In southern France, 35 nations are collaborating to build the world's largest tokamak, a magnetic fusion device that has been designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy based on the same principle that powers our Sun and stars.
As signatories to the ITER Agreement, concluded in 2006, the seven Members China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States will share of the cost of project construction, operation and decommissioning. They'll also share the experimental results and any intellectual property generated by the operation phase.
Europe is responsible for the largest portion of construction costs (45.6 percent); the remainder is shared equally by China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the US (9.1 percent each). The Members deliver very little monetary contribution to the project: instead, nine-tenths of contributions will be delivered to the ITER Organization in the form of completed components, systems or buildings.
On a cleared, 42-hectare site in the south of France, building has been underway since 2010. ITER's First Plasma is scheduled for December 2025. That will be the first time the machine is powered on, and the first act of ITER's multi-decade operational program.
