task the EU Commission now wants to recruit specialist engineers of a very wide spectrum of expertise.
James Drake, Professor at KTH´s Div. of Fusion Plasma Physics, thinks this is an outstanding opportunity for Swedish scientists to give a hand in one of the largest scientific and technical projects ever undertaken.
– This is a milestone in fusion research, he says. I think it would be most creditable if there were a number of Swedish engineers in the ITER teams as they get started. Besides that, the project needs people from every branch of technology.
The ITER reactor is an international venture, funded from the EU, Russia, the USA, China, India, South Korea, and Japan. The total price tag is estimated at some 100,000 million SEK.