ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor: Bringing a Sun to Earth (Copernicus Books) 3031377613, 9783031377617

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Michel Claessens

The Giant Fusion Reactor ITER

Bringing a Sun to Earth Second Edition

Copernicus Books Sparking Curiosity and Explaining the World

Drawing inspiration from their Renaissance namesake, Copernicus books revolve around scientific curiosity and discovery. Authored by experts from around the world, our books strive to break down barriers and make scientific knowledge more accessible to the public, tackling modern concepts and technologies in a nontechnical and engaging way. Copernicus books are always written with the lay reader in mind, offering introductory forays into different fields to show how the world of science is transforming our daily lives. From astronomy to medicine, business to biology, you will find herein an enriching collection of literature that answers your questions and inspires you to ask even more.

Michel Claessens

ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor Bringing a Sun to Earth Second Edition

Michel Claessens European Commission Vinon-sur-Verdon, France

ISSN 2731-8982 ISSN 2731-8990 (electronic) Copernicus Books ISBN 978-3-031-37761-7 ISBN 978-3-031-37762-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4 1st edition: © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 2nd edition: © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Copernicus is part of Springer, an imprint published by Springer Nature This Copernicus imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Foreword to the First Edition

I first visited the ITER site in the autumn of 2009. There were many people working there, beavering away in temporary office buildings while their glossy new headquarters took shape nearby. People came and went: national delegations, scientists, engineers, nuclear regulators and suppliers. But up a steep bank behind those busy offices, the actual construction site where the great machine would be built was desolate. On this bleak expanse of gravel and puddles, a kilometre long and half as much wide, nothing was happening— as if a giant had built a court for pétanque, the bowls game popular across France, but no other giants had turned up to play. It was three years on from the handshakes and backslapping that accompanied the signing of the ITER Agreement that fired the project’s starting gun. Yet its new managers had decided to take another long and detailed look at the reactor’s design. Tensions were running high, among its backers, who wanted more progress, among scientists, who wanted results, and among engineering companies who wanted a piece of the action. But delays proliferated and ITER seemed to be demonstrating the maxim that has always dogged fusion: that it’s the energy of the future and always will be, or some variation on that theme. Ten short years later, it’s hard to imagine that desolation. The giant’s sportsground is filled with countless buildings on a suitably gigantic scale, towering cranes, sprawling electrical switchyards, thousands of workers bustling about like ants, the looming edifice of the assembly hall cloaked in mirrors, and next to it, the sturdy walls of the reactor building rising slowly from a pit in

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the ground, soon to be ready for cranes to lift segments of the reactor into place. Project managers say construction is more than 60% complete and few now doubt that ITER will defy the maxim and the future will arrive. People understandably complain about the ever-increasing cost of ITER and the snail’s pace at which fusion is moving towards a usable energy source. But that cost is spread across 35 nations which represent more than half the world’s population. The fact that those countries, some of which are politically at odds with each other, are working together so peaceably to achieve clean energy has got to be admired. As for the pace: nobody said it was going to be easy, but with global temperatures rising and glaciers and icecaps melting, the stakes could not be higher. We would be fools not to at least try to make it work. The ITER project is epic in scale and global in extent. Yet as I’ve written about it over the past couple of decades I’ve found that, when people ask me what I’m working on, I have to explain what ITER is, what fusion is and why it’s important. ITER stays resolutely below the radar of the public consciousness. I never have to provide explanations for the Hubble Space Telescope, CERN, or the International Space Station, which are projects similar in scale and importance. Yet, it could be argued that ITER has more relevance to people’s lives than those other three. While the first two are aweinspiring efforts to understand the universe and the third is a superpower vanity project, fusion has the potential to solve one of the greatest threats to humanity, our current climate crisis. I’m sure that once ITER starts operating and begins ticking off milestones, it will regularly be in the news. But we should not wait until then to let people know of its importance. Especially in such uncertain times, it is important for people to have a reminder of what we can achieve if we work together and that, with enough determination, we can solve the challenges we face. That is why this book is so important. London, UK June 2019

Daniel Clery Journalist with Science Magazine

Preface to Second Edition

The first edition of this book was published in the summer of 2019. I must say—and I know that my editor will also agree—that it has been quite successful in terms of sales, downloads and reviews. It turned out that most readers and the media were quite enthusiastic about the book. For example, I was very pleased to receive from Robert Aymar a physicist and former chair of the ITER Council who is often considered as the “father” of ITER, the following comment in late 2019: “Progress in nuclear fusion research is not often reported by the media but your book provides an excellent and comprehensive documentation, easy to read. Please receive all my congratulations! You covered all the aspects of the project—both technical and political—by providing a lot of references such as, from now on, any study on ITER cannot avoid relying on and exploiting the content of your book.” More importantly, I received and continue to receive many questions about ITER, as well as invitations to give lectures and write articles. People seem to appreciate the fact that the book provides a comprehensive account of the project’s development presented in an engaging and popularised way and enriched with personal opinions, memories and anecdotes. Little by little, my book has become a reference on ITER and fusion in general—although it is not a textbook. I therefore came to the conclusion that it deserved a new edition. Indeed, in four years, a lot has happened at ITER. There has been impressive progress in building the machine which is visible from the ITER worksite and on the ITER website. At the same time, some significant new problems arose—at technical and management levels. They culminated with

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a public hearing on ITER at the European Parliament on February 28, 2022, where the ITER management was questioned. Clearly, my book would soon be out of date. After a brief exchange with my editor in London, Anthony Doyle, his reaction was immediate and positive. This is, in short, the background to this second edition. I have corrected and updated all chapters of the first edition and three additional chapters give an overview of the recent advances and difficulties. As I have said before, ITER is a complex and challenging project and so will it be until the end… Vinon-sur-Verdon, France May 2023

Michel Claessens

Acknowledgements and Preface

I would like to express my sincere thanks to all the people—scientists, experts, government representatives, journalists and citizens like you and me—who have contributed to this book, in particular through a number of information exchanges and interviews, in the last several months or before. A special mention to Jean-Marc Ané, Carlos Alejaldre, Sylvie André, Robert Arnoux, François d’Aubert, Robert Aymar, Pietro Barabaschi, Bernard Bigot, Philippe Busquin, Ken Blackler, David Campbell, Yvan Capouet, John Carr, Daniel Clery, Laban Coblentz, Kathryn Creek, Lynne Degitz, Luo Delong, Arnaud Devred, Shishir Deshpande, Diana Diez-Canseco, Krista Dulon, Jean Durieux, Joelle Elbez-Uzan, François Genevey, Claudie Haigneré, Nick Holloway, Joel Hourtoule, Jean Jacquinot, Kijung Jung, Steven Krivit, Hubert Labourdette, Gyung-Su Lee, Paul Libeyre, Akko Maas, Osamu Motojima, Philippe Olivier, Jérôme Pamela, Annie-Laure Pequet, Hélène Philip, Thiéry Pierre, Roger Pizot, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Iris Rona, Bettina Roselt, Ned Sauthoff, Laurent Schmieder, Takayuki Shirao, Tom Vanek, Vladimir Vlassenkov, Pascal Weil, Peter Weingart, Paul Wouters and I am sure a lot more whose names I have forgotten. I hold their contributions in high esteem, even if they are anonymous and invisible—except for me. I am also grateful to the people who have greatly improved the quality of the second edition of this book by pointing out an impressive number of errors, inaccuracies and omissions. Great thanks in particular to Alice Whittaker, Giulia Marzetti and Elizabeth Trump, who turned the book into real English! Let me add that, despite all these valuable contributions, I take sole

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responsibility for the mistakes and imperfections of this book. And last but not least, I am very grateful to my wife Xuling as for several months (again), my brain was trying to confine ITER and highly energetic plasmas… Popularising a subject like ITER is a great challenge as information about it, albeit not necessarily hidden or secret, is not always available or public. Sometimes, it is just not easy to find! For a technical, international and nuclear project such as ITER, transparency has its limits. I have therefore done my best to retrieve the right information and present it as objectively as possible, without avoiding commenting on it wherever appropriate. I am also grateful to Springer and in particular Anthony Doyle, for publishing this second and fully updated edition of my book on ITER. A final remark: the opinions expressed in this book are personal and do not in any way bind my previous employers, i.e. the European Commission or the ITER Organization, where I used to work as a science communicator. Should you wish to be kept informed about the evolution of ITER kindly follow me on Twitter @M_Claessens or email me at michel_ [email protected]. Vinon-sur-Verdon, France

Michel Claessens

Introduction

On November 17, 2010, in Cadarache (close to Marseille), under a Provençal sunlight and in the presence of some 400 guests, Osamu Motojima, the then Japanese Director General of ITER,1 laid the foundation stone of the headquarters of the ITER Organization and established almost four years before to coordinate an ambitious international nuclear fusion research programme. It was indeed on November 21, 2006, that the biggest economic powers of the planet gathered in the Elysée Palace in Paris and in the presence of the French President Jacques Chirac to sign an international agreement to build the most powerful experimental nuclear fusion reactor in the world. Freshly appointed to the post, Motojima was keen to welcome the ITER Council, the governing board of ITER comprised of high-level political representatives from the seven founding members of the project.2 After travelling to Cadarache for this highly symbolic ceremony, the members of the Council were not shy of showing their happiness: after 22 difficult years of preparation, conceptual design and detailed planning, the project3 was finally born. As French journalist Robert Arnoux and physicist Jean Jacquinot put 1 Pronounced “eater”. ITER is the acronym of International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. However, given that the adjectives nuclear and thermonuclear today generate much opposition and misunderstanding, the ITER promotors such as the ITER Organization and the European Commission use to explain that ITER is the Latin for the way (towards a new source of energy). 2 In alphabetical order: China (People’s Republic of ), Europe (European Union), India, Japan, Korea (Republic of ), Russia, and United States. 3 A project is often described as a singular effort of defined duration while a programme is generally comprised of a collection of projects. The reality is a bit more complex but we consider in this book

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it in 2006: “In Cadarache, along the banks of the Durance River, a dream long considered to be a chimaera, will materialise. Bringing together their knowledge and experience, physicists, engineers, technicians, and management experts from all over the world are embarking on a road to the stars. With ITER, humanity is ready to conquer fire for the second time.4 ” Now, 17 years later, the adventure continues: construction is almost complete on the site and the assembly of the machine is progressing, albeit much more slowly than foreseen. Without a doubt, ITER is an ambitious project. The reactor under construction, which will be 10 times larger than the largest machine of its kind ever built, is only the most visible part of a gigantic international effort. Look around and you will discover, for example, a high-energy neutron source in Japan aimed at developing materials for the industrial exploitation of fusion. Another 15 more modest installations are located all over the world, preparing experiments and testing innovations and improvements for ITER. All of these are supported by phenomenal computing power provided by dozens of computers located across various high-security locations. According to its member countries, ITER should demonstrate that hydrogen fusion, the reaction naturally occurring in the Sun and the stars, can be replicated on Earth for several minutes and produce power equal to several hundreds of millions of watts. Thus, if ITER succeeds and if the technology turns out be economically sustainable, fusion could become a new power source used on an industrial scale to produce electricity on Earth in a safe and environmentally friendly way. Fusion uses as its fuel a mix of hydrogen isotopes (deuterium, which is very abundant, and tritium, which is rare on Earth) and produces little waste. ITER will therefore produce a “green nuclear” energy, without any major drawbacks despite the production of (short-lived) radioactive waste. Although there are still unanswered technical questions such as the supply of tritium and the material for covering the reactor’s inner walls, the advantages of fusion are therefore high. The seven members of ITER, who committed to build the machine together, realised this quite a while ago. By mobilising considerable resources and several 1000 people around the world, ITER is, in some respects, not so much different from Second World War’s Manhattan Project, albeit in the field of peaceful scientific research. It is possible that ITER will revolutionise nuclear power forever.

that a programme tends to involve a bigger team and to have lower levels of uncertainty. ITER is actually both. 4 Arnoux R, Jacquinot J (2006) ITER, le chemin des étoiles? Edisud, Saint-Remy-de-Provence.

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But we are not there yet. There are still areas of shadow and black spots under the fusion star. The project’s difficulties are in proportion to its challenges; delays are accumulating as the first experiments will take place in 2030 at the earliest (although the ITER website still mentions 2025 as the official date), and the budget is quadruple its original size (according to the latest estimates, the construction only will cost more than EUR40 billion although, as we will see, the concept of “cost” is here meaningless). High-tech experts have been used to put these problems in perspective as this is the most complex machine ever built by humankind. Some also compare ITER to the Apollo project due to its technological sophistication and its potential to irreversibly modify both the course of history and the future of our civilisation. The seven ITER members actually represent 33 countries—more than half the global population—which have decided to work together to construct the project. ITER is among the world’s largest scientific and peaceful cooperation projects. Although this is not often pointed out, ITER is a “generous” project in that the countries participating in the experiment have decided to learn together and share all the knowledge that will be developed in the framework of this huge international cooperation. This is obviously not just about science and technology, the objective is also to develop a worldwide fusion industry. Is ITER the “star of science” whose creation has been made possible by humankind’s sophisticated mastery of the laws of nature and the powers of technology? Or is it only the result of a scientific marketing operation supported by a community of researchers who managed to convince policymakers that they hold the keys to our energy future? What is ITER in the end? A revolutionary programme likely to save our civilisation or yet another expensive project aimed at impressing politicians and industrialists? At least there is unanimity on one point: since its launch the project has triggered a lot of controversy. I am well aware of the difficulty of producing a narrative for a nonspecialist audience about such a complex subject. There is a great risk of focusing on minor details or concentrating on issues which are purely technical, perhaps even trivial. Worse, readers may suspect that this work has been written to put forward the ideas of a particular cause or even as an evangelist text. This bias is present in all books even the most “scientific” ones. From physics to biology to environment and medicine, there are abundant examples of worldrenowned scholars who have, in the name of science, put forward a political opinion and/or an ideological point of view.

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I fully assume this risk, although I do not see myself as an evangelistic and have no contentious issue to sort out. Nor do I claim to present a scientific book on fusion and ITER—this is very much beyond my competence. Science and technology are nowadays so specialised and compartmentalised that such a book would have to involve dozens of co-authors who would each deal with their specialty—from plasma physics to nuclear engineering and materials science, magneto-hydrodynamics, heating technology, civil engineering, computer-aided design, etc. But ITER is a fabulous subject, especially for a science writer like me. Having devoted more than 20 years of my life to the relationship between science and society, I have followed since its inception the evolution of this incredible project situated at the interface between the research world and the energy sector. I have therefore decided to write a book for nonspecialists. I hope to contextualise the programme in its many different dimensions— historical, scientific and technical, of course, but also political, economic, human and philosophical. This small book therefore offers a snapshot of the programme and summarises what has been accomplished, without avoiding the drawbacks and issues that come along with the project. I’ll also occasionally digress with some notes, personal memories and anecdotes because as had recalled the previous Director General Bernard Bigot, this exploration at the frontiers of science and technology is indeed also and maybe above all, an “extraordinary human adventure.5 ” Pushing science and technology to their limits for a noble and peaceful purpose is an endeavour that deeply pervades all of us. Transforming matter can also transform our minds and values. Some colleagues even feel a part of humanity’s struggle through the centuries. In any case, it is a formidable experience, enriched by the convergence of the continents of knowledge and the rallying of cultures united by the same passion. I hope that you will share my passion. In the following pages, we will take a look at the major milestones that accompanied the genesis of the ITER programme and discover the principles of nuclear fusion (without, however, let me reassure you right away, turning the book into a physics handbook). Then we will examine the great machine currently under construction and address the questions that most of us are asking about ITER: Why in France? Why has Europe joined with six other partners? How much will ITER cost? Who opposes the programme and why? What are the risks? How is such a complex undertaking being managed? Why is the assembly of the reactor interrupted since 2022? And finally this fundamental question, perhaps above all others: Will the ITER star ever shine? 5 Bigot B (2016) La fusion thermonucléaire et le projet ITER. Revue de l’électricité et de l’électronique, special issue 3.

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Due to the recurring delays and the exponential increase of the budget, two of the seven ITER members, specifically the United States and India, have considered withdrawing from the project. If this happened, would it mean a major delay or even the death of ITER? Some think, even within the scientific community, that fusion energy will always remain a mystical chimera. Recalling that fusion energy has been in development for over 30 years, the most sceptical state that it will always be 30 years away… A view that seems to be confirmed every day by ongoing delays. The subject is without doubt a complex one that covers many varied topics. Therefore, this book is organised in such a way as to allow a nonlinear exploration. However, I recommend readers start with the first four chapters that describe the general context and the basics of the programme. After that, readers should feel free to pick and choose according to their desires and interests. I like to present ITER as a living project, still under construction and in constant evolution. The downside to this point—and this is the last remark in this introduction—is that some of the information contained in this book will become obsolete even as soon as it is published. Despite days spent verifying the technical data with experts and colleagues, the publication of this book will freeze its snapshot of ITER in a way that cannot be immediately updated. But this is the price that has to be paid, dear readers, to peek behind the scenes of this enormous project and see the work of the scientific and industrial elite of the planet (Fig. 1). ITER in Numbers6 23,000 tonnes. The ITER reactor (“tokamak”) will weigh 23,000 tonnes which is the weight of three Eiffel Towers. Approximately, one million components and 10 million parts will be integrated into this complex machine. 400,000 tonnes. Some 400,000 tonnes of material will rest on the lower basement of the “tokamak complex,” including three buildings, the 23,000-tonne machine and all its equipment. This is in total more than the weight of New York’s Empire State Building. 100,000 kilometres. The 18 toroidal field coils (each 17 m high) have been wound from superconducting strands made from a niobium-tin alloy (Nb3 Sn). Some 100,000 kilometres of these strands have been fabricated by industries of six out of the seven ITER members—China, Europe, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States. This is a record-beating production.

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Adapted from the ITER Organization’s website: www.iter.org.

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104 kilometres. The heaviest components of the ITER machine are being shipped to Fos-sur-Mer, the French harbour on the Mediterranean Sea closest to the site. Then they are transported along 104 km of specially modified road known as the “ITER itinerary.” The dimensions of these components are mind-blogging: the heaviest and largest, a ring magnet manufactured in China, weighs nearly 900 tonnes including the transport vehicle and is approximately four-storey—or about 10 m high. 5000 people. Close to 5000 people work today at the headquarters of the international organisation and on the ITER worksite. As the peak of construction and assembly activity has been achieved in 2022, this number is now decreasing smoothly. 15,000 visitors per year. Since the opening of the site in 2007, more than 200,000 people have visited ITER. In groups, with family or individually, visits are possible with advance registration.7 ITER also organises two “Open Door” days a year.

Fig. 1 Aerial view of the ITER worksite in Cadarache (close to Marseille) in March 2023. The site has a total area of 181 ha. (Left) The main warehouse that is used for the storage of the reactor parts delivered by the seven ITER members. (Top right) The headquarters of the international organisation (the building which is bent and has a dark façade). The reactor will be located in the tallest building on the platform that is surrounded by four cranes (beside what is known as the “assembly hall”). Nearly, 5000 people are currently working on the site. From ITER Organization

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See the page http://www.iter.org/visiting.

Contents

1

The Future of Energy What Sources of Energy Are Available and How Much Do We Need? References

1 3 10

2

What is Nuclear Fusion? Hydrogen, Deuterium, and Tritium References

11 17 18

3

A Brief History of ITER A Scientific Slowdown The Golden Age of Fusion The “Fireside” Summit The Birth of ITER Exit the United States References

19 22 26 28 30 32 35

4

Why in France? The Impasse ITER in Canada? High Technology and High Diplomacy “All United in Cadarache” References

37 39 44 46 51 57

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Building a Gigantic Machine A 5200-Tonne Chamber High-Tech Bricks The World’s Largest Magnets The Fusion Ashtray A Giant Refrigerator A Pharaonic Worksite Constructions Worth EUR2 Billion A New Scientific Village References

59 63 67 68 73 74 76 78 80 82

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A Machine Manufactured in Thirty-Five Countries A High-Tech Meccano The World’s Biggest Puzzle The Assembly Heart Transporting an Airbus A380 on the Road A Huge Logistical Challenge A Nerve Centre Close to Marseille Reference

85 87 89 91 93 95 98 100

7

Those Who Are Against ITER Scientific Criticisms Astrophysics and Flying Saucers False Claims and Miscommunication References

101 104 107 109 111

8

Why So Many Delays and Cost Overruns? “Concrete” Delays Poloidal Coils and Cooling Towers The Complexity is “Built-In” How Much Will It Cost? First Plasma in 2035? The ITER Budget is “Peanuts” References

113 115 116 118 120 122 124 126

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How to Manage Such a Complex Programme? New Directors General “The Project Progresses Alone” ITER, Ellul, and Galbraith A Political Project Compensation and Benefits References

127 129 133 136 137 139 142

Contents

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Is ITER Really Safe and Clean? Introduction What Kind of Waste? On Safe Grounds Tritium and Safety Natural Hazards References

143 144 147 148 150 151 154

11

ITER is Heating up the French Economy No Accommodation for ITER Contracts Worth EUR4.9 Billion Who Works for ITER? Workers Under Control Calls for Tenders and Subcontractors References

155 158 159 163 165 166 167

12 Will Fusion Become Commercial? How to Maximise the Gain Factor? After ITER References

169 172 174 179

13

Chinese Citizens in Provence Communication, Culture and Policy A Scientific Tower of Babel The Provence Cliché References

181 184 186 187 190

14

How to Communicate with the Public About a High-Tech Project? A Credible Mediascientific Dialogue Public Debates Why is ITER Invisible? References

191 193 195 196 198

15

Quest for Holy Grail of Fusion Lasers for Fusion Fusion Billionaires References

199 201 203 209

16

Beyond Technology Diplomacy “We Would Be Crazy not to Build ITER” ITER Is Already a Historic Step

211 214 216

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Technological Integrator References

218 221

More Technical Challenges The Assembly on Hold “a Delay of Several Years” References

223 229 231 233

18 The Dark Side of Political Technology A Ridiculously Small Budget A Political Technology The Responsibility of Science Communicators Professional Integrity An Unexpected Happy-Ending References

235 237 239 242 245 249 250

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Fusion, Science and PR References

Bibliography

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Index

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1 The Future of Energy

Abstract The demand for energy continues to grow in virtually every country in the world, a “natural” consequence of demographic changes, boosted by the almost universal increase in quality of life and by the development of emerging economies. The world’s energy consumption has more than doubled since 1973; it could even be tripled by the end of the century. Although the planet’s main fossil fuels—oil, natural gas and coal—are being depleted, they still provide more than 80% of the energy consumed. The pressing reality of climate change calls for a radical and urgent change in our relationship to energy. At the same time, we must develop new solutions that are as safe and environmentally friendly as possible, based on sustainable and universally available sources. Fusion energy, which reproduces physical reactions occurring in the Sun and the stars, meets these requirements. Most of the world’s scientific community is convinced that scientific and technological mastery of this energy is within reach. However, will we need fusion energy at all? Several experts argue that an energy supply based solely on renewable sources is possible by 2050. Nevertheless, despite growing investments and encouraging evolutions many experts do not envisage green energies completely supplanting all “unsustainable” sources before the end of this century. They point to physical space constraints and natural fluctuations of solar and wind energies as factors limiting the contribution that clean energies will make to global energy production. In future, energy will probably be supplied through a diverse “mix” of energy sources. Will humanity need controlled fusion to secure its energy future? Maybe, maybe not. Some Nobel laureates, like the French physicist Georges Charpak, have strongly © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_1

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criticised ITER. But some high-level government officials have different ideas. “We would be crazy not to achieve ITER,” said Geneviève Fioraso, then French Minister of Research and National Education, when she inaugurated the headquarters of ITER in 2013. We will address these contradictory statements and apparently irreconcilable positions in the following chapters. Keywords World energy consumption · Climate change · Renewable energies · Fusion With the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads the demand for energy continues to grow in virtually every country in the world, a “natural” consequence of demographic changes, boosted by the almost universal increase in quality of life and by the development of emerging economies. The world’s energy consumption has more than doubled since 1973; it could be further tripled by the end of the century. Though the planet’s main fossil fuels—oil, natural gas and coal—are being depleted, they still provide more than 80% of the energy consumed. The pressing reality of climate change therefore calls for a radical and urgent change in our relationship to energy. Opinions differ on the solutions to be implemented, but there is no doubt that industrial energy production will go through a profound change in the coming decades.1 The benefits of technology, which has given us many energy-intensive gadgets, have never been fundamentally questioned. But the public is calling on policy-makers to set clear goals regarding the protection of the planet, to propose actions at the level of individuals and to support research related to these goals. If we are to meet our present and future energy needs and continue to grow without harming the environmental balance too much, two things are almost universally agreed: we must reduce or at the very least rationalise our energy expenditure. At the same time, we must develop new solutions that are as safe and environmentally friendly as possible, based on sustainable and universally available sources. Fusion energy, which reproduces physical reactions occurring in the Sun and the stars, meets these requirements. The majority of the world’s scientific community is convinced that scientific and technological mastery of this energy is within reach. To demonstrate this, the 7 members of ITER, grouped in the international ITER Organization, decided in 2006 to build an experimental reactor in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance in the forest of

1 Not just because oil is depleted but mainly for climate change. Also, it is too precious to be used to move cars; it should be available only for pharmaceutical and industrial exploitation.

1 The Future of Energy

3

Cadarache, which should achieve fusion energy production over at least ten minutes for the first time in history.

What Sources of Energy Are Available and How Much Do We Need? Although humankind consumes more and more energy, we use only a small part of the power received or produced on Earth: world consumption currently accounts for only 1/10,000th of the energy received from the Sun at ground level. According to a recent report,2 world energy consumption, which is best measured by the total primary energy supply, was in 2021 14,212 million tonnes of oil equivalent,3 up 54% since 1995 (see breakdown in Fig. 1.1). International Energy Agency (IEA) projections of world energy consumption up to 2030 show that the energy mix should remain dominated by fossil fuels, with renewables expected to contribute 18% which is well below the 32% share needed for the world to be on track with the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (NZE).4 According to current estimates, the world’s stocks of conventional fossil resources amount to about 1 trillion tonnes of oil equivalent, which will cover only a mere 100 years at the current consumption rate. Solar energy seems to have a sunny outlook because it receives energy estimated at nearly 100 trillion tonnes of oil equivalent, nearly 10,000 times the global energy consumption. But it only works on paper. In fact, these numbers correspond to the sunlight that hits the whole surface of the globe, whereas other sources are measured only by the energy that they can produce in a useful way. It is clear that only a very small fraction of the energy received from the Sun can be converted into usable energy, since any fertile land will remain dedicated to agriculture, and the oceans as well as the areas close to the poles are difficult to exploit. The poles are also from a solar and economic point of view, not particularly profitable. American business guru Jeremy Rifkin argues that renewable energies coupled with communication technologies will bring us into the era of clean and easily distributed energy after the demise of fossil fuels. For this reason, 2

BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2021 (2022), https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/businesssites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2022-full-report.pdf. 3 The tonne of oil equivalent (toe) is a unit of energy defined by convention as the amount of energy released by burning one tonne of crude oil and is worth approximately 42 giga/billion joules. 4 IEA [1].

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Renewable energies 25% 5% 27%

7%

17%

1% 4%

31%

Oil

Coal

Natural gas

Nuclear

Hydropower

Wind and solar

Other renewables

Fig. 1.1 Breakdown of the world’s energy consumption in 2021. (Source BP statistical review of world energy, 2022)

he advises heavy investment in them.5 Green technologies should, according to Rifkin, give rise to greater decentralisation of energy production and the emergence of a new sharing economy. This is a plausible scenario provided we implement the action plan that he recommends: massive investment in research and development; installation of micropower plants on all continents; industrial development of hydrogen technology; use of the internet to share energy as information; and replacement of the existing car fleet by rechargeable electric vehicles. Several exploratory scientific studies carried out in various countries and political contexts seem to converge towards the idea that an energy supply based solely on renewable sources is possible by 2050, as supported for example by the work of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which aims at a “100% green” scenario for the United States6 . However, let us keep in mind that the forecasts of these studies and the models used can change radically as the global economic and geopolitical context evolves. Who predicted the collapse of oil prices after 2012? Who predicted the war in Ukraine in 2022?

5

Rifkin J [2]. See also the work carried out in Europe, in particular by ADEME and the négaWatt association, who argue for the feasibility of a total conversion into renewable energies by 2050 as, on top of its advantages, it would lead to savings of hundreds of billions of euros and the creation of some 500,000 jobs in France: https://www.negawatt.org/. 6

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At the end of 2016, under the title “Clean energy for all Europeans,”7 the European Commission submitted to the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers a “package” of proposals to reduce the European Union’s CO2 emissions by at least 40% compared to 1990 level before 2030. The package had a second objective to modernise the economies of the European Union’s Member States, creating jobs and supporting growth. Although Members of the European Parliament considered the package not ambitious enough in its remit, many support the idea of encouraging citizens to play an active role in electricity generation by supplying a large part of Europe’s solar and wind electricity themselves. According to a recent study8 , “energy citizens” could produce up to 19% of the total electricity demand in Europe by 2030, and 45% by 2050. It is true that solar energy and renewable energies, in general, are on the rise these days. In 2015, the 10th annual report of the United Nations Environment Programme9 indicated that for the first time, more than half of the energy that could be generated by new sources connected to worldwide networks was from renewable sources (excluding large dams). We now invest twice as much in renewable energies than in fossil fuels (USD130 billion a year), and prospects for solar development, in particular, are very promising. Europe is therefore active on the renewable energy front. In fact, the agreement reached at the end of the Conference of the Parties (COP-21)10 held in Paris from December 5 to 12, 2015, broadly reflected the approach promoted by the European Commission on behalf of the 28 EU Member States. Following the success of the conference and the approval of the Paris Agreement by 195 delegations (plus the European Union)11 , a result rightly described as “historic,” Europe has made climate protection one of its main priorities with the aim of achieving an “Energy Union.” Of course, there is still a lot of work to do. And inevitably, one wonders whether these big events are useful as there seems to be a big difference between the messages in the speeches and the real intentions of the so-called decision-makers. The reality of politics or just hypocrisy? Superficial decision or genuine indecision?

7

European Commission [3]. Kampman et al. [4]. 9 McCrone [5]. 10 The Conferences of the Parties (COP) is the supreme decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). All states that are parties to the Convention are represented at the COP, which annually reviews its implementation and produces protocols and any other legal instruments to define obligations and commitments of the parties. 11 To date (March 2023), 194 States and the European Union have ratified the Paris Agreement, of 197 Parties to the Convention, accounting for around 98% of global emissions, https://unfccc.int/ process/the-paris-agreement/status-of-ratification. 8

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Did the policy-makers address the problems in an efficient and comprehensive way? It is for you to judge. While a major cause of global warming is the pursuit of growth, there were not many people in Paris ready to slow down or even put upper boundaries to the process. “This loss of meaning,” explained the yet to become French Minister of Ecological and Solidary Transition Nicolas Hulot in a book published a few days before the opening of COP-21, “is well-reflected by the structural failure of our current democracies to stop and prevent global warming.12 ” The global political decisions, although pointing in the right direction, take too much time to be implemented and do not respond quickly and globally enough to address the climate warming urgency. At the COP-27, which took place in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh on November 6–18, 2022, countries reached a historic decision to establish and operationalise a loss and damage fund, particularly for nations most vulnerable to the climate crisis. Although most welcome, the response did not seem to fully apprehend the many weather abnormalities which happened across the world in 2022 (heat waves, floods, extreme weather events, etc.) as the planet Earth experienced its sixth warmest year to date since global records began in 1880. However, solutions do exist, and it is probably wise to investigate several options in parallel. Like investing heavily in “green technologies,” the option favoured by the Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a private–public fund backed by the billionaire, which announced in January 2022 a “programme [to] finance, produce and buy the new solutions that will underpin a low-carbon economy”—the aim of which is to help invest up to USD15 billion into clean technology projects across the United States, the UK and the European Union. One can argue that it is a solution that can only be afforded by a wealthy country which also benefits from a powerful system of scientific research and technological development. In terms of more downto-earth options, a recent report13 urged the world to cut carbon pollution as much and as fast as possible and to embark in an unprecedented effort to transition away from fossil fuels and to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on an ambitious scale. Another option is to radically change our way of life. Or, put the responsibility for controlling global warming in the hands of an international body that can make a truly coordinated worldwide effort. Against this background, two factors must temper our expectations regarding 12

Hulot [6]. The reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that it is still technically feasible to avoid a 1.5 °C rise in temperature. For this purpose, emissions will need to reach net zero around mid-century. A USD13.5 trillion is estimated to be necessary to make the energy transition. The reports also show that 2 °C is a critical threshold for the planet. See in particular IPCC (2018) Global warming of 1.5 °C. Switzerland, IPCC, http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/. 13

1 The Future of Energy

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climate action. First, there is still a long way to go before a world government could be put in place that would ensure that every country on Earth effectively converges to a common objective. Nicolas Hulot was thinking along the same lines: “We have to set up a global governance for the environment, in order to put the preservation of common goods and services on top of our priorities and ensure the survival of humanity.” Unfortunately, a lot of people are still too modest (at best) or pessimistic (at worst), insisting that the power and inertia of the gigantic economic and industrial system will never allow in-depth reforms and substantial decrease of greenhouse gas emissions. They argue that no public authority could decide to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the risk of slowing economic development for humanity; it is doubtful whether a political force of any kind could ever afford the potential political damage. There are now strong arguments against this way of thinking. In Europe at least, greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union were reduced by 34% between 1990 and 2020, while the economy grew by 53% over the same period, according to the latest European Environment Agency report14 . The European Union is producing a new pattern. Well before the crisis hit in 2008, economic growth and energy consumption had begun to decouple in the European Union through increased energy efficiency. This effect has continued to grow, driven by a comprehensive set of energy supply and energy efficiency policies (see Fig. 1.2).15 However, new developments are creating new effects. According to the IEA, renewable energies overtook coal as the number one source of electrical power in 2015. However, more electrification in transportation, buildings and industry would lead to a peak in oil demand by 2030.16 It would have a negligible impact on carbon emissions without stronger efforts to increase the share of renewables and low-carbon sources of power. This is because oil and coal are still the biggest energy sources consumed worldwide (and coal experienced the highest growth in consumption, almost doubling between 1995 and 2014). This is the trend that the European Union has decided to reverse. By 2030, half of Europe’s electricity production is expected to come from renewable sources. The goal is to achieve a 100% carbon-free production in the European Union by 2050. Despite these encouraging evolutions, most experts do not envisage green energies completely supplanting all “unsustainable” sources before the end 14

EEA [7]. Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and Council [8]. 16 IEA [9]. 15

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Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 14000

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Fig. 1.2 Evolution of energy consumption and gross domestic product (GDP) in the EU 1995–2019. (Source European commission services based on EUROSTAT data)

of this century. They point to physical space constraints and natural fluctuations of solar and wind energies as factors limiting the contribution that clean energies will make to global energy production. This means that other technological options will most likely be needed. Unfortunately, these alternatives can be counted on one hand. This is a point that fusion proponents are keen to insist on, such as Chris Martin, Chairman of the UK-based company Tokamak Energy: “Just 8.4% of the world’s energy was from renewable sources in 2017—there is a long way to go before we have a decarbonised circular economy. Fusion is one of the few renewable technologies with the potential to fill this gap soon enough to avert climate chaos. It is time to stop yawning and wake up to the source of sunlight.”17 Therefore, in future, energy will probably be supplied through a diverse “mix” of energy sources. This strategy will minimise the inconvenience and weaknesses of each one and reinforce the quality of the overall supply. In this perspective, some ecologists now see nuclear fission playing a role in the transition to this state because its impact on global warming is almost zero. This is particularly the case of the French “Association des Ecologistes pour le Nucléaire” (AEPN)18 , a delegation of which I welcomed at ITER in 2016. This is also the opinion held by many personalities such as, among many others, Michael Bloomberg (former Mayor of New York), Bill Gates (cofounder of Microsoft), James Lovelock (British scientist famous for his 17

Martin [10]. Created in 1996, the association now has several million members and associates; http://ecolo.org/ intro/introfr.html. 18

1 The Future of Energy

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Gaia hypothesis) and Xi Jinping (current President of the People’s Republic of China). Since 2021 and the war in Ukraine, the reorganisation of the oil and gas markets in Europe has further boosted the rise of nuclear energy in order to diversify the supply of primary energy. In the United States, an opinion poll carried out in May 2022 showed that nuclear energy had support of 51% of the population with 47% opposed. In Japan, in March 2022, 53% of the people in Japan supported nuclear energy, constituting the first pronuclear majority there since the Fukushima disaster. However, in Europe, at least the vast majority of the environmental movement still condemns nuclear power in all its forms, both fission and fusion. This is true of several key political parties such as Europe Ecologie Les Verts (EELV) in France and Die Grünen in Germany. Will humanity need controlled fusion to secure its energy future? Maybe, maybe not. At this point in time, we cannot answer with certainty. It is certainly an interesting option, if only because it is much cleaner than conventional sources and safer than nuclear fission. Some also mention the fact that, unlike renewable energies, fusion energy would allow the construction of large power plants and thus guarantee the supply of baseload power to the electricity networks (i.e. a stable minimum level of production at any time, regardless of weather conditions), which is essential to ensure the essential needs of our society and economy. However, technological progress and the emergence of “smart” electricity networks have also shown in recent years that it appears possible to have stable electricity production without “centralised” power plants19 . So, to develop fusion or not? Nobody can argue that having a new source of energy, safe and clean and using a very abundant fuel, would not be a great news for humankind. It would be able to gradually replace old, polluting technologies. However, some Nobel laureates, for example, the French physicist Georges Charpak, have strongly criticised ITER. In a landmark publication back in 2010, Charpak argued that ITER is useless, given the many questions that remain unanswered about the workings of a future industrial reactor. But some high-level government officials have different ideas. “We would be crazy not to achieve ITER,” said Geneviève Fioraso, then French Minister of Research and National Education, when she inaugurated the headquarters of ITER in 2013. Despite its risks and unknown elements, ITER would be worth being built because it sheds light on the future as it 19

“The concept of the need for baseload generation is fading away,” said Paolo Frankl, who heads the renewable power division of the IEA. “Technically, you could run a system 100% on renewables and even 100% just wind and solar.” Bloomberg News, October 20, 2017, https://www.bloomberg. com/news/features/2017-10-20/renewable-energy-threatens-the-world-s-biggest-science-project.

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could be producing light in future. We will come back to these contradictory statements and apparently irreconcilable positions in subsequent chapters. Let us first take a look at the basics of fusion and the history of the ITER project. Then we will see where we are right now with the construction of the world’s largest fusion reactor.

References 1. IEA (2022) Global energy and climate model, https://iea.blob.core.windows. net/assets/2db1f4ab-85c0-4dd0-9a5732e542556a49/GlobalEnergyandClimat eModelDocumentation2022.pdf 2. Rifkin J (2013) The third industrial revolution: how lateral power is transforming energy, the economy, and the world. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 3. European Commission (2016) Press release database. http://europa.eu/rapid/ press-release_IP-16-4009_en.html 4. Kampman B, Blommerde J, Afman M (2016) The potential for energy citizens in the European Union. Committed to the Environment, Delft. http:// www.cedelft.eu/publicatie/the_potential_of_energy_citizens_in_the_european_ union/1845 5. McCrone A (2018) Global trends in renewable energy investment 2018, Frankfurt School-UNEP Centre/BNEF, Frankfurt am Main. http://www.iberglobal. comfiles/2018/renewable_trends.pdf 6. Hulot N (2015) Osons—Plaidoyer d’un homme libre. Les liens qui libèrent, Paris 7. EEA (2022) Annual European Union greenhouse gas inventory 1990–2020 and inventory report 2022. European environment agency and European commission, Brussels, https://www.eea.europa.eu/highlights/continued-drop-in-eus-gre enhouse 8. Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and Council (2014) Energy efficiency and its contribution to energy security and the2030 Framework for climate and energy policy. COM(2014), 520 final. European Commission, Brussels. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html? uri=cellar:f0db7509-13e5-11e4-933d-01aa75ed71a1.0003.03/DOC_1&for mat=PDF 9. IEA (2018) Energy outlook 2018, IEA, Paris. https://www.iea.org/weo2018/ 10. Martin S (2018) Fusion has the power to avert climate change chaos. In: The financial times. https://www.ft.com/content/a5e4a352-d77c-11e8-a854-33d6f8 2e62f8

2 What is Nuclear Fusion?

Abstract During the five years I spent at ITER, I discovered that people visiting ITER, despite very different origins and backgrounds, have one thing in common: the vast majority of them confuse nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. However, the difference between fusion and fission is indeed fundamental. In modern nuclear fission power plants, large atomic nuclei such as uranium or plutonium are split apart, releasing large amounts of energy. This energy is stored in the strong bonds that hold the protons and neutrons together in the nucleus; therefore, breaking the nucleus apart releases the energy. In a fusion reactor, the opposite process takes place: light atomic nuclei such as hydrogen are heated to several million degrees and will then have enough kinetic energy to overcome their electrostatic repulsion and “fuse” with each other. This releases even larger amounts of energy. Although fusion and fission are fundamentally very different technologies, they are unified under the adjective “nuclear.” To achieve fusion on Earth, one must create astronomical temperatures of tens or even hundreds of millions of degrees. For example, the H-bomb (a.k.a hydrogen bomb or thermonuclear bomb) is actually a double bomb. It contains a primary fission A-bomb (made of uranium or plutonium) that explodes only to compress and heat the gas inside (tritium, deuterium or lithium deuteride) up a very high temperature of about 100 million degrees. This triggers hydrogen fusion reactions, which constitute the thermonuclear explosion of the bomb. This became clear in the 1950s, when scientists realised that fusion holds huge potential for peaceful applications and controlled (nonexplosive) systems. Although the fusion pioneers didn’t master all the science and technology at © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_2

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that time, it was clear that fusion would be a vastly superior energy source compared to fission. However, these visionary scientists clearly underestimated the many difficulties and technical hurdles they would encounter on the road to fusion that complicated, if not prevented, the road to peaceful application of the technology…. This chapter will introduce the principles of nuclear fusion (without, however, let me reassure you right away, turning into a physics handbook) and look into the “tokamak” technology, invented by Russian scientists in the early 1950s, which is currently the most promising to produce fusion energy. Keywords Nuclear fusion · Tokamak · Confinement · Deuterium · Tritium Visitors to the ITER site in France come from all over the world. In Cadarache, I welcomed over 100 groups of visitors. However, despite their different origins and backgrounds, all these visitors have one thing in common: the vast majority of them confuse nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. The reason for this is quite simple and relates to the fact that most of them did not have the training in nuclear physics needed to grasp the difference between these technologies; therefore, I always spent several minutes helping them understand. The difference between fusion and fission is indeed fundamental. In modern nuclear fission power plants, large atomic nuclei such as uranium or plutonium are split apart releasing large amounts of energy. This energy is stored in the strong bonds that hold the protons and neutrons together in the nucleus; therefore, breaking the nucleus apart releases the energy. In a fusion reactor, the opposite process takes place: light atomic nuclei such as hydrogen are heated to several million degrees and will then have enough kinetic energy to overcome their electrostatic repulsion and “fuse” with each other. This releases even larger amounts of energy. Although fusion and fission are fundamentally very different technologies, they are unified under the adjective “nuclear.” Nuclear fusion reactions are universal in the most fundamental sense; they occur all over the universe, as it is fusion that allows the stars to ignite and produce energy. About 100 million years after the Big Bang, the very first fusion reactions occurred in the centre of immense gaseous spheres. As the temperature of the gas inside a sphere climbed, it would “ignite” marking the birth of a new star. When reaching several million degrees Celsius, the gas that made up the stars would then become a “plasma”: a state of matter where the nuclei and electrons that make up atoms have been completely dissociated

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from each other.1 Billions of years after the Big Bang, this process is still going strong and, at the scale of the observable universe, plasma is probably the most common state of matter. Our Sun, which accounts for 99.9% of the total mass of the solar system, is a huge ball of plasma composed mostly of hydrogen, and it has been over four billion years since the first fusion reactions ignited in its heart. But scientists have known all this only since the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1920, the British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington (1882–1944) was the first to suggest that the stars burn because of a nuclear reaction (namely the transmutation of hydrogen into helium). However, it took almost twenty years—until 1939—for the German physicist Hans Bethe (1906–2005) to articulate the exact sequence of reactions involved. This is the famous “proton–proton chain”, which starts with four hydrogen nuclei and ends with a helium-4 nucleus (a.k.a an alpha particle). This achievement, along with a broader explanation of the process of transmutation of matter within the stars, earned Bethe the Nobel Prize in physics in 1967. Practice sometimes precedes theory in science. In 1934, five years before Bethe worked out the process of fusion in stars, the physicist Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937), born in New Zealand, made history by achieving fusion in the laboratory for the first time. He managed to fuse deuterium (one of the two heavy isotopes2 of hydrogen) into helium. Having noted the considerable effect that this reaction produced Rutherford paved the way to fusion research, of which ITER, more than ninety years later, is the culmination. Rutherford’s assistant, the Australian Mark Oliphant (1901–2000), also played a key role in the development and observation of these early fusion experiments. In particular, he discovered other “fuels” for fusion such as tritium, the second heavy isotope of hydrogen, and helium-3, a promising isotope that might be used in the next generation of reactors. To achieve fusion on Earth, one must create astronomical temperatures of tens or even hundreds of millions of degrees. For example, the H-bomb (a.k.a hydrogen bomb or thermonuclear bomb) is actually a double bomb. It contains a primary fission A-bomb (made of uranium or plutonium) that

1 In the states of matter that we are familiar with (solid, liquid and gas), nuclei and electrons are bound together to form atoms. In a plasma, however, nuclei and electrons are independent of each other. In technical terms, atoms have become “ionised.” In a plasma, positive and negative charges are evenly spaced, making plasma electrically neutral even on a very small scale. 2 Most chemical elements exist in several forms, called isotopes. Different isotopes of a given element have the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons (hence different masses). In a chemical reaction, isotopes behave almost the same as each other; in a nuclear reaction, they can exhibit very different properties.

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explodes only to compress and heat the gas inside (tritium, deuterium or lithium deuteride) up to a very high temperature, about 100 million degrees. This triggers hydrogen fusion reactions that constitute the thermonuclear explosion of the bomb. In the 1950s, scientists quickly realised that fusion holds huge potential for peaceful applications and controlled (nonexplosive) systems. As the American science journalist Daniel Clery wrote, “Fusion seems too good to be true and to the fusion pioneers in the late 1940s and early 1950s, although they wouldn’t have known all of these details, it was clear that fusion would be a vastly superior energy source compared to fission.”3 But these visionary scientists probably underestimated the many difficulties and technical hurdles they would encounter on the road to fusion that complicated, if not prevented, the road to peaceful application of the technology. To control fusion, physicists began by exploiting the phenomenon of “magnetic self-constriction” that develops in gaseous plasmas when an electromagnetic field is applied. For example, in a plasma that is shaped symmetrically around, one axis the electric current flowing in the plasma column itself generates a magnetic field through electromagnetic induction. This magnetic field exerts a force that confines the gas and “pinches” the plasma, hence the names “pinch effect,” “Z -pinch” or “zeta pinch” given to this phenomenon (Z /zeta representing the direction of the axis). A large torus-shaped (broadly, doughnut-shaped) machine called Zeta was built in 1954. Zeta was located in the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) (a.k.a Harwell Laboratory) in Oxfordshire. This county not far from London was the main centre for atomic energy research and development from the 1940s to the 1990s. Zeta exploited the “pinch” effect to stabilise very hot plasmas. But the researchers encountered an early hurdle. Although the magnetic fields and electric currents nicely combined to constrain the particles, vertical drift led them to deviate and hit the walls of the vessel, losing their energy. The self-pinched plasma turned out to be unstable and tended to develop kinks or break up into a series of lumps like a string of sausages. The pinch effect, therefore, had to be augmented with other magnetic field configurations to produce a stable “magnetic bottle.” Thus, the Harwell team learnt that their machine had to be surrounded by powerful magnets, in order to repel the charged particles and prevent them from touching the walls. In fact, this principle of “magnetic confinement” had already been applied in the early 1950s on the other side of the Iron Curtain by Russian theoretical

3

Clery [1].

2 What is Nuclear Fusion?

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Fig. 2.1 Kurchatov Institute’s T-1 was the first tokamak in the world. With a radius of only 67 cm, it was a very small machine compared with JET, ITER and the like

physicists Igor Tamm (1895–1971) and Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989), who had in fact designed a toric (torus-shaped) device with several magnets which they called the “tokamak.”4 And at about the same time, a more complex machine called the “stellarator”5 had been developed in the United States by the theoretical physicist and astronomer Lyman Spitzer (1914–1997). Magnetic confinement was therefore in vogue at that time (Fig. 2.1). In a tokamak, the geometric configuration of the machine makes electrically charged particles, such as the electrons and nuclei that plasma is made of, move in helical (spiral-shaped) paths. If the magnetic fields produced by the external magnets are correctly calibrated, these helical paths create magnetic surfaces that close in on themselves inside the vacuum chamber that contains the plasma. The tokamak generates an infinite number of such surfaces, nested one inside the other, in which the particles are virtually imprisoned (in the absence of collisions and magnetic turbulence) and faithfully follow the electromagnetic field lines as if they were invisible rails. The acronym comes from the Russian “topoidalbnaR kamepa c magnitnymi katyxkami” (“toroidal chamber with magnetic coils”). 5 The name derives from the fact that its promoters hoped to achieve, with this configuration, temperatures comparable to stellar plasmas. 4

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The “poloidal field,”6 parallel to the central axis of the torus, is created mainly by a high-intensity induced current that circulates in the plasma and contributes to its confinement. Unfortunately, this magnetic field is maintained only if the intensity of the current is constantly increasing, which is not feasible over a long period. Furthermore, the impurities and instabilities of the plasma increase its resistance to the current, which eventually dies out, as does the magnetic field associated with it. This is why a tokamak has to work in relatively short “plasma shots” rather than operating continuously. This way of working also implies—another disadvantage—that the tokamak goes through a succession of heating and cooling, which causes fatigue for the machine particularly in those parts facing the plasma. The situation is quite different in a stellarator, where the magnetic fields are entirely produced by coils outside the plasma. The shape of the machine gives the magnetic field lines the appearance of a Moebius strip. No current flows in the plasma, which makes this type of reactor much more stable and longer lasting. On the other hand, the complex three-dimensional geometry of the stellarator and the resulting costs create headaches for engineers and sleepless nights for fundraisers… At present, the most powerful machine of this type is located in northern Germany, in Greisfwald, where the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, built by the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, was inaugurated and commissioned on February 3, 2016, in the presence of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Dubbed W7-X by physicists, this machine is far from performing as ITER is expected to and will not itself generate energy. However, it will test the feasibility of a future fusion reactor using stellarator technology and check the stability of the plasmas produced. After several upgrades, W7-X resumed operations at the end of 2022. The plan is to gradually increase power and maintain enclosure for up to 30 min of continuous plasma discharge. Stellarators have an enormous advantage for future fusion power plants: they may have access to continuous operation. This experiment may therefore provide good news in future.

6

The name “poloidal field” comes from comparison to the Earth’s magnetic field, which has a poloidal component (parallel to the North–South axis) and a toroidal component (parallel to the lines of latitude).

2 What is Nuclear Fusion?

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Hydrogen, Deuterium, and Tritium If you’re looking to produce energy from the fusion of light atoms, nature offers a dozen possible combinations. But even with the current state-of-theart technology, only one reaction is feasible: fusing deuterium and tritium, hydrogen’s two isotopes. In the family of hydrogen fusion reactions, this one is the most advantageous. In fact, it is characterised by the largest cross section (a measure of the probability that the two nuclei will interact), with a maximum at a relatively low energy—of the order of 100 keV.7 Finally, this reaction releases a large amount of energy, three-quarters of which is carried away by the neutron produced by the reaction. It can be written as follows: 2

H+ +3 H+ → 4 He2+ (3.56 MeV) + 1 n (14.03 MeV)

The equation means that the fusion of one deuterium nucleus and one tritium nucleus produces one helium-4 nucleus (carrying 3.56 MeV of kinetic energy) and a neutron (with 14.03 MeV of kinetic energy, travelling at roughly one-sixth of the speed of light). The take-home message from all this is that 1 g of D-T (deuterium–tritium) 50/50 mixture produces, through nuclear fusion, as much energy as the combustion of 8000 tonnes of oil! This massive difference in production is the result of the different sources of energy at the molecular and atomic levels. “Burning” fossil fuels releases chemical energy, whereas the energy that comes from fusion is released through reorganising the bonds that form the helium nucleus. Through this reorganisation, a small amount of mass is converted to energy using none other than Einstein’s famous equation E = mc 2 . In this chapter, we focused mainly on magnetic confinement (realised in tokamaks and stellarators), but we will see in Chap. 15 that other technologies are being developed to generate fusion energy. Let me say now a few words about what has been called “cold fusion,” which is supposed to occur at room temperature—unlike “hot” fusion. Cold fusion came “to life” on March 23, 1989, when the Financial Times published a breaking news article: “Nuclear fusion in a test tube.”8 Clive Cookson, the FT’s science journalist, was announcing on the newspaper’s front page that two electrochemists apparently managed to produce fusion energy in a benchtop apparatus at 7

The electron volt (eV) represents the amount of energy gained by the charge of a single electron moved across an electric potential difference of 1 V. In plasma physics, it is common to use the electron volt as a temperature unit. The Boltzmann constant kB is used to make the conversion, meaning that one electron volt is equal to 11,605 K. In the ITER tokamak, the plasma will reach a temperature of 13 keV, which corresponds to about 150,000,000 K. 8 Cookson [2].

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room temperature and pressure. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, of the University of Southampton and the University of Utah, respectively, were claiming to have obtained an excess of heat during the electrolysis of heavy water on the surface of a palladium electrode that they could not explain. By giving an exclusive report to two financial newspapers (a European one and an American one—the Wall Street Journal), Fleischmann and Pons achieved an impressive communication tour de force: their claim quickly became a world news. Producing “low energy nuclear reactions” (LENR as it is now usually called) is indeed the dream of all fusion scientists. Most media reported about the consequences of the claim which, if true, would have been the discovery of a plentiful, clean energy source. Unfortunately, after much media excitement, the interest for cold fusion cooled down quite quickly. Many scientists failed to replicate the Fleischmann-Pons experiment with the few details available. The research was then discredited due to the absence of any positive demonstration and the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected any fusion reaction byproducts. By late 1989, most scientists considered cold fusion claims dead. However, despite the lack of any scientific validation, cold fusion never disappeared from the scientific publications devoted to nuclear fusion. “We are still learning how to treat pathological science,” explains Philip Ball, a former editor at Nature.9

References 1. Clery D (2013) A piece of the sun: the quest for fusion energy. Overlook Duckworth, New York 2. Cookson C (1989, Mar 23) Nuclear fusion in a test tube. Financial times 3. Ball P (2019) Lessons from cold fusion, 30 years on. Nature 569:601. https:// doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01673-x

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Ball [3].

3 A Brief History of ITER

Abstract Nuclear fusion researchers realised long time ago that international cooperation was the best way to go: fusion is a complex scientific discipline that requires very large and sophisticated instruments. Against this background, the European Union built the “Joint European Torus” in Culham (UK), which was inaugurated in 1984 and is still the world’s most powerful tokamak (although it will be ready for decommissioning at the end of 2023). The idea of ITER came up in November 1985 when the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and the then President of the United States Ronald Reagan met in Geneva for the first time. In the press release, they “advocated the widest practicable development of international cooperation in obtaining [fusion] energy, which is essentially inexhaustible, for the benefit of all mankind.” The start of ITER was however quite laborious. It was only in 1988, three years after the Geneva meeting, that a joint committee was established to work on the initial design of the machine with the participation of the Soviet Union, the United States, Europe and Japan. The aim was first to determine the main characteristics of the machine. This work ended in December 1990. In July 1992, the ITER members decided to initiate the technical design phase which was intended to create the detailed plans of the machine. However, these activities took more time than expected. Meanwhile, the United States withdrew from the consortium in July 1998. The final detailed design of ITER was eventually completed in 2001. Then the members had to decide where to build ITER. The “ITER Agreement” was formally signed on November 21, 2006, in the Elysée Palace in Paris in the presence of the French President © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_3

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Jacques Chirac. It entered into force on October 24, 2007, after ratification by all the members, officially establishing the “ITER Organization.” The intergovernmental organisation was formally installed in the commune of Saint-Paul-lez-Durance near Cadarache and construction works began on-site at the end of 2007. Keywords ITER · History · Reagan · Gorbachev · Cadarache · Agreement · JET · EURATOM Researchers in nuclear fusion quickly realised that international cooperation was the best way to go. Since the middle of the last century, plasma physicists have been facing up one fact: fusion is a very complex scientific speciality that requires a major research effort as well as very large and sophisticated instruments that are, in effect, very difficult to build and operate. Therefore, to produce fusion energy, the scientific community had no choice but to pool its innovative potential, its technological expertise and of course its financial resources. Remarkably enough, the scientists also managed to convince their political authorities of this fact—something that was obviously easier to say than to do! This international cooperation started over 60 years ago, in the midst of the Cold War. At that time, fusion research was still considered a classified defence activity. But cracks were beginning to show in the official secrecy surrounding fusion research. On December 8, 1953, in a speech to the UN General Assembly, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced his intention to launch a programme to develop nuclear technologies that would have no military application and could therefore be used freely for the benefit of mankind. This programme would become known as “Atoms for Peace” after the title of the speech. The initiative was followed by the first international conference on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy in Geneva in 1955 attended by no less than 25,000 participants. For the first time since the Second World War, scientists in the West could talk publicly with their counterparts in the East across the Iron Curtain. Another outcome of the speech was the creation in 1957 of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog that oversees civil nuclear power and tries to ensure critical material is not diverted into weapon production. The US and British governments then officially acknowledged supporting fusion research programmes and began to exchange views on the subject. They were followed by other countries including the Soviet Union. It is not widely known that a high-level meeting took place on April 25, 1956, in Harwell Laboratory, in the presence of a large contingent of British and Soviet scientists to discuss the topic of nuclear fusion. Accompanying Nikolai

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Fig. 3.1 On April 25, 1956, in Harwell Laboratory, a high-level Soviet delegation met a large contingent of British scientists, to discuss the topic of nuclear fusion: leading the group are Nikolai Bulganin (centre) and Sir John D. Cockcroft, Director of AERE, to his left, followed by Nikita Khrushchev (wearing a hat). From Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

Bulganin, the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, and Nikita Khrushchev, Secretary General of the Communist Party, a Soviet scientific delegation met some 300 physicists gathered in the sacred heart of British nuclear research. In a rare instance of transparency for that time, the director of the Soviet nuclear programme, Igor Kurchatov, delivered a lecture entitled “The possibility of producing thermonuclear reactions in a gaseous discharge.”1 While Kurchatov never revealed the precise objectives of his visit, it is most likely that he was fishing for information and that his aim was to find out more about the priorities and research efforts of European fusion scientists. However, for the physicists who were present, it was very clear that only free and transparent international cooperation could overcome the huge difficulties, both theoretical and practical, that nuclear fusion posed (Fig. 3.1).2

1

https://fire.pppl.gov/kurchatov_1956.pdf. Actually, fusion was the first—and over the years, most intense—area of cooperation between US and Russian nuclear laboratories. 2

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Europe strongly encouraged the integration of this emerging scientific community. A decisive step was the ratification of the treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM), which was signed in Rome on March 25, 1957, the same day as the founding text of the European Community (EC), later renamed the European Union (EU).3 The six founding countries of the community—Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands—considered atomic energy, as it was called at that time, as a means to achieve independence in energy supply. An interesting detail: in the 176 pages of the EURATOM Treaty, only one line is dedicated to fusion—a surprising contrast to the huge development it would later undergo in Europe. And this reference appears only in the annex, which lists the areas of research that “the Commission shall be responsible for promoting and facilitating […] in the Member States and for complementing it by carrying out a Community research and training programme,” in subparagraph (e): “study of fusion, with particular reference to the behaviour of an ionised plasma under the action of electromagnetic forces and to the thermodynamics of extremely high temperatures.”4

A Scientific Slowdown These unassuming words have had a huge effect; since the signing of the EURATOM Treaty, the European Union has been able to build powerful fusion machines such as the Joint European Torus (JET5 ) and now ITER thanks to European and international cooperation. A second key factor that explains the tremendous development of fusion in the EU Member States was the establishment at the end of the 1950s of association agreements between the European Commission and most of the laboratories engaged in fusion research at the time. Later, from 1984 onwards, this initiative was followed by multiannual framework programmes to promote research carried out across national borders. At that time, several fusion scientists were managing the famous European Commission’s Directorate General XII (Science, Research and Development) that was driving these programmes, such as Donato Palumbo and Umberto Finzi, who were Director and Deputy Director General, respectively. These two men possessed all the knowledge 3 EURATOM is legally distinct from the European Union (EU) but has the same members and is governed by many of the EU’s institutions. From 2014 to 2020, Switzerland also participated in EURATOM programmes as an associated state. 4 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:11957A/TXT&from=EN. 5 Called the Joint European Torus rather than the Joint European Tokamak because representatives of some Member States did not want to use such a Russian-sounding word.

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necessary to link the tools at the Commission’s disposal with the needs and desires of the fusion community creating a very favourable environment for research in this area. Donato Palumbo implemented the association agreements in a way that was as simple as it was effective: any laboratory that accepted the Community rules on tendering, sharing results and work evaluation could have a quarter of its general expenditure paid by EURATOM. The Controlled Fusion Research Department (DRFC) of the French Atomic Energy Commissariat (CEA6 ) was the first research centre to sign up to these principles in 1959. It was then followed by all the other European fusion laboratories. Scientists quickly seized on these agreements as they would allow them to benefit from large subsidies, without losing any of their autonomy (which they were keen to defend). Today, 30 research centres located in twenty-six Member States of the Union, plus Switzerland, Ukraine, and the UK are part of the EUROfusion consortium, which together with the Commission organises and funds European fusion research, benefitting over 100 laboratories and almost 2000 researchers. The European Union is often criticised by the media and its citizens for its lack of vision and foresight—an opinion that was very visible in the UK’s decision to leave the EU—but fusion is clearly an area in which this criticism is absolutely unfounded. Since 1957, Europe has been implementing an ambitious and long-term fusion strategy. EURATOM’s contribution was more than just financial because the association agreements also boosted the exchanges of information between the various scientists and laboratories that helped create genuine coordination in the European fusion research. Given that scientists are usually viscerally attached to their independence as researchers, it was a stroke of genius to have dozens of laboratories collaborate and work towards the same goals. It was this successful principle that, almost half a century later in 2002, the European Commissioner Philippe Busquin extended to all of the scientific disciplines by proposing the idea of a European Research Area, a sort of single market of science and technology to facilitate cooperation, coordination and mobility. A major weakness of the European Union is indeed the fact that research is still fragmented and often duplicated across its 27 members. In reality, the era of the first EURATOM agreements was not very exciting for fusion research. Progress was slow, and no major breakthroughs were reported. In addition, despite the EURATOM funding, fusion was not a priority for Europe at that time. This was partly because the EURATOM Treaty was originally designed for nuclear fission and included activities that

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Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives.

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most Member States did not want to take on. In 1960, John Adams, then Director General of CERN, invited some forty scientists to Geneva to discuss the present and future of fusion research. Adams had had the idea of setting up a European organisation similar to CERN in the field of plasma physics. Fusion research could then benefit from the model that had made CERN such a success. However, none of the scientific leaders invited by Adams were enthused by the idea. It was still a time in which national concerns were prioritised. Despite this withering of scientific vigour, some people did manage to move things forward. In Europe, Robert Aymar stands out. A physicist trained at the Ecole des Poudres in Paris Aymar had been recruited in 1956 by the CEA (whose objectives are equivalent to those of the US Department of Energy, DoE), to conduct fundamental research on fusion. I met Robert Aymar in Paris for lunch on December 9, 2017, to discuss his career and the early development of fusion in Europe. Our discussion took place on the day of the funeral of the best-selling author Jean d’Ormesson, and I remember the incredible traffic jams near the Invalides where I had booked a table at Pasco’s, a Mediterranean restaurant not far from the Eiffel Tower. “The sixties were indeed not exciting for fusion,” Aymar told me. I was a little surprised to hear this; Aymar’s career is undoubtedly one of the brightest in this field, and he could be considered as the father of ITER. “Nothing we did then worked and there was no real research strategy,” he explained. But the huge student revolt of May 1968, which was soon joined by a general strike eventually involving some 10 million workers, blew a revolutionary wind all over France and triggered many changes in French society. And, against all odds, the spirit of revolution even impacted fusion research! Robert Aymar actively participated in the student movement. “I discovered with surprise that I could harangue two thousand people,” he told me. “The protest also took place in the laboratory, where we started to openly question the legitimacy of the management. I found myself at the head of an elected committee that was set up in the CEA’s DRFC, which had some two hundred staff. At the same time, the third IAEA conference on fusion took place in Novosibirsk, Soviet Union in August 1968. At the event, Soviet physicists announced a major breakthrough. Thanks to their T-3 tokamak, these researchers reported that they had reached unprecedented temperatures (10 million degrees) and plasma confinement times (several seconds)—two of the essential parameters of fusion. The Soviet achievements impressed all the attendees. It then became clear to me that the CEA and France had to build a tokamak. I discussed over several nights with the two CEA directors, Anatole Abragam and Jules Horowitz, and we eventually agreed on a new

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labour agreement which involved staff participating in the management of the organisation. As a result, the CEA decided one year later, in 1969, to build TFR, the “Fontenay-aux-Roses” tokamak, named after the commune near Paris where it was to be located. Since then, my personal goals have not changed in the least: throughout my professional career, my permanent goal has always been to try and achieve a self-sustaining plasma to show that fusion provides a source of clean, safe and virtually limitless energy.” The 1970s marked the beginning of a new age for fusion. The combination of several breakthroughs and the dynamism of the European community helped boost national research programmes and not just those of EC Member States. All major countries equipped themselves with quite powerful tokamaks. France had its TFR, Germany its Axially Symmetric Divertor EXperiment (ASDEX), the United States its Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR), Japan its JT-60 (JAERI tokamak 60), etc. It was in the German machine that a spectacular unexpected phenomenon termed H-mode (high-confinement mode) was discovered in 1982. H-mode is a particular plasma configuration that improves its stability and offers the possibility of lengthening its confinement time—at least doubling it. Since then, physicists have been able to reproduce H-mode in almost all the tokamaks in the world, even if they do not yet agree on the source of this interesting phenomenon. Commissioned in the spring of 1973, the French tokamak TFR was the most powerful tokamak in the world at the time. Its plasma volume was roughly 1 m3 (about the same as a washing machine), a record for the time (for comparison, the volume of ITER’s vacuum vessel will be 840 m3 ). TFR owed almost everything to another visionary physicist who would later lead the design process of JET and hold the reins of the ITER project from 1992 to 1994: Paul-Henri Rebut, trained like Aymar at the Ecole des Poudres (only one year before). The physicist’s passion for his machine was such that most of his collaborators considered that TFR stood for Tokamak façon Rebut (“Rebut’s own Tokamak”). At that time, Europe was firmly in the driving seat of the fusion research momentum that was developing worldwide. Riding on the wave of collective scientific excitement, in the early 1970s, European leaders conceived an even more ambitious project for the EURATOM framework. It was to be a larger, more powerful machine for testing D-T plasmas (using a mix of deuterium and tritium as its fuel) to achieve “real” fusion and release large amounts of energy. The project eventually coalesced into the first plans for JET. PaulHenri Rebut was asked to lead the working group for its development. Presented to the European Commission for approval in 1975, JET was officially accepted three years later. Funding was approved on April 1, 1978,

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for the JET Joint Undertaking. Construction started immediately on a former Royal Navy airfield at Culham, near Oxford, about 100 km northwest of London. In 1983, JET created its First Plasma. This machine and its American counterpart TFTR were designed to work towards achieving plasma breakeven conditions, a sort of plasma thermal equilibrium, which is achieved when the power released by the fusion reaction equals the power injected to heat it. From an industrial perspective, breakeven is the minimum requirement for a productive fusion reactor: in simple terms, the power “out” must exceed the power “in.”

The Golden Age of Fusion If you ever have the chance to visit JET, I bet you will have the same reaction I had in March 2011 when I visited the inner sanctum of European fusion. JET is indeed an impressive machine, with a mass of 5000 tonnes and a vacuum chamber of nearly 100 m3 (the volume of a domestic swimming pool), hosted in a building 20 m tall on a site of 35 ha. It is still the world’s most powerful tokamak currently in operation. When JET is running plasma pulses (typically two per hour), the machine, equipped with conventional copper magnets, can draw up to 8% of the electricity on the UK national grid. This is why fusion experiments are not allowed at JET at times when high power consumption is expected during the day (e.g. in the case of extreme cold weather or a major soccer match). Science and sport are not always compatible at the highest level! Inaugurated on April 9, 1984, by Queen Elizabeth II and French President François Mitterrand, the European tokamak performed the world’s first D-T experiment on November 9, 1991. It produced nearly 2 MW of fusion power, a major achievement that led Paul-Henri Rebut to announce to the press: “this is the first time that a significant amount of power has been obtained from controlled nuclear fusion reactions. It is clearly a major step forward in the development of fusion as a new source of energy.”7 But the specialists knew well that this first result was well below JET’s real capabilities since senior management had opted for a modest set up for this first experiment using a fuel with low tritium content (representing only 10% of the gas mixture) so as not to irradiate the inner walls of the reactor too much (Fig. 3.2).

7

https://www.iter.org/doc/www/content/com/Lists/Stories/Attachments/731/press%20release%20jet. jpg.

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Fig. 3.2 The UK government and the European Commission will continue to fund the Joint European Torus (JET) nuclear fusion experiment until the end of 2024 regardless of Brexit. JET is still the world’s most powerful tokamak machine. From EUROfusion

Beyond JET, the 1990s saw intense international activity in fusion as a result of the significant investments that had been made during the previous decade. There was almost a sort of competition between the international teams working on the big tokamaks in operation at that time. It was of course a civilised and scientific competition—but a genuine competition nonetheless. Even though international collaboration is now part of the culture of scientific and technical teams working in fusion, their passion and the hope of making a significant advance or historic breakthrough before anyone else are also deep and powerful motivations that drive scientific research. Given the high costs of these facilities, researchers are under pressure to demonstrate to their academic and political authorities as well as the public and the press that their laboratory and their country are at the forefront of the competition on the world stage. Thus, in December 1993, the American TFTR also performed its first D-T plasma “shot,” which released 3 MW of power. TFTR was the first tokamak to operate with D-T fuel composed of 50% deuterium and 50% tritium. In November 1994, TFTR generated nearly 11 MW, an amount that could have powered 1000 homes for a few seconds if converted into electricity. From 1996, JET started to operate at full power, also with 50–50 D-T mixtures.

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And in 1997, the European tokamak released a total power of 16 MW over 2 s. This is still the world record for a single pulse from a controlled fusion device. Japan’s JT-60, transformed into JT-60-U to operate with tritium, set a world record in 1996 by raising its plasma temperature up to 520 million degrees. It then achieved results very close to the European tokamak. At the end of the last century, humankind entered the era of controlled thermonuclear fusion thanks to JET and other similar machines. These achievements lent scientific credibility to fusion energy and supported new proposals to move to the next stage: reaching or even exceeding breakeven. In the early 1990s, this global enthusiasm particularly benefitted ITER, at the time in its earliest stages of conceptual development. JET, which is often described as a “little ITER” since the designs are very similar in many ways, laid the groundwork for ITER both by its scientific performances and the political momentum it created. However, the enthusiasm for ITER did not last very long, as the partners involved in the project encountered its many difficulties and uncertainties. Paradoxically, at the end of the last century, ITER was almost dead before it had begun despite the significant successes achieved by JET, TFTR and the likes and the openings that had appeared for fusion energy. We are still awaiting the second golden age of fusion…

The “Fireside” Summit Before the 1980s, fusion research mainly focused on its scientific principles and the technological conditions required for its realisation. The production of fusion energy was seen as an interesting but secondary endeavour because physicists and engineers knew that there was not yet a machine that could reach the necessary thresholds. A historic turning point came on November 19 and 20, 1985, when the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev met the then President of the United States Ronald Reagan for the first time. The two leaders met in Geneva to hold talks on international diplomatic relations and to find a way out of the Cold War that had lasted almost 40 years. Their priority was addressing the looming arms race; both leaders wanted to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the great powers of the planet. However, the final communiqué published at the end of this historic summit surprisingly mentions fusion. The two leaders pledged to set up a joint international programme to build the largest nuclear fusion reactor in the world to harness this new source of energy. As we know,

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the Soviet Union and the United States had already been operating nuclear fusion machines for some years at this point. In fact, Soviet and Western scientists had been exchanging their ideas on fusion for several decades, since the famous Harwell meeting in 1956. International collaboration had soared as a result of the impetus provided by the second UN Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva in 1958 in which some 6000 people participated. This conference was largely devoted to fusion. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, such fusion research leaders as Lev Artsimovitch in the Soviet Union and Edward Teller and Lyman Spitzer in the United States had received the green light from their authorities to come together and discuss their experiences, hopes and doubts. A budding international fusion community was born that was committed to “the exciting but extremely difficult task of controlling thermonuclear reactions,” to use Kurchatov’s exact words. Moreover, in the early 1980s, a team was formed under the umbrella of the IAEA to work on an international reactor project called short for International Torus (Intor). The European Community participated despite already committed to the Next European Torus (NET) programme that was intended to succeed JET. The scientists of the time worked out that the size and complexity and therefore the cost of the next reactor would be beyond the scope of any single country. Only a genuinely international effort could make it. Into this fertile environment came the Reagan-Gorbachev summit (Fig. 3.3). During the two days spent in Geneva, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan discussed such high-level political concepts as nuclear arms reduction, the threat of a Third World War, and their common aspiration for lasting peace. “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” concluded the joint statement issued after the meeting. However, the 13th point of this text, carefully phrased and very diplomatic in style, stated that both countries emphasised “the potential importance of the work aimed at utilising controlled thermonuclear fusion for peaceful purposes and, in this connection, advocated the widest practicable development of international cooperation in obtaining this source of energy, which is essentially inexhaustible, for the benefit of all mankind.” These words were what the international fusion community had been waiting for. “We knew that only a vast international programme could allow us to build the very large machine capable of demonstrating the scientific and technical feasibility of fusion energy,” reminisced Evgeny Velikhov, then director of the Soviet research programme on fusion, writing in 2016.8 In 8

ITER Organization (February 2016) Conceived in Geneva, ITER Magazine, https://www.iter.org/ mag/8/59.

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Fig. 3.3 Collaboration in fusion was the 13th and last point of the final communiqué of the historic meeting on November 19–20, 1985, dubbed the “fireside summit.” But, as the Assistant to the US President said at the time it was “the only tangible product agreed upon.” From Ronald Reagan Library

Geneva, the two most powerful men in the world gave the necessary political impetus to a large-scale initiative that would soon leverage significant resources and require unprecedented international collaboration. It has been said that it was Velikhov himself who sold the idea of an international fusion reactor project to Gorbachev whom he had met at the University of Moscow. Without the friendship that developed between the two men, the history of fusion may have taken another route.

The Birth of ITER At first glance, ITER appears to be the product of one courageous political decision; the leaders of the two superpowers of the world managed to overcome the tensions of the Cold War and launched an international project for peaceful purposes. Of course, we know that this decision was also (or even mostly) the result of the vision of a few men, such as Evgeny Velikhov and IAEA’s Director General Sigvard Eklund, who were both convinced that fusion activities needed to be coordinated at the global level. Velikhov’s proximity to Gorbachev was the political lever that made this scientific project possible.

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However, the start was quite laborious; several months after the Geneva statement, the work of implementing the idea had still not started. Based on the Reagan–Gorbachev initiative, with the participation of the Soviet Union, the United States, EURATOM and Japan, a committee had been set up in 1988 to work on the initial design of the machine. However, the group’s enthusiasm for the project was quite limited. There was a big gap between the political speeches and the reality. Most participants around the table were looking elsewhere: Europeans were working on their plans for the post-JET period; the Japanese had just begun to implement an ambitious fusion programme; the Americans were more concerned about the risk of transferring sensitive technology; and the Soviets wanted to be reassured that the committee would meet in a neutral country. It wasn’t until after another meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev in Reykjavik in 1986 that the first draft agreement was put on paper involving Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union and the United States. The Director General of the European Commission’s DG XII, the Italian Paolo Fasella, gave the new project its name: International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. A few months later on April 21, 1988, the Official Journal of the European Communities announced a “Commission Decision […] concerning the conclusion of an Agreement of participation in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Conceptual Design Activities, by the European Atomic Energy Community, with Japan, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the United States of America, by the Commission for and on behalf of the Community.”9 This is how the four members decided to build ITER, the world’s largest fusion experimental reactor, under the authority of the IAEA. The show could now go on! The EC official publication gave a genuine legitimacy to the project on the basis of which the partners could then work to launch the Conceptual Design Activities (CDAs) and create the first conceptual design for the fusion reactor. The aim was first to determine and agree on the main characteristics of the machine taking into account the technology available at the time and the various fusion programmes that were running around the world. This work ended in December 1990. A few months later, the Parties entered into a series of consultations on how ITER should proceed further. In July 1992, a new agreement was formalised in order to initiate the technical design phase called engineering design activity (EDA) that was intended to create the detailed plans of the machine. This 9 Official Journal of the European Communities, L 102, April 21, 1988, p 31– 44, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.1988.102.01.0031.01.ENG& toc=OJ:L:1988:102:TOC.

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was a decisive step, as the four members agreed to share the intellectual property produced through their work and to commit up USD1.2 billion to carry out these detailed studies and realise required full-scale prototypes before the end of the century. For about two years, the atmosphere in the consortium was excellent. The scientific community and the authorities of the participating countries did not hide their satisfaction: “Quest for Fusion Power Is Going International” announced the New York Times on July 28, 1992.10 The article explained that the four members had decided to abandon their big national plans about fusion to the benefit of a joint initiative. Somewhat premonitorily, the article suggested that the road would be full of pitfalls: “Japan, Russia, the United States and the European Community closed ranks on the research on ITER’s design after some bickering and hesitation. Experts say it will probably be more difficult to develop a consensus on where the big machine will be built.” Detailed conceptual and technical design phases of the machine were progressing smoothly and were expected to end in 1998 according to the official schedule. The work was carried out by an international team comprised of scientists and engineers from Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States. Under the management of Paul-Henri Rebut, the team was spread over three sites: Garching in Germany, Naka (Naka refers here to the district of Naka “Naka-gun” located in the prefecture of Ibaraki) in Japan, and San Diego in the United States. The international aspect of the project was present throughout the organisation as the Naka team was led by a Frenchman (Michel Huguet), the San Diego team by a Russian (Valery Chuyanov) and the Garching team by an American (Ron Parker). Rebut from France and Yasuo Shimomura from Japan led the top management.

Exit the United States However, the EDAs took longer than expected and it appeared that the machine’s detailed plans would not be finalised before the end of the century. These delays were caused in part by profound differences of opinion between Paul-Henri Rebut and the ITER Council, the governing body of the consortium which takes the most important decisions regarding the management of the project and the resources to be allocated. In 1993, the project entered severe turmoil that almost killed it.

10

Broad [1].

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The machine that had been conceived by the team was huge. With a plasma volume of a 1000 m3 , almost 12 times that of JET, it was designed to deliver an output thermal power estimated at 1.5 GW (Giga- or billion watts). Quite naturally, the total cost had increased with it and was then estimated at USD11 billion (1993 values). The experts were also unsure whether any physical material would be able to withstand the huge thermal and neutron loads in the core of the reactor. Furthermore, Rebut’s management style was heavily criticised by some of the members who felt excluded from the design of the machine. Although a brilliant engineer, Rebut was not a natural manager. He found it hard to delegate. And although he was travelling a lot (staying for a week on each site and then moving to the next one over the weekend), communication between the teams was poor. Fearing that the project would become gridlocked, the ITER Council asked Robert Aymar, who had in the meantime overseen the construction of the Tore Supra tokamak in the south of France, to take over leadership of the project (a post he was to occupy for 10 years) and to reduce the ambitions of the ITER reactor. “At this time,” Aymar recalled, “we were no longer in the race to gigantism. It is true that the dimensions of the first ITER model were impressive. But this was to meet the demands of the United States and the Soviet Union.” In the mid-1990s, the general climate changed radically; major difficulties arose on the international stage, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the abrupt fall in the cost of petroleum (which, in the eyes of certain politicians, reduced the urgency of research on new sources of energy). But the most dramatic change came from America and was nearly fatal to the project. Under the influence of the new Republican majority elected two years earlier, the United States was drastically cutting public spending (e.g. the budget devoted to magnetic fusion by the DoE was reduced that year to USD244 million, which was markedly insufficient to cover participation in ITER. In an article published in 1997 titled “Money Shortage Jeopardies Fusion Reactor,” the New York Times lambasted the Republican decision to reduce the fusion research budget by 33%, which led to the closure of Princeton’s TFTR11 . The United States appeared to be willing to contribute to the construction of ITER, but only a little more than 5% of the cost.

11

Browne [2] TFTR was followed by the NSTX spherical tokamak, upgraded as NSTX-U at the end of 2015, but it broke down in July 2016, which caused the Director of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Stewart Prager, to resign after 8 years in the service of the project. This means that only one major fusion facility is currently operational in the United States: DIII-D, located in San Diego (California) and owned by General Atomics, a US defence partner.

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Likewise, the Europeans declared that they would invest the same amount if ITER was located in Japan. Sensing a change in the wind, Robert Aymar asked his team in Garching to stop their current work and start designing a smaller machine. At that time, the United States was not alone in facing budgetary difficulties; Japan’s financial freedom was also reduced as a result of a severe economic crisis in the country, and Russia was entangled in considerable financial and political difficulties. The situation was quite serious. In Washington, criticisms of ITER were increasing in frequency and severity. Some people even claimed that ITER was virtually dead. More and more US experts expressed their doubts and criticisms about the design of the international reactor that they considered extravagant and overambitious, and they gained increasing support from the Congress. Furthermore, the criticisms were not just about the project’s finances, they also concerned the technical choice of using magnetic confinement, which created a consistency problem for the American Administration. In fact, at the same time (1997), the United States had just started constructing the National Ignition Facility set up to explore fusion by inertial and laser beam confinement. The Federal Administration had a clearly marked preference for this option as it offered possible military applications. The officials in the DoE quickly made their calculations: the budget allocated to ITER, now fixed at EUR50 million per year, was unrealistic. In this context, and under strong pressure from Congress, the first global power withdrew from the consortium in July 1998. However, the three remaining partners decided to finalise the design and engineering phase and confirmed their commitment to bringing the project to completion. Nevertheless, taking into account the delays, the persistent economic crisis in Japan and the reduction of ITER’s total funding due to the US withdrawal, the members gave themselves an additional three years to continue and complete the work in progress. The staff allocated to San Diego were then redeployed in Naka and Garching. The final detailed design of ITER was eventually completed in 2001. The initial mammoth task was over: the final document outlined a modest machine with a vacuum chamber of 800 m3 , with a target output of 500 MW of fusion power. “It was,” Robert Aymar told me, “the appropriate size to realise a self-sustained plasma and achieve net energy production.” The Aymar report, which was several thousand pages long, was approved by the ITER Council in June 2001 (without the United States of course) and published the following month. Subsequently, a new round of negotiations started in November 2001 in order to draft the Joint Implementation

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Agreement that would detail the construction, operation and dismantling of ITER, and also define members’ responsibilities for supplying the machine components. To provide data for the cost estimates on as realistic a basis as possible, the cost structure of ITER was broken down into 85 “procurement packages,” each about the size of a plausible procurement contract. Last but not least, the document would include an estimate of the financial, organisational and human resources needed to implement the project that would allow members to choose the best possible location for the tokamak.

References 1. Broad WJ (1992) Quest for fusion power is going international. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/28/science/quest-for-fusion-power-isgoing-international.html 2. Browne MW (1997) Money shortage jeopardizes fusion reactor. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/20/science/money-shortage-jeo pardizes-fusion-reactor.html

4 Why in France?

Abstract ITER could have been built in any one of the 35 countries that are participating in the project. So why Cadarache rather than Beijing or San Diego? Overall, it took no fewer than 10 years of technical studies, political negotiations and diplomatic arrangements before Cadarache was finally chosen to host ITER. Although this was a complex issue, it had major consequences. Formally speaking, the discussions about the site started in spring 2001 when the report on ITER’s detailed design was being finalised. The three project members (Europe, Japan and Russia) started to consider fundamental practical questions. Where were they going to build ITER? How much would it cost? Who would pay for what? All these questions had major political, economic and technical implications, since the selected site (and its host country) would receive concrete benefits, but there would be also myriad practical concerns such as transport, water and electricity supplies. Actually, only four countries put their names forward to host ITER: Canada, France, Japan and Spain. EU countries decided to support France as the European candidate. Canada withdrew from the discussions. But over three years of technical and diplomatic discussions were deemed necessary to reach a consensus. On May 4, 2005, Yomiuri Shimbun, the world’s largest Japanese daily announced a possible decision by the Tokyo Government to withdraw its proposal to host ITER. Intense negotiations lasted until June 28, 2005, when the ministers and deputy ministers of the ITER Parties met in Moscow. After a few hours of discussion, a consensus was finally reached, with members unanimously accepting that the experimental fusion reactor that China, the European Union, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_4

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had decided to build together (India would join them at the end of the year) would eventually be installed in Cadarache in the small commune of SaintPaul-lez-Durance (around 1000 inhabitants), approximately 80 km north of Marseille. Construction works began on-site at the end of 2007. The 181 ha site where ITER now stands was leased to the ITER Organization through a 99 year long-term lease. Keywords Cadarache · ITER · ITER council · Rokkasho-Mura · Vandellòs · CEA · Japan · EURATOM ITER could have been built in any one of the 351 countries that are participating in the project. So why Cadarache rather than Beijing or San Diego? It is true that Cadarache has been a familiar name for many years to those interested in fusion in Europe. One can even say that fusion is a part of the local landscape, with a huge property of 1600 ha being occupied by the CEA since 1960. The CEA’s Cadarache site is among the largest research centres dedicated to nuclear energy in the world, with 19 nuclear fission reactors in operation. The site is also host to the first ever tokamak equipped with superconducting magnets—Tore Supra (renamed WEST in 2016). In operation since 1988, Tore Supra is a very efficient machine. In 2003, it maintained a plasma pulse for six minutes and 30 s, producing one billion joules in energy—a world record among tokamaks that still stands today (Fig. 4.1). Overall, it took no less than 10 years of geological and technical studies, political negotiations and diplomatic arrangements before Cadarache was finally chosen to host ITER. The 181 ha site where ITER now stands is leased to the ITER Organization from the CEA through a 99 year long-term lease. Formally speaking, discussions about the site started in spring 2001 when the report on ITER’s detailed design was being finalised. The three project members (Europe, Japan, and Russia) were almost ready to submit the report to their political authorities, but some fundamental practical questions needed to be considered first. Where were they going to build ITER? How much would it cost? Who would pay for what? All these questions had major political, economic and technical implications, as the selected site (and its host country) would receive concrete benefits, but there would also be myriad practical concerns such as transport, water and electricity supplies.

1 In 2023, there are only 33 countries involved and funding the ITER project since the UK left the EU after Brexit and Switzerland is no longer associated to EURATOM.

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Fig. 4.1 Tore Supra, the first large tokamak equipped with superconducting magnets, has been upgraded and renamed WEST in 2016 to mimic some tungsten plasma-facing divertor components that will be used in its successor, ITER. From CEA/ C. Roux

The Impasse France made an early bid in 1997 through the CEA to locate ITER in Cadarache, but the initiative was unsuccessful. The experts that I consulted recognised somewhat guardedly that the bid was not well prepared since it was presented as a purely French initiative. France’s officials failed to involve the ITER members and convince them that they would also benefit from locating ITER in Provence. As a consequence, the ITER project entered a period in which little was achieved for a couple of years. These were black years for the project. The United States had left the consortium, and the remaining members were still working on the initial concept of ITER that was particularly ambitious and expensive as we have seen. At that time, it would have been difficult finding anyone in support of the construction of ITER in Cadarache. Moreover, the German and French ministers requested that Europe abandon the project arguing that the contribution requested of Europe (35% of the cost of ITER’s construction) was unacceptable. In short, the project had reached a complete impasse. However, something completely unexpected happened at the end of 1996 that would have a decisive impact on the future of the project despite

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being technically independent of ITER. In December 1996, the European Court of Justice condemned the European Commission for having refused in September 1994 to appoint a EURATOM scientist working at JET as a member of the Commission’s temporary staff in Brussels.2 Since the JET joint venture was scheduled to shut down on December 31, 1999, the Commission was therefore obliged to move and reassign the 100 EURATOM staff (termed agents) at JET to Brussels. One of the staff was the JET Director, French physicist Jean Jacquinot, who was reappointed at the CEA of Cadarache as Head of the Controlled Fusion Research Department (DRFC). You may recall this laboratory was the very first ever European laboratory associated with EURATOM. Jean Jacquinot quickly became a key figure in the negotiations about where to build ITER. This scientist, a world-renowned amateur astronomer with the physique of d’Artagnan, was a great proponent of the necessity for ITER to be as international a project as possible. His main aim in Cadarache was to push the project to be carried out at international level by Europe—not by France. As he explained to me with a smile, this would require that “French people would need to provide flawless technical and logistical support, but as discreetly as possible.”3 In Jean’s view, there was no other alternative. Fusion could only progress with ITER and ITER only with Europe. In the European Commission, this had been quickly recognised by Umberto Finzi, among many others. Jacquinot even suspected Finzi to have detached him to Cadarache to resuscitate the ITER project and put it on the international stage. But at that time in France, the ITER project was far from raising a lot of enthusiasm. In April 2000, Jean Jacquinot met René Pellat, the High Commissioner for Atomic Energy who was as such advising the French President on nuclear issues. Pellat was an old friend of Jacquinot both having worked together on plasma confinement in the CEA laboratory of Fontenayaux-Roses. When they met, Jacquinot gave Pellat an informal two-page document on ITER outlining what needed to happen to ensure international development of the project, while enabling its location in France. “I gave him my paper en perruque [literally: with a wig4 ],” Jacquinot explained with a broad smile. It should be noted that at the time, the whole organisation and culture of the CEA were concentrated almost entirely on nuclear fission. As 2 At that time most scientists working for the European Commission were “temporary agents” under renewable 5 year contracts. 3 Interview conducted on June 23, 2017 in Jean Jacquinot’s house in Aix-en-Provence. 4 Working “with a wig” in French means performing a personal task during working hours using work materials [author’s note].

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a consequence, fusion was perceived by most managers as a competing technology that could diminish their own budgets. At the end of their discussion, René Pellat came to the following conclusion: “Jean, what you are proposing is crazy, but this should not prevent us from having lunch.” His reaction can be easily explained. Pellat was a close colleague of Claude Allègre, at that time Minister for National Education, Research and Technology in the Government of Lionel Jospin, and famous for his controversial statements (he used to compare the French administration with a “mammoth”). Pellat and Allègre shared a common aversion to large publicly funded projects, which they considered costly and pointless. It is exactly for this reason that Jacquinot had not submitted his informal note through the usual chain of command of the CEA since he was certain that his document would have been immediately thrown in the bin. However, Pellat somewhat surprisingly suddenly changed his mind and became an ardent and very effective supporter of the project. Things then started moving forward. At the beginning of 2001 François Gounand, then Director of the Physical Sciences Division in the CEA, advised Jean Jacquinot to meet Bernard Frois, then Director of the Energy, Transport and Environment Department at the Ministry of Research and New Technologies. Frois immediately came onboard the idea of proposing Cadarache as the European site for the construction of ITER. He quickly requested an appointment with the Advisor to the Minister for Research, Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg, and a few weeks later paid a visit to Cadarache and the candidate site for ITER. In addition, Robert Aymar, who was at that time finalising the report on the detailed design of the reactor, joined the discussions and also played an active role in supporting the French application to construct the machine. A few weeks later, the EC’s Consultative Committee on Fusion (CCE-FU) met in Brussels. The Committee’s role was to advise the European Commission on the best way of implementing its fusion programmes. The Committee was chaired at the time by René Pellat. During the plenary session, Bernard Frois took the floor and surprised his colleagues and fellow scientists by announcing that the French Government had decided to examine the possible installation of ITER in Cadarache. Immediately, all the Committee’s members stood up and applauded wildly. After a fraction of second, René Pellat stood up and applauded as well. As far as the other EU specialists were concerned, the French proposal was seen as perfectly natural and was even received with relief. However, in the discussion that followed experts stressed the European dimension: “[…] the CCE-FU warmly welcomed the announcement made by the French Delegation and expressed its strong support for a translation of the CEA proposal into a ‘European’ site proposal,

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calling on active contributions from the EURATOM-Fusion Associations and on a strong involvement of European industry in the preparation of the proposal.5 ” Sitting on a seat in the back of the room in his capacity as a senior expert, Jean Jacquinot savoured the progress that had been made in the previous few years. Looking back at this time, Jean Jacquinot’s role was clearly decisive. Since Jean is a physicist by training, used to be Director of JET (and clearly associated to its success), and speaks English fluently; he therefore had double legitimacy in bringing the ITER project to the international stage. This was confirmed by the fact that Jean won several EURATOM contracts allowing him to launch a dozen technical and feasibility studies at European level that would produce strong arguments for the Provence site. At that time, Philippe Busquin was in charge of the research portfolio in the European Commission in Brussels and as such was the highest ranked European political leader for the ITER dossier (in accordance with the general order of precedence a European Commissioner is ranked above national ministers). Philippe Busquin helped raise the profile of EU research policy and give it a reputation for excellence. He managed to substantially increase its resources and reinforce its ambitions. A Belgian Minister of State, Busquin, was convinced that research was a top policy priority for Europe’s industrial societies. He felt that major projects should structure the European research system much like what CERN has achieved for basic research in nuclear physics. In 2000, he launched a European Research Area, a sort of EU single market for science and technology to boost the free circulation of ideas, research and innovation across EU borders. This ambitious and strategic approach immediately triggered a lot of discussions and public debates within the European institutions. While writing the first edition of this book, I wanted to meet with Philippe Busquin and talk to him about his experiences in Europe and his own memories of ITER. I met him in Brussels on November 9, 2017, in the bar of the tennis club where he plays bridge once a month. I was happy to reacquaint myself with this high-level politician known for his communicative, enthusiastic manner. “I think about you every day,” Busquin told me with a happy smile, “because the screen background of my computer is a photograph you took in 2015, when you guided me and my family on a tour of the ITER site. ITER has been a great challenge for the European Commission, and for me 5 Minutes of the 7th meeting of the Consultative Committee for the EURATOM specific research and training programme in the field of nuclear energy (fusion) (CCE-FU), European Commission, Brussels, July 11, 2000. The document is not available to the public.

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as well personally,” Busquin remembered with some emotion. “Of course, as a physicist, I know a little about fusion and ITER, but at the beginning of my mandate, nothing was decided about the funding mechanism and the building site. It was of course—and it will continue to be—a difficult project due to the geopolitical dimensions and the fact that, for the first time, governance at global level is being implemented to carry out the project. No other project has since tried to achieve this. But despite these difficulties and uncertainties, Umberto Finzi was putting pressure on us in order to move forward.” In fact, the context was relatively favourable to ITER. The European Parliament had been renewed after the 1999 European elections and, on November 30, the European Energy Foundation chaired by Rolf Linkohr organised the first informal debate on nuclear fusion. In addition, as Portugal held the Presidency of the European Council in the first half of 2000, favourable winds were clearly perceptible in Brussels. Following the renewals of the Commission and the Parliament, Prime Minister António Guterres (the current Secretary General of the United Nations), and his special adviser, the economist Maria Joao Rodrigues, created a constructive atmosphere that propagated throughout EU institutions. They prepared the ground for strengthening and improving the coordination of European policies—the socalled Lisbon Strategy. As a result at the Lisbon Summit of March 23 and 24, 2000, the Heads of State and Government decided to make the EU “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world” and endorsed an increase in public and private investment in research. At the meeting of the Council of Research Ministers in June 2000 chaired by the Portuguese Mariano Gago, another physicist, the idea of choosing a Spanish site for ITER was discussed behind the scenes. Philippe Busquin relived this fruitful period with me. “Sometime after I took office, I wished to meet Robert Aymar, and my team discreetly invited him to the European Commission a few weeks before the Lisbon Summit. Then I pretended to accidentally stumble upon the small office where he had been installed. We started to chat and we quickly turned to discussing ITER. Aymar confirmed that the design studies were almost completed and he thought it was the right time to bring up the project at the political level. After some reflection, I followed his advice. At the Council of Ministers on November 16, 2000, I put forward a technical proposal enabling the European Union to take part in the ITER negotiations. I made it plain that the Commission was not conjecturing whether or not ITER should be built. However, the audience was silent. I realised that almost no one knew about

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ITER. Only the Swedish Minister followed suit and encouraged the European Union to commit to ITER. After the meeting, during the informal lunch, I returned to the fusion project and almost everybody agreed with the proposal.”

ITER in Canada? As early as November 2000, Philippe Busquin realised that without broad political support, it would be impossible to implement ITER given the huge financial and technical resources that were required. At the request of Wolf-Michael Catenhusen, German Parliamentary State Secretary, Commissioner Busquin decided to hold a political debate on ITER before tabling new framework proposals for supporting research in the years 2002–2006. French Minister Schwarzenberg supported this process but did not disclose any information on France’s intentions to propose a site for ITER. In his Communication to European Ministers, Philippe Busquin presented four possibilities: two breaking options (shutdown or pause of fusion research) and two relaunch options (negotiation of an international agreement or construction of ITER in a European context). The debate held in the Council on November 16, 2000, revealed broad support for the international approach.6 In the summer of 2001, Busquin proposed the allocation of EUR700 million from the EURATOM research framework programme for the construction of ITER over the period 2002–2006. He also recommended making ITER the top priority of the European fusion programme so as to give visible and substantial support to the project. The European commitment and financial framework were taking shape, although the ministers did not discuss at least publicly the possibility of hosting ITER in Europe. In April 2001, discussions in the EU institutions on where to build ITER gained momentum when a group of Canadian scientists and industrialists determined to join ITER proposed hosting the tokamak in Clarington approximately 20 km east of Toronto. The initiative was supported by a letter sent by Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources Ralph Goodal to the ITER Council in which Canada expressed its willingness to host ITER. Although not particularly credible, this proposal had the advantage of forcing the existing partners to take positions on the question of ITER’s location.

6

European Commission [1].

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“For the first time since the project’s inception in 1985, the name ‘ITER’ was associated with a precise location,” remembered Jean Jacquinot. “The Canadian proposal lent credibility to the project.” The Clarington initiative also had some impact in France where it raised the project’s profile and produced momentum. The French authorities launched preparatory works for the candidature of the Cadarache site. A lot of work had already been done from the mid-1990s on in response to the French government asking several groups of experts to undertake technical site studies for the first bid in 1997. In 2000 and 2001, this work was reactivated and updated. However, in spring 2002, two important pieces of news further showed that interest in ITER was rising. First, on April 14, the Spanish government proposed hosting ITER in the city of Vandellòs, located on the Mediterranean coast south of Tarragona. And a few days later, Japan followed suit proposing two candidate sites for ITER: Rokkasho-Mura in the prefecture of Aomori in the north of the country, just over an hour’s flight from Tokyo; and Naka-Ibaraki, a more central location that was already the site of a fusion research centre (but the latter site was quickly abandoned in favour of the former). So, no less than four countries were therefore competing to host the ITER reactor. It was clear that the selection of the site would be much more complicated than expected. Philippe Busquin remembers that Spain was committed to supporting ITER at the highest level: “The President of the Spanish government, José María Aznar, wanted an international research centre for his country. The president of Catalonia, Jordi Pujol, invited me and I was greeted in Barcelona with great pomp. French officials by contrast were quite silent. Maybe too confident.” Meanwhile, in June 2002, Minister Schwartzenberg was replaced by Claudie Haigneré, the first French female astronaut. “This certainly saved the candidature of Cadarache,” Philippe Busquin remembered with a smile. The private office of Claudie Haigneré was headed by Bernard Bigot, future CEA Administrator General and Director General of ITER. Soon after he took up the position, Bigot asked to meet Pellat, Jacquinot, and Aymar, a meeting at which he asked them a lot of questions about ITER. However, the following months were characterised by complete silence on the side of the French authorities. Most people were unaware that behind the scenes intense work was under way. Bigot was quickly convinced that France had to send a formal proposal to host ITER. Claudie Haigneré happened to be quickly convinced too. So Bigot called upon Alain Devaquet, one of the advisers of President Jacques Chirac and a former minister. Bigot knew

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him quite well because Devaquet was one of his former teachers. Bigot asked whether he could submit the file directly to the President. “At that time,” Philippe Busquin recalled, “few personalities in France expressed a public opinion in favour of ITER, with the notable exception of Claudie Haigneré and Jean-Louis Bianco, former Secretary General of the Elysée, who became President of the Departmental Council of Alpes de Haute-Provence and who had already seized the strategic interest of ITER—and not only for his region.” Few people know that President Chirac then called up a number of local politicians such as Maryse Joissains (Mayor of Aix-en-Provence), Daniel Spagnou (Mayor of Sisteron) and Roger Pizot (Mayor of Saint-Paul-lezDurance), the small village in which the CEA and now the ITER Organization are officially established. President Chirac concluded from the talks he had that three main reasons justified France’s support to ITER: developing a new source of clean energy, stimulating European integration and fostering local development. However, on the French side, it was officially radio silence. On October 14, 2002, Claudie Haigneré had to give a keynote speech at the IAEA High Conference on Fusion Energy that took place in Lyon over five days. Participants were expecting a statement from the minister regarding the ITER site. But her speech was evasive and conference participants were disappointed.7 The next day, at 2 am, Jean Jacquinot received an e-mail from Bernard Bigot saying that Minister Haigneré was delighted with the conference and that the government had just sent a formal bid to the European Commission to build ITER in Cadarache. It just so happened that a few days before, at the end of a meeting gathering of the ministers and heads of Cabinet that were involved with ITER, Prime Minister JeanPierre Raffarin had asked Claudie Haigneré to prepare under his signature a formal candidature to the European Union for the installation of the project in Cadarache.

High Technology and High Diplomacy All of the sites that had been proposed for ITER were “nuclear sites” hosting either a research centre (in the case of Cadarache), a production plant (like Clarington and Vandellòs), or a site where a uranium enrichment plant, a 7 Quite surprisingly, most of the conference participants that I met afterwards underlined that the English version of the minister’s speech, which was provided by simultaneous interpretation, was more positive. This could mean that either interpreters received a specific briefing or that French-speaking and English-speaking participants in the conference had a different perception of Claudie Haigneré’s presentation.

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nuclear waste storage installation, and a used—fuel reprocessing plant share a 14 km long peninsula (Rokkasho-Mura). By the end of 2002, the four candidate sites had received visits from a group of international experts to assess their suitability, including the provision of equipment and services, the quality of the local schools and characteristics of the local housing market. During their stay in France the Rector of the Aix-Marseille Academy proposed the idea of building an international school in Manosque (20 km from Cadarache) to host over 1000 pupils from the ages of 3 to 18, in much the same way as the European schools set up in the European Union for children of EU institutions’ officials.8 At the beginning of 2003, Jean Jacquinot was invited to a meeting of the Forces vives de la Nation 9 at the Palais de l’Elysée in Paris. President Jacques Chirac presented the roadmap that he had given to the government, which included a brief mention of the ITER project. At the cocktail that followed Jacquinot bumped by chance into Jean-Pierre Raffarin. They started a discussion and Jacquinot discovered that the Prime Minister was very well-informed about the project. “C’est normal , Madame Haigneré informs us about the project progress every Wednesday,” Raffarin explained. “The President is also passionate about this major initiative.” By summer 2003, all the options were still open. However, there was clearly one site too many since the United States put pressure on the Commission to have only one European candidate. Bernard Bigot, who was appointed High Commissioner for Atomic Energy in August 2003, was instructed by the French Government to try and achieve a consensus in Europe. Negotiations then took place among the Member States of the European Union (15 at that time) hoping to agree on a single site, which would make it more likely that the ITER members would eventually decide to build the tokamak in Europe. Along this line, the European Council of Ministers set up a European high-level working group under the chairmanship of Sir David King, Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, with the mandate of comparing the merits of the two European sites and hopefully identifying the best one. The group started its work on June 16, 2003. The French and Spanish sites were quite different at first glance, each having its own strengths and weaknesses. Building ITER in Spain would probably have been less expensive, 8 It was clear from the outset that the school would not be open only to the ITER families. Today, approximately 60% of schoolchildren attending the international school in Manosque have at least one of their parents working for ITER. 9 Literally, the ‘Nation’s vital forces.’ This expression is used since 1982 as French President François Mitterrand decided to meet every year or so citizens whose work is contributing to improve the society in all possible areas—social, environmental, sport, education, research, etc.

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but there was no research centre in the vicinity of Vandellòs. Cadarache, on the other hand, was already hosting many scientific teams, but the site is quite far away from the sea, making the transport of the major reactor components more complicated (and certainly more expensive10 ). At last, the much-anticipated report was handed over by David King to the European Commission on September 3, 2003, but it was so inconclusive to the extent that a pun was coined: “It can go ITER way.”11 Without any strong technical guidelines, the decision could only be political. But it was obvious that the discussions would be difficult. In the Council, Spain wanted the Commission to take the final decision in order not to create too many tensions between the Member States. Although it was legally possible, it was politically inappropriate. Only a unanimous Council decision could be accepted at European and international levels. Three European Ministers played a key role at that time in the political negotiations that took place behind the scenes: Claudie Haigneré (France), who was obviously supporting the French site; Maria van der Hoeven (the Netherlands), who was going to hold the Presidency of the Research Council in the second half of 2004 and, most importantly, the then President of the Research Council Letizia Moratti (Italy). Their combined skill of negotiation greatly facilitated the joint decision. The meeting of the Council of Ministers was scheduled for November 26, 2003. Philippe Busquin, accompanied by Cristina Russo, a member of his cabinet responsible for the relations with the Council and the Parliament, arrived in Rome almost a week before the meeting to prepare the terrain. They met with Letizia Moratti and her diplomatic adviser on Thursday, November 20. A precise strategy was then set in motion. A dinner with representatives from France, Spain and the Commission took place on Sunday, November 23 at the private residence of the Permanent Representative of Italy to the European Union. Claudie Haigneré was calm and confident. However, Pedro Morenés, the Spanish Secretary of State for Science and Technology Policy and future Spanish ambassador to the United States, was determined not to make any concession. Morenés was accompanied by his supervisory Minister, Juan Costa, who had just been appointed on September 4 and had visited the site of Vandellòs with José Maria Aznar on September 9. The exchanges were icy. The dinner had no clear outcome, but participants felt that a solution in favour of Cadarache would be possible if compensation was offered to Spain. In a last-ditch effort before leaving the private residence, Pedro Morenés said that Spain was ready to increase its contribution to 10 11

These transport costs are however marginal compared to the total investment. “It can go either way.”.

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the project with respect to the figure stated in the negotiating directives. But Letizia Moratti stayed strong. The next day she finalised a compromise that was acceptable by all noncandidate Member States. Moreover, Spain decided to support it as well. Thus, on November 26, 2003, the Competitiveness Council of the European Union unanimously chose to propose Cadarache as the European site to host ITER. As compensation for this decision, Spain was granted the seat of the future European Domestic Agency that would be responsible for managing the Union’s contribution to ITER. The Agency, or more precisely the EU Joint Undertaking called Fusion for Energy (F4E), was later set up in Barcelona in 2007. Following the Council’s endorsement of Cadarache, Philippe Busquin immediately threw himself into promoting the European site to the other ITER Parties. An amended negotiation mandate was adopted by the Council on December 3. President of the European Commission Romano Prodi wrote to US President George Bush and the highest authorities of the other parties to announce the European position. The Canadian consortium withdrew from the negotiations in December given a lack of support for joining ITER by the Ottawa Government. Therefore, there were only two sites left in the competition, Rokkasho-Mura and Cadarache. Far from dividing the European countries, the decision to put forward Cadarache brought them closer together. Given that the United States had left the project (but not for long as we will see) and that Russia and Japan were kept very busy with internal economic and political difficulties, the European Union appeared to be the strongest and most reliable partner. Therefore, building ITER in Europe seemed fitting. The Director General of the European Commission in charge of research at that time, the Greek Achilleas Mitsos, an economist by training, spared no effort in promoting the French site—or as we should now say—the European site. He made dozens of roundthe-world trips to the capitals of the ITER Parties to persuade their political leaders to choose Cadarache. But it was not over yet. In the meantime, the United States had come back on board. In 2001, the House of Representatives had commissioned the DoE to explore concepts for a national fusion experiment since the TFTR had closed in 1997. Based on the work done in Washington, DC, and a meeting which took place in Snowmass, Colorado, in summer 2002, it became clear that what the Americans had in mind was broadly similar to ITER. As a result, in September 2002, members of the DoE’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee unanimously recommended the return of the United States as a full partner to the international ITER collaboration, with an annual financial contribution of USD100 million. This was announced by President George W. Bush

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on January 30, 2003. The eighth meeting of the working committee on the selection of the building site, held on February 18 and 19, 2003, in Saint Petersburg, was marked by the return of the United States and the arrival of China at the negotiation table. The return of the United States would not make things easier. All of the negotiators knew that the United States would support the Japanese site despite all the technical studies that had been carried out (e.g. the three volumes of the European ITER Site Studies 12 ). Evidence was mounting that the Cadarache site fully met all the technical requirements set by the international team for hosting the tokamak in terms of geology, seismic protection and the provision of water and electricity. In addition, Cadarache presented a high-quality operational environment thanks to numerous research infrastructures and high-level scientific teams in the region (e.g. the Institute for Research on Magnetic Confinement (IRFM) that operates Tore Supra, and the University of Aix-Marseille). Jacques Chirac’s team worked night and day under the leadership of Claudie Haigneré and with support from Alain Devaquet, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne (the President’s diplomatic advisor), and of course Bernard Bigot. The year 2003 was now coming to an end, and everybody was hoping that the diplomatic and political pressures would decrease and allow a choice to be made between the European and Japanese sites. However, the ITER consortium gained two new members (China and South Korea), which added even more complexity.13 Each party was extolling the strengths of the site it supported. Negotiations were at a total standstill. Technically speaking, the French and Japanese sites were similar apart from the risk for earthquakes and tsunamis. However, Jean Jacquinot felt there was little local expertise at Rokkasho-Mura. On December 20, 2003, ministers from the ITER Parties met in the United States in Reston, a suburb of Washington, DC. The meeting was presented as decisive and television crews were on standby in Rokkasho-Mura and Cadarache, with journalists and negotiators glued to their mobile phones. However, the ITER representatives only confirmed their positions and no decision was taken in Reston.

12

EISS [2]. The ITER consortium is not closed, but the participation of additional states or organizations in the project has to be unanimously approved by the ITER Council. It is now becoming less and less advantageous for a new country to join the project, as they will have to pay a high membership fee, and as most contracts for the manufacturing and the construction have already been placed, they would not receive much in return. 13

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“All United in Cadarache” There is not much public information available about the meeting in Reston, except a surprisingly optimistic press release: “The six parties reached a high degree of consensus on a large number of topics,” read the official text. “We have two excellent sites for ITER, both excellent to the extent that further assessments are needed to reach a consensual decision.” However, behind the political façade, the reality was quite different. Nobody outside the meeting room in Reston knew that China’s representatives were firmly opposed to the Rokkasho-Mura site, given the high frequency of earthquakes in Japan, and even told the other parties that they would leave ITER if this site was eventually chosen. The newly arrived (and the newly returned) were definitely not the most conciliatory!14 During our discussion in the tennis clubhouse in Brussels, Philippe Busquin remembered the Reston meeting as being important despite the absence of official statements. “When we arrived in front of the building where the meeting would take place, some fifty journalists, mainly American and Japanese, were waiting for us. My political blood immediately boiled up as I understood that the Americans had sold ITER to Japan. Spencer Abraham, State Secretary for Energy in the Government of George W. Bush, chaired the meeting. It was clear to me that the choice of the ITER site would be political, not technical. I was accompanied by Letizia Moratti and Claudie Haigneré. The first tour de table clearly confirmed the two sides of the negotiation: Europe and China were supporting Cadarache; Japan and the United States Rokkasho-Mura. The United States were making France pay for their refusal to support the US-British coalition in the war against Saddam Hussein (2003–2011). On the other side of the table, Russia and Korea seemed undecided. Evgeny Velikhov, who was leading the Russian delegation, made a rather technical presentation, addressing in particular the issue of the availability of materials. But as no consensus emerged, Abraham suspended the session.” At this point, Philippe Busquin gave me a diagram he had drawn of the table in Reston: in the centre Spencer Abraham and then clockwise the Russians, Koreans, Japanese, Europeans and Chinese, each delegation

14

I always found strange that the decision to build ITER in Europe did not receive and spontaneous support. After all, Europe is involved in ITER since the beginning, long-term strategy and is paying half of the construction costs. But Philippe Busquin bit more nuanced than me: “ITER is managed by a global governance which has no in the world. ITER is not the United Nations. It is not the CERN either. ITER has a dimension which is truly unique.”.

more rapid has a clear was a little equivalence geopolitical

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consisting of three members plus a few experts and the heads of Cabinet of the Commissioner and Ministers. “During the suspension of the meeting,” he continued, “Abraham met the Korean delegation, presumably to instruct them to take a clear position in favour of Japan. Meanwhile, coffee cup in hand, Claudie Haigneré did a remarkable job in going straight to Evgeny Velikhov requesting him not to support the Rokkasho-Mura candidature. When the meeting resumed, Korea underlined the high quality of the French site but marked a preference for Japan, which is the closest one, geographically. Speaking last, the Russians recommended not to limit the negotiations to the selection of the site but also to provide for a structure for material research (which could be located in Japan). And then, the meeting closed without a formal conclusion. Outside, Japanese journalists did not hide their disappointment.” So, on the eve of 2004, lobbying work resumed but now even more intensely. At the end of January, the French newspaper Le Monde ran the headline: “All united in Cadarache.” But in reality, tensions were running high behind the scenes despite this message of solidarity. The Japanese Prime Minister wanted his country to host an international organisation since Europe had already set up CERN. Moreover, George W. Bush was still harbouring a grudge against France for its opposition to the US intervention in Iraq in March 2003. In April 2004, Philippe Busquin went to South Korea to prepare a broad agreement on scientific cooperation with the European Union. He had a meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the late Ban Ki-moon, future Secretary General of the United Nations. Ban Ki-Moon explained that the Korean position was not going to be negotiable as the decision had been taken by the President himself, Roh-Moo-yun, after a meeting with the Prime Minister of Japan and without any consultation with their respective administrations. However, there was a major revelation during the third round of negotiations attended by all the members held at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna in June 2004. Against all expectations, the Japanese delegation announced that their government was prepared to pay 50% of the cost of building ITER. The European proposal involved financing up to 45% of the construction costs, 35% of which would be paid by the Union and 10% by France (around EUR1.9 billion and EUR0.5 billion, respectively15 ). During a meeting suspension, the Commission’s representatives said that their mandate did not

15

As explained in a next chapter, the European contribution to the construction of ITER was at that time estimated to be EUR2.4 billion.

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allow them to change the European funding level without a new interservice consultation in Brussels, which was impossible to organise at such short notice. The question was therefore whether France could increase its commitment to at least 15%. Convinced that France’s participation would ultimately be in the range of the 10% officially authorised, Bernard Bigot called JeanPierre Raffarin in Paris from the French Embassy in Vienna. Bigot explained the situation to the Prime Minister, who gave Bigot permission to make an exceptional request to the minister for Budget, Francis Mer. Against the advice of his advisers, Mer gave his consent following his own firm conviction that France and Europe had to lead the ITER project. However, it would still be another year before the final decision was reached. To break the gridlock, the members proposed setting up an initiative called “Broader Approach.” According to this agreement, the party not selected to host the tokamak (the so-called nonhost country) would be assigned a separate research programme as compensation. In concrete terms, this involved installing in the “nonhost” country three scientific and technical fusion facilities: a research centre for testing materials under conditions similar to those of a future fusion power plant, a tokamak which would be used as a “satellite” facility of ITER to optimise the plasma operation, and an international computer centre dedicated to modelling and remote-handling experiments—something for which Europe had always advocated. Throughout 2004, a number of meetings took place resulting in countless discussions in working committees, behind the scenes and at the highest political level. Jean Jacquinot remembers that the workload was enormous. “We had to provide a lot of additional technical documents, explain the objectives of the project in detail, or just translate the official information! This was the case, for example, when the Rector of the Aix-Marseille Academy told the ITER members about the merits of the French national education in a speech given in… French!” Jacquinot remembered also having to explain to the US delegation that France offered high-quality medical care. A particular point he made was that Americans working in Cadarache would continue to use the same emergency number (namely 911) as in the United States. In fact, Jean Jacquinot had a heart attack a few months later in Aix-en-Provence and had to use the emergency number to get help. During that period, René Pellat and Jean Jacquinot also met with all the presidents of the local and regional authorities in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) region.16 They explained to key officials and politicians in the region that they would have to contribute to the funding of ITER so that the 16

In France, the main units of local government defined by the constitution as collectivités territoriales (“territorial collectivities”) are the régions, the départements and the communes.

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final decision could be facilitated. Pellat and Jacquinot were firmly convinced that if ITER was built in France, the financial contribution made by the host country could not only be taken from the national research budget because this would have created major difficulties in Paris. As a result, no less than EUR467 million were eventually provided by the Regional Council of PACA, the six départements that constitute the region, and the communities of Greater Aix-en-Provence (CPA) for the construction of ITER over a period of ten years. “It had never happened in France before,” Jacquinot explained, “with the regional and local authorities providing such a large financial contribution for a technological project. The funding provided by the Provence authorities to ITER was similar to that of the United States! And the future would confirm that it was the right decision as the economic impact has already exceeded our expectations.” At the beginning of 2005, discussions were still ongoing and Achilleas Mitsos was now going to Tokyo twice a month. The governments and media of both sides were very active. Experts were working hard beyond the scenes and exchanging a lot of information. Reports and op-ed contributions multiplied in the media, generally in good faith. Spring 2005 saw statements, rumours and personal comments circulating worldwide and generating many often contradictory interpretations. However, at the end of April, speculation began about the withdrawal of Japan’s candidature. On May 4, 2005, Yomiuri Shimbun, the largest Japanese daily and the world’s best-selling newspaper with more than 10 million copies distributed every day, published an article on a forthcoming possible decision by the Tokyo Government to withdraw its proposal to host ITER. This period of intense activity lasted until June 28, 2005, when the ministers and deputy ministers of the ITER Parties met again, this time in Moscow. After a few hours of discussion, a consensus was finally reached with members unanimously accepting that the experimental fusion reactor that China, the European Union, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States had decided to build together (India would join them at the end of the year) would eventually be installed in Cadarache, in the small commune of Saint-Paul-lezDurance (around 1000 inhabitants), approximately 80 km north of Marseille. The long-awaited decision was reported in a joint press release by European Commissioner for Science and Research, Janez Potoˇcnik and the Japanese Minister of Science and Technology Nariaki Nakayama. The former declared: “Today, a page has been written in the history of international scientific cooperation. Now that we have reached consensus on the site for ITER, we will

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make every effort to finalise the agreement on the project, so that construction can begin as soon as possible,17 ” and the latter, very honourably but with some regrets: “I wish to say that today Japan is both sad and happy. However, this project is so important that we have decided to overcome our grief and transform it into joy.”18 Behind the scenes, an agreement had been reached between the European Commission and Japan a few weeks before (May 5, 2005; in fact, the day following the publication of the Yomiuri Shimbun article), to compensate Japan by making the first Director General of the ITER Organization a citizen of the Land of the Rising Sun, or in diplomatic language: “The host member shall support for the position of Director General an appropriately qualified candidate of the nonhost member.” So ITER had a home at last. On June 30, 2005, two days after the historic decision, President Chirac paid a visit to Cadarache. In a warm speech, he thanked the CEA staff and added: “I have followed this project closely and I have made every effort to support France as the host country. This is part of a major French ambition, justified by the exceptional expertise gathered here in Cadarache. We have an ambition for research, for innovation, for progress. […] This success is part of our project that is essential for France as we aim to build a united Europe, cohesive, political and supportive of sustainable development.” There was general agreement among experts that the French authorities had done a remarkable job on ITER, supported by effective diplomacy and many committed politicians, such as the MP Pierre Lellouche, who was the government’s representative from November 2003. Two days after President Chirac, the European Commissioner Janez Potoˇcnik also visited Cadarache together with French ministers who had been involved in ITER. In a ceremony hosted by President Chirac and the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, the ITER Agreement was officially signed in Paris on November 21, 2006, by ministers from the seven ITER Parties establishing a legal international entity responsible for building, operating and decommissioning ITER.19 Following ratification of the international treaty by all parties, the ITER International Fusion Energy Organization (ITER Organization) was officially established on October 24, 2007. The champagne could finally be served. Each of the parties—Chinese, Europeans, Japanese, Koreans, Russians and Americans—had demonstrated 17

European Commission Daily News [3]. Associated Press [4]. 19 http://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/downloads/aboutf4e/l_35820061216en00620081.pdf. 18

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their capacity to overcome difficult odds and find a solution that was acceptable to all. Over 15 years later, this approach and this mind-set remain. The first ITER teams arrived in Cadarache at the beginning of 2006.20 From that moment until construction began in 2010, the staff increased to approximately 500, the nuclear licensing process was initiated, site preparatory works were carried out and procurement agencies in each ITER member (the “Domestic Agencies”) were established. The project had become a programme. When José Manuel Barroso reached at the end of his mandate as the toplevel executive of the European Commission in 2014, he asked to visit ITER. I remember receiving him on July 11 of that year with Director General Osamu Motojima and a few dozen other personalities. In front of the journalists attending the visit, Barroso remembered the signing ceremony of the ITER Agreement at the Elysée Palace where he occupied the place of honour at French President Jacques Chirac’s right. Looking around he declared, he was impressed by the work carried out since: “The European Commission is proud to have believed in this project,” he said.21 At the end of the visit, in a humorous aside to ITER Director General Osamu Motojima, he said: “I’m responsible for coordinating 28 countries—you, 35. I know it’s not easy every day!” (Fig. 4.2).

20 The first “ITER employee” was the Dutchman Akko Maas who started working in Cadarache on January 15, 2006. 21 ITER Organization [5].

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Fig. 4.2 Signing ceremony of the ITER international fusion energy agreement in the Palais de l’Elysée, Paris, November 21, 2006. From photographic service of the presidency of the French Republic—L. Blevennec

References 1. European Commission (2000, Nov 16) Press release database. https://ec.europa. eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/PRES_00_431 2. EISS (2002) European ITER site studies. CEA, Cadarache. http://www-fusionmagnetique.cea.fr/site/elmt_tec_022002_fr.pdf 3. European commission daily news (2005) Déclaration du Commissaire européen à la Recherche Janez Potoˇcnik sur ITER. https://europa.eu/rapid/midday-express28-06-2005.htm?locale=EN. (Available only in French) 4. Associated Press (2005) France chosen as site for nuclear reactor. USA Today. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-06-28-french-reactor_x.htm 5. ITER Organization (2014) Europe’s Barroso: proud to have believed in ITER. ITER Magazine. https://www.iter.org/mag/4/35

5 Building a Gigantic Machine

Abstract The ITER tokamak will be a perfectly formed jewel of technology. Probably, the most complex (and most expansive) machine ever built by humankind. With the largest magnets in the world, the most powerful cryogenic plant, and endless banks of high-powered computers ITER’s ambition and scale are unprecedented. In principle, a tokamak is a relatively simple machine: it is a toroidal vacuum chamber (shaped like a doughnut or tyre, to use a more down-to-earth analogy), surrounded by magnets that confine the plasma and keep charged particles from touching the walls. Hydrogen gas is injected into the chamber and heated reaching temperatures of tens or even hundreds of millions of degrees. Energy is generated by the fusion of hydrogen nuclei and comes out of the fusion reaction as kinetic energy of the neutrons produced. Since neutrons are not electrically charged, they are not affected by the magnets surrounding the chamber, so they hit the walls and their kinetic energy is absorbed as heat. As with conventional power generators, an operational fusion reactor uses this heat to convert water into steam and produce electricity through turbines and alternators. In this chapter, we will visit the interior of the machine. We will look at its main components: the vacuum vessel, the magnets, the inner walls, the divertor, the cryostat and the heating techniques. Then we will look at how all these parts interconnect in assembly. This is another logistics challenge as a result of the thousands of annual deliveries and millions of coded products stored in facilities both on-site and off-site, something that couldn’t be done without a sophisticated materials management system.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_5

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Keywords ITER · Tokamak · Magnet · Vacuum vessel · Cryostat · Divertor · Heating “In most sciences,” writes Daniel Clery, a journalist at Science, “you build machines to allow you to conduct experiments. in fusion, the machine is the experiment.1 ” In principle, a tokamak is a relatively simple machine: it is a toroidal vacuum chamber (shaped like a doughnut or tyre, to use a more down-toearth analogy), surrounded by magnets that confine the plasma and keep charged particles from touching the walls. Hydrogen gas is injected into the chamber and heated reaching temperatures of tens or even hundreds of millions of degrees. Energy is generated by the fusion of hydrogen nuclei and comes out of the fusion reaction as the kinetic energy of the neutrons produced. Since neutrons are not electrically charged, they are not affected by the magnets surrounding the chamber, so they hit the walls and their kinetic energy is absorbed as heat. As with conventional power generators, an operational fusion reactor uses this heat to convert water into steam and produce electricity through turbines and alternators. Simple in principle but complex in practice, the ITER tokamak will be a perfectly formed jewel of technology. Let us now visit the interior of the machine. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, the next several pages are going to get technical. But if you’re not a fan of technically complex omelettes, feel free to jump to the next dish (chapter). Developed, as we have seen, by Soviet physicists in the early 1950s, the tokamak concept has produced some interesting results and undergone some spectacular improvements. This is the main reason why this type of reactor has become the dominant model for researchers working on magnetic confinement fusion, particularly those developing this technology to produce fusion energy (remember that ITER will remain an experimental machine, designed to explore the technical feasibility of fusion energy on Earth, and will never produce any electricity2 ). The first tokamaks were small enough to sit on a laboratory bench. The technology and control systems were quite basic. However, scientists using them managed to generate high-temperature plasmas and confine their energy for an amount of time (still relatively short: just a few milliseconds). These first experiments afforded a first glimpse at new physical phenomena 1

Clery [1]. Most visitors of ITER are surprised when they are told that ITER will not exploit the energy produced by the fusion reactions (apart from producing steam). 2

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such as anomalous transport, which is generated by turbulences and micro instabilities that affect the behaviour of the plasma. Similarly, physicists discovered scaling laws that allowed them to predict that the plasma energy confinement time could be much longer in a larger machine equipped with powerful magnets. This is because the particles would spend more time inside the plasma before leaving it, so they would have more time to fuse and therefore the plasma would produce more energy. In the tokamak, family size matters! The second generation of tokamaks appeared in the years 1970–1980 and were characterised by extensive use of external heating systems (i.e. heating injected into the plasma from outside). Further improvements were made for this generation of machines such as adding a divertor, a sort of giant ashtray at the bottom of the machine to collect nonhydrogen particles and the product of the fusion reaction (helium in the case of D-T fusion). These technological developments allowed designers and engineers to confine the plasma more securely, therefore reducing neutron and heat loads on the internal walls of the machine. This was a significant improvement since the extreme conditions within the vacuum chamber and on the walls of the chamber and other plasma-facing components during the experiments are difficult for all but the toughest materials to withstand. These new tokamaks were larger than those before them, such as JET in Europe, JT-60 in Japan, TFTR in the US and T-15 in the Soviet Union and allowed scientists to study plasmas in conditions as close as possible to those of a fusion reactor. Integrating the latest developments in fusion science and technology, these machines have been regularly renovated and updated (in particular, with superconducting magnets and remote-handling tools). Some of them have become able to operate with deuterium-tritium mixtures. Overall, these second-generation devices have made it possible to make significant progress in fusion research and plasma physics. For example, when operating the ASDEX machine in Garching on February 4, 1982, the German physicist Friedrich “Fritz” Wagner discovered a dramatic change in the plasma’s behaviour under certain conditions. Now called high-confinement mode (H mode), the phenomenon was previously unknown but is now famous in the fusion community. It also triggered a lot of research in plasma physics since it took scientists almost 40 years to understand the theory behind the effect. Initially, sceptical Wagner took a full weekend to check and analyse his data and eventually confirmed that the phenomenon was real. Arriving at his office on the following Monday, he announced victoriously that he had observed a transformation of the plasma during experiments he had performed a few

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days before. Having reproduced the phenomenon in a new series of experiments, Wagner concluded that a sudden and remarkable change in plasma characteristics can occur above a certain threshold of heating. This change suddenly improves the performance of the plasma with an increase not only in confinement time but also in energy production, as scientists were soon to observe in JET. Fritz Wagner disclosed his results at a symposium held in Grenoble in March 1982, but the scientists he met there were all sceptical about his presentation. However, this was fine by him because this was as he said exactly the “fundamental role of science.”3 It was only after a presentation at the IAEA conference in Baltimore six months later that H mode was definitively accepted in the fusion community, although the origin of the phenomenon had yet to be clarified. Fritz Wagner confirmed to me at the beginning of 2018 that H mode can be reproduced in any tokamak and even any stellarator provided that a threshold of thermal power is exceeded. The exact value of the threshold depends on parameters such as magnetic field and plasma density but also varies from device to device. After 1982, even greater modes of stability, known as VH (very high), were observed in certain machines. This unexpected and spectacular result is one of the most visible aspects of the huge amount of scientific knowledge and technical know-how that has been amassed over the decades thanks to these machines. Together with the many lessons learned through the experiments themselves, this expertise has been used to inform the design of ITER, both a qualitative and a quantitative leap forward. Thanks to these increasingly powerful machines fusion research entered a new era of “burning plasmas.” A burning plasma is one in which the heat from the fusion reaction is contained in sufficient quantities and for a sufficiently long time that the energy produced in the plasma is almost or completely sufficient to maintain its temperature. External heating can therefore be vastly reduced or even switched off altogether. The advantage of a burning plasma is not just that it allows external heating to be reduced; it also allows fusion reactions to maintain themselves for longer periods of time. This is a crucial step forward if the aim is to exploit fusion energy commercially; a full-scale commercial reactor would have to be operated continuously for several minutes if not several hours. Investigating burning plasmas would therefore allow scientists and engineers to address this issue since plasma stabilisation is crucial to ensuring the economic viability and industrial feasibility of fusion energy. Since ITER will study burning

3

Wagner [2].

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Fig. 5.1 Computerised image of the ITER reactor. At the centre is the vacuum chamber (pink) that will contain the plasma, and around it are the magnets and related technical systems. From ITER Organization

plasmas (i.e. self-heating plasmas) the operation of ITER and execution of its research programme should in principle validate (or invalidate) the feasibility of fusion energy. Having given a basic introduction, we are in a position to look at one of the main events in modern fusion: the ITER tokamak (Fig. 5.1). We will look at its main components; the vacuum vessel, the magnets, the inner walls, the divertor, the cryostat and the heating techniques. Then we will look at how all these parts interconnect in assembly.

A 5200-Tonne Chamber When the ITER tokamak is in operation (probably around 2030 if all goes well), vacuum pumping will be required in the chamber prior to starting any fusion reaction. This is necessary to eliminate nonhydrogen molecules that would otherwise pollute the plasma. This elimination is achieved by making the pressure in the chamber as low as possible before injecting the hydrogen gas. Mechanical and cryogenic pumps will suck as much air as possible out of the chamber and the cryostat until the pressure inside has dropped to one millionth of normal atmospheric pressure. Given the volume of ITER, this operation will take 24–48 h. ITER’s six cryogenic pumps will be among the most powerful in the world. When the pressure in the vessel reaches its target, the magnetic system will be activated ready to confine and control the plasma. Then the injection system will feed in the low-density gaseous fuel. In principle, this will be a mixture

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of hydrogen isotopes, but in the first experiments, the gas will be helium or regular hydrogen. A key component of the tokamak, the central solenoid will then induce a powerful current in the gas through electromagnetic induction. This current will be maintained during each plasma “pulse,” and it is this current that will ionise the gas and transform it into a plasma. ITER and other tokamaks essentially act as large transformers where the central solenoid is the primary winding and the plasma the secondary winding. But the role of the central solenoid doesn’t end there. As the high-intensity current circulates within the plasma, resistance will be created through collisions between energised particles. When current encounters resistance, energy is dissipated in the form of heat—an effect known as ohmic heating. This will contribute to heating the plasma. As the plasma heats up, the kinetic energy of the electrons and ions will gradually increase. We can measure their kinetic energy through measuring their temperature, although their temperatures will not be the same since the plasma is not in thermodynamic equilibrium. A number of additional heating technologies will then intervene to bring the ITER plasma to a high enough temperature for fusion (i.e. 150 million °C). At this temperature, the electrostatic repulsion that normally keeps nuclei from touching each other will be overtaken by their kinetic energy. The nuclei will fuse releasing huge amounts of energy. At this stage, the critical task will be to effectively control and confine the plasma using the electromagnetic coils that surround the vessel. Technicians in the future tokamak control room will have to play with the current in these coils, the external heating power, the density of the gas and many other parameters to stabilise the plasma against turbulence and instability. It may take several months if not years to effectively master the machine and learn to control the plasma. Hopefully, a single fusion experiment can then last several minutes. ITER will host what will certainly be the highest difference in temperature over the smallest distance on Earth and maybe even beyond. Indeed, over a distance of just 3 m (between the heart of the plasma and the supercooled superconducting magnets), the temperature will fall abruptly from 150 million °C to −269 °C. In no other human-built facility that I am aware of, nor anywhere in the solar system, is there such a steep change (gradient) in temperature (except perhaps in the CERN’s large particle accelerator, which happens to create highly energetic collisions). In a tokamak, it is the size of the doughnut-shaped vacuum vessel that determines the volume of the plasma: the larger its volume, the easier it is to confine it and achieve the high-energy mode that can produce significant

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fusion power. ITER’s huge chamber will be 19 high and 6 m in diameter. The empty vacuum vessel will weigh approximately 5200 tonnes (8500 tonnes once fully equipped) and will have a volume of 1400 m3 , similar to a four-story building. It will be an unprecedented experimental tool since the volume of ITER’s plasma (840 m3 ) will be ten times larger than that of the largest of the tokamaks today in operation (JET). Inside the chamber and under the influence of the magnetic field created by the magnets and the plasma, charged particles will normally follow a helical (spiral-shaped) trajectory around the doughnut without touching the walls. The vacuum chamber will act as a first safety barrier against the radiation and the many neutrons produced by the fusion reaction. It will also hold some of the tokamak’s internal components, such as the blanket and the divertor. The vacuum chamber will have 44 ports (openings) to allow access for measurement, heating, and pumping equipment. These ports will also be used by the robots that will perform maintenance work. Three ports are reserved for the neutral beam that will inject particles and heat the plasma; five will give access to the divertor for replacement and maintenance, while a further four will be reserved for vacuum-pumping systems. During operation, these ports, which have watertight doors, will be closed to ensure the vessel is completely airtight. The vacuum vessel is a huge challenge to manufacture. Principally because of its dimensions, ITER’s chamber will be among the world’s largest. Despite its complex geometry, it will need to be perfectly airtight. In addition, the openings and the fixing points must be positioned very precisely, with a margin of error of less than 1 mm—a gigantic task given the size of the chamber. Moreover, in 2001, the ITER members added yet another layer of complexity because they decided that the chamber would be partly built in Europe and partly in South Korea. A sizeable challenge! Just like an orange composed of segments, the vacuum chamber will be assembled as nine sectors, each 11 high and 7 m wide. Originally, two of these sectors were to be provided by South Korea and the other seven by Europe. But Europe experienced significant delay because of difficulties unrelated to ITER encountered by three Italian companies involved in the manufacturing. Accordingly, the ITER Organization asked South Korea to manufacture two additional sectors. In addition, two more companies were contracted to work on the vacuum vessel. One is Spanish and is responsible for producing the poloidal (the most internal) part of three of the sectors, and the other is German and has the delicate job of welding together each sector using powerful electron beams. This company is the only one in Europe capable

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of welding pieces as large as the ITER components using electron beam welding—a technique that produces almost no lateral shrinkage, angular distortion or any other kinds of distortion during or after the welding. This means that sensitive components or those with tight tolerances can retain their carefully manufactured dimensions. But this is not an easy process. Individual pieces of the sectors travel by road from Italy to Germany and back again. In summer 2018, engineers in Cadarache noticed defects in some of the pieces when they came back from Germany. Fusion for Energy sent an official complaint to the German company, which triggered some internal investigation. As a result, two of the directors of the company (in charge of welding and quality, respectively) were fired. The challenge for Europe and Korea was to complete the manufacturing and the welding of all sectors in the tokamak pit by 2022 in order to keep the project on schedule for First Plasma (i.e. the first experiment demonstrating that the reactor is fully operational and that it all works as intended—at least with plasmas that do not produce neutrons as part of the reaction) in 2025. However, we will see in the penultimate chapter that major defects have been identified in 2022 on three sectors provided by South Korea. Carlo Sborchia, who coordinated the manufacturing of the vacuum chamber for Fusion for Energy, said: “The main challenge is that many actors are involved in the design and manufacture of this equipment. The vacuum chamber is located literally in the core of the reactor and is connected to many technical systems (magnets, cryoengineering, measuring instruments, etc.). It was therefore necessary to gather everyone involved in manufacturing the vacuum chamber to design the interfaces between the systems while meeting all the technical requirements. This was a major challenge, as the vessel design had to be finalised before knowing what exactly would be required for the fusion experiments.” I remember my 2014 visit to Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan in South Korea. This company is in charge of the Korean sectors of the vacuum vessel. It was a very impressive operation. In a rather small workshop, we were shown the vacuum vessel segments under construction. But during the lunch with managers following the visit, I realised that the Hyundai team had had almost no contact with the European teams manufacturing the other sectors. I found this quite strange since they were doing almost the same job! I raised the question but did not get a satisfactory answer. This is one of the challenges of ITER: to get companies to work together despite being reluctant to share their respective know-how. A couple of weeks later, back in Cadarache, I was told that the European and Korean teams working on the vacuum vessel were now talking to each other and working together on their common task.

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High-Tech Bricks In the tokamak, the vacuum vessel will not be directly exposed to the plasma. The inner walls of the vessel will be covered by 440 blanket modules (aka bricks) that will shield the steel vacuum vessel and the external machine components from the high-energy neutrons produced during the fusion reaction. This blanket designed to support a thermal load of 700 MW will absorb neutrons transforming their kinetic energy into heat, which will then be absorbed and carried away by water circulating behind the bricks. In future fusion power plants, this energy will be used to produce steam, and then electricity via turbines and alternators. Each brick will be about 2 tall and 1 m wide and will weigh up to 5 tonnes. There will be no less than 100 different types of brick, determined by each brick’s precise location in the vacuum chamber. As explained earlier, the blanket will also include ports for measurement, robotics and plasma-heating systems. The blanket is one of the most important and economically sensitive components since it is right next to the hot plasma and is thus on the front line for the thermal loads and neutron fluxes. Clearly, a particularly hostile environment! The bricks will be coated by a thin layer of beryllium. With unique physical properties such as a very high evaporation point and a similarly high melting point (1287 °C), this light metal will contaminate the plasma as little as possible, and absorb almost no hydrogen. Once ITER has already been operational for a few years, it has been proposed that tritium breeding modules (TBMs) will be installed in the blanket after First Plasma. These special bricks will contain lithium that can be converted into tritium when hit by a neutron. By installing and testing four prototypes scientists hope to find a way to generate tritium inside the vacuum chamber itself to fuel the fusion reaction. While deuterium can be extracted from seawater in virtually boundless quantities, only minute amounts of tritium can be found in nature. The biggest sources of tritium today are Canada Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) nuclear fission reactors that are powered by natural (unenriched) uranium and cooled using heavy water (water that contains more deuterium than normal). Today, only a few countries operate CANDU reactors. In addition to Canada, the world’s largest producer, there are active reactors in South Korea, India, Argentina, Romania and China. In this way, ITER will represent a unique opportunity to study tritiumbreeding blanket modules in a real fusion environment. Indeed since ITER will probably consume a substantial fraction of the world’s inventory of

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tritium (around 40 kg), a method of producing tritium for any future fusion power plant will be absolutely crucial. Initially, six different test modules that vary mainly in the form of lithium used (liquid or solid such as lithium lead, ceramic or metal) were going to be used in the machine. But the number of ports available for TBM experiments has been reduced from three to two, allowing space for no more than four options.4 ITER engineers will test four different technologies and select the best one. This aspect of the project is essential, as there will be no industrial development of fusion energy if we cannot achieve self-sufficiency in tritium.

The World’s Largest Magnets In ITER, the magnetic confinement of the plasma will be ensured by about 43 superconducting magnets weighing over 10,000 tonnes. This number breaks down as follows: 18 D-shaped toroidal magnets 17 m tall, each weighing 310 tonnes; 6 circular magnets 6–24 m in diameter, the heaviest weighing 400 tonnes; a central solenoid 17 tall and 4 m wide and weighing 1000 tonnes; and 18 smaller correction coils. ITER’s magnet system will be the largest and most complex ever built. It will generate a magnetic field strength of 13 T (3 million times the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field) and will concentrate a total magnetic energy of over 50 billion J.5 . Distributed around the vacuum chamber, toroidal magnets will be placed vertically and poloidal magnets horizontally (see Fig. 5.2). Whereas the toroidal and poloidal fields are static fields, the central solenoid’s field is variable; its main function consists in inducing an electrical current of several mega amperes in the plasma and controlling its mechanical equilibrium and shape. In addition, 31 nonsuperconducting coils will be fixed to the inner wall of the vessel to suppress or reduce certain types of plasma instabilities that occur on the edge of the plasma, called Edge-Localised Modes (ELMs). If not properly controlled, these instabilities can lead to violent expulsion of heat and particles, which can damage the blanket and the rest of the machine. ITER’s magnets are made of superconducting alloys—either niobium-tin (Nb3 Sn) or niobium-titanium (Nb-Ti). When cooled down to −269 °C

4

The decision taken to reduce the number of vacuum vessel ports available for tritium breeding systems from three to two implies a reduction of the number of experiments from six to four. As the tritium experiments are “owned” by individual members, each member has therefore been invited to consider either cancelling their experiment or cooperating with another one. 5 This is approximately the kinetic energy you would have if you were moving at 160,000 km/h!

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Fig. 5.2 Computerised view of the ITER magnet system, showing the D-shaped toroidal field coils (18 in total), the 6 ring-shaped horizontal poloidal field coils and the central solenoid. From ITER Organization

(4 K), close to absolute zero, the alloys exhibit their superconducting qualities meaning that electric current moves through them without any resistance. As you can imagine, the cables that form ITER’s superconducting magnets are not the kind that are commercially available (see Fig. 5.3). Each cable in the toroidal magnets is composed of about 1000 superconducting strands, each containing filaments no wider than a human hair. The strands are encased inside a stainless steel jacket 4 cm in diameter. The wires are then twisted together in a carefully designed pattern and fitted inside a stainless steel conduit or jacket. Alongside the filaments, there is space for liquid helium to flow keeping the magnets at the very low temperatures needed to ensure they work as superconductors. Helium is used because it is the only material that remains fluid at these temperatures. The cables need to be wound with an accuracy of 0.05 mm/m. Niobium-tin cables are heat treated at 650 °C in an inert atmosphere. This winding is extremely challenging because the conductors need to fit perfectly in the radial plate, a stainless steel D-shaped structure with grooves on both sides. This kind of cable called a cable-in-conduit was invented in the United States in the 1970s (both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory stake a claim to it), and is used in all tokamaks.

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Fig. 5.3 Section of a niobium-tin superconducting cable-in-conduit conductor (CICC) used for the ITER toroidal magnets, showing the cable organisation in strands and filaments. Almost 100,000 km of strands have been manufactured by nine suppliers. From National High Magnetic Field Lab

These cables are a key component of ITER’s magnet system. They are each 1 km long! This is the maximum technically feasible length that allows the minimum number of joints between superconducting strands. To entertain visitors at ITER, I used to give them a small section (half a metre long) of a superconductor cable to hold. Most would lose their balance not expecting the weight of over 10 kg! Superconducting magnets have many benefits. They are able of carrying higher currents (we are speaking here of several million amperes) and thus generate much stronger magnetic fields than their nonsuperconducting counterparts. They also consume much less electricity making them much cheaper to operate. All of this makes superconducting magnet technology the only option for ITER. The disadvantage is that these magnets must be maintained at a very low temperature. In the case of ITER, this is −269 °C. The superconducting niobium-tin alloy that are used for the toroidal coils and the central solenoid can generate very high magnetic fields but has a few disadvantages. It is more expensive to produce and much more difficult to process than the more “standard” niobium-titanium alloy. Indeed, unreacted, not-yet-superconducting niobium-tin strands must first be assembled into cables, and the cables then wound into a coil. Otherwise, the strands would be too brittle to withstand the cabling process and would lose their superconducting properties. Finally, the coil must be heat-treated at about 650 °C for several days to make it superconducting through a complex chemical process. The niobium-tin compound was discovered as a superconductor alloy in 1954, eight years before the discovery of niobium-titanium. However, the latter was used for the construction of the CERN’s largest accelerator, the

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Large Hadron Collider,6 due to its greater availability, higher ductility and excellent electrical and mechanical properties. Even if it is more complicated to produce, there has been a renewed interest for niobium-tin in recent years since it can produce stronger magnetic fields. In total, nine suppliers in six countries have produced close to 500 tonnes of niobium-tin strands for ITER representing a total length of almost 100,000 km—more than twice the circumference of the Earth. This has increased world annual production from 15 to 100 tonnes and enabled three new suppliers to enter the global market. Toroidal and poloidal magnets consist of several kilometres of cables-inconduit made rigid and insulated by an epoxy polymer resin and compacted into large “pancakes.” Assembled two by two as double pancakes, they are stacked to form “winding packs” that are encased in large stainless steel structures. ITER’s magnets account for a quarter of the total weight of the machine. The central solenoid is another key component of the machine, as it will act as the backbone of the tokamak. It will consist of six separate coils made of niobium-tin superconducting cables and will be one of the most complex and powerful superconducting magnets ever built. The function of the central solenoid will be to induce a large electric current in the plasma, which will in turn create a powerful magnetic field that will contribute to confining the plasma. As we have seen, the current will also help with heating. Were this thermal (ohmic) heating the only source of heat, the plasma would reach a temperature of about 20 million °C. Although this is a lot, it is insufficient to induce fusion reactions. Examining the magnets gives a good idea of the kind of the problems ITER’s engineers have had to face. Europe is manufacturing ten of the toroidal coils, and Japan produced eight plus one spare; the poloidal coils were supplied by Europe (four), Russia and China (one each); and the central solenoid is being produced by the United States. The companies involved have been given very detailed technical specifications to ensure that the magnets are compatible if not identical. Interestingly, to ensure that the stainless steel is of the same chemical composition for all the magnets, irrespective of their origin, all the manufacturers decided among themselves to use the same supplier, a company located in Le Creusot, France (Fig. 5.4). With the benefit of hindsight Arnaud Devred, who coordinated the manufacturing of superconducting magnets for the ITER Organization until 2017, 6

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It first started up on September 10, 2008, and consists of a 27 km ring of thousands of superconducting magnets and a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way.

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Fig. 5.4 ITER’s first toroidal magnet was produced in Italy by ASG Superconductors. This is one of the world’s largest magnets with a height of 17 m. From ITER Organization

recognises that the difficulties he faced had more to do with management and logistics than they were technical. He later took the lessons learned from his experience to CERN, where he is now the team leader for magnets, cryostats and superconductors. “When we started in 2007, there was no precedent to work from,” he told me. “For example, there was no template for a procurement agreement, and we had to be quite creative in making one (which then served as a model for all the subsequent agreements). With six of the seven ITER members producing cables, we also had to make sure that each manufacturer used the same procedures and quality assurance, which was no mean feat. In particular, it was difficult to obtain the famous ‘CE marking,’ which certifies that a product conforms to the health, safety and environmental protection standards that apply in Europe (actually the European Economic Area). At this point, quality assurance is still a major concern. Several Domestic Agencies have complained that the ITER Organization imposes criteria that are too strict, leading to additional manufacturing costs; however, in general, the procurement contracts are very clear and precise on this subject and specify in detail the rules to follow and the standards to conform to. This leads to lengthy and cumbersome negotiations, and Project

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Change Requests (PCRs), which allow the agencies to recover part of the cost incurred by conforming to the regulations. In the end, there are also logistical difficulties, as we work with 23 manufacturers for the conductors alone and about 150 intermediaries. In fact, no less than 1000 people are involved in the production of ITER’s magnets worldwide. Another hassle is storage; kilometres of conductors were produced well before the magnet manufacturers were ready to use them. As a result, hundreds of tonnes of cables had to be stored in several places all over the world.”

The Fusion Ashtray Positioned at the bottom of the vacuum vessel, the divertor is yet another essential element of ITER. Its main task is to remove the helium produced by the fusion reaction and impurities in the chamber mostly released by the inner walls minimising plasma contamination. The divertor will also extract some of the heat produced by the fusion reaction—up to 20 MW per m2 , a heat load 10 times higher than that on a spacecraft reentering the Earth’s atmosphere. As in the case with the divertor, some of the plasma actually touches the wall where its surface will reach a temperature of almost 2000 °C. To carry away the huge heat load and prevent the material from being melted or vaporised, pressurised water will flow just a few millimetres below the surface. The water will reach a temperature of about 200 °C. This means a very steep temperature gradient that will result in significant expansion and mechanical stress on the components. Composed of 54 W-shaped cassettes that slot together to form a circle ITER’s divertor will act literally as a giant nuclear ashtray. Subject to intense flows of high-speed particles, it is a real challenge for materials science and engineering. The divertor will be placed in a position where the magnetic field strength is almost zero. As a result, particles will leave the plasma, flow along the magnetic field lines, and then naturally “fall” into the ashtray hitting the cassettes and passing through to the outside of the reactor. The cassettes will also contain a number of measurement tools for plasma control and physics optimisation. Up to 2009, the ITER Organization was considering covering those parts of the divertor expected to receive the highest heat loads with carbon fibre composites (CFC) at the commencement of plasma operation. However, in 2011, as a result of budget restrictions, Director General Motojima decided

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to explore the possibility of using tungsten instead (which, coincidentally, has the chemical symbol W), a metal known for its very high refractivity and for being cheaper than carbon fibres. Carbon fibres present two major drawbacks as divertor armour material: they chemically react with tritium, and they trap the fuel like a sponge, leading to enhanced material erosion and unacceptable levels of tritium retention within the machine. Tungsten has the advantage of not absorbing tritium, but at the same time, it doesn’t offer the same forgiving behaviour as carbon in terms of compatibility with the plasma. However, it is more stable since it has the highest melting point of all the elements (3422 °C). As a consequence, instead of the divertor being replaced twice during the life span of the tokamak, it would only need to be replaced once if it was made of tungsten representing a substantial saving. Tungsten will also ensure that as few metal atoms as possible are released and pollute the plasma as a result of the interaction of shields of this material and the intense plasma flow, which occurs directly in the chamber area. According to ITER scientists, tungsten impurities will be kept below 0.005% of the total plasma volume. However, it was necessary to ensure that the tungsten divertor would resist the first test campaigns planned for ITER that would use helium gas. After almost two years of design, research, testing and prototype development work carried out by several international expert groups; in 2013, the ITER Council gave the green light for the production of a tungsten divertor. At the end of 2016, Tore Supra, the French tokamak (and ITER’s neighbour), was equipped with a tungsten divertor to test the ITER Organization’s conclusion under real conditions. These experiments confirmed that tungsten was the right choice. Incidentally, in doing so, the CEA management offered a second life to Tore Supra. Renamed WEST—Tungsten (W) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak—its raison d’être is now to test technologies that will be used in ITER. All this work will soon take shape in the form of 54 tungsten-covered cassettes weighing 10 tonnes each that will together make the world’s largest ashtray. It is planned that each cassette will be replaced once during the operational phase using remote-handling tools specially designed for ITER.

A Giant Refrigerator The ITER tokamak will not reside alone in its building since it will be enclosed within a kind of giant thermos flask, a huge cylindrical cryostat, that will provide structural support to the tokamak, and ensure that the

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superconducting magnets are insulated by an ultra-cool and high-vacuum environment. ITER’s cryostat will be among the world’s largest stainless steel vacuum chambers at almost 30 m high and 30 m wide. The size of the cryostat directly reflects the size of the tokamak as it will encase the whole reactor, including all its magnets. The base section of the cryostat weighs 1250 tonnes making it the heaviest single component of the machine (see Fig. 5.5). This giant structure will have 23 openings to allow access for maintenance and over 200 other apertures—some as large as 4 m in size—that will provide access for cooling systems, magnet feeders, auxiliary heating, diagnostics and the removal of blanket sections and parts of the divertor. Large bellows situated between the cryostat and the vacuum vessel will allow for thermal contraction and expansion by as much as 5 cm in the structures during operation! Indeed, the ITER tokamak will be a structure inundated with movement, expansion and contraction under the influence of magnetic fields and temperature changes. For example, when the toroidal magnets cool down from room temperature to −269 °C, they will shrink by 3 cm! To allow for the horizontal and rotational forces generated by the movement of the tokamak, 18 spherical bearings will support the cryostat. Weighing 5 tonnes each, the bearings will act like ball-and-socket joints and

Fig. 5.5 The lower cylinder of the ITER cryostat gives a good sense of the real size of the fusion reactor. The complete structure will be 30 m high. It now rests on the cryostat base (weighing 1250 tonnes) which is the single heaviest piece of the ITER machine. From ITER Organization

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will smoothly transfer the immense forces exerted on the machine to the ground both during normal operation and in exceptional events such as an earthquake. The cryostat has been manufactured in India and supplied in 54 segments transported by boat and then as wide loads on roads. Since September 2016, on-site welding has been taking place on the cryostat supervised by the Indian Domestic Agency. A leak inside the cryostat is now considered by the ITER Organization as the most serious risk for delaying First Plasma (besides delayed in-cash contribution by some ITER members or delayed manufacturing/delivery due to budgetary or quality problems in some members). The cryostat will also host a number of supporting systems such as heating, diagnostics and fuelling. In addition to the central heating induced by the central solenoid, the tokamak will use two other systems to bring the plasma up to the temperature needed for fusion: a neutral beam injector (consisting in high-energy neutral particles that will enter the magnetic confinement field and transfer most of their energy by collisions to the plasma particles), and two sources of high-frequency electromagnetic waves. I hope that this quick overview of the ITER tokamak has given you an idea of the technological challenges that the ITER designers and engineers have had to face—and are still facing. Some of these challenges are not completely new as they have already been tackled in other tokamaks. However, at ITER, the size and complexity of the machine impose constraints on technology and challenges for industry. With approximately 1 million components, ITER will be one of the most complex machines ever built by humankind. However, tokamak engineers are far from reaching the end of their troubles. ITER will be an important step towards commercial reactors since it should break new ground and be able to test many technologies under the conditions of a real fusion plant. But ITER is just the beginning of the fusion energy story—not the end. The economic feasibility of tokamaks has yet to be demonstrated.

A Pharaonic Worksite Construction started in earnest on the ITER site in Cadarache in 2010, the year the ITER Organization signed one of its largest procurement packages (EUR537 million) with the European Domestic Agency—Fusion for Energy (F4E)—for the construction of 12 buildings and site infrastructure. Fusion

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for Energy is located in Barcelona with about 500 staff and manages the EU contribution to ITER. When I started working in Cadarache in April 2011, work on-site was regularly interrupted by emergency sirens and explosions. This contrasted wildly with the quiet atmosphere of offices I was used to. Building construction had started, and massive excavation works were underway on the 42 ha platform. Explosives were blasting away rock at an average rate of 4000 m3 per day. Bulldozers and dump trucks were working full speed ahead. The excavation work was massive, lasted 8 months, and created a pit 90 × 130 m wide (roughly the size of a soccer pitch) and 17 m deep. This meant that about 210,000 m3 of Earth and stones that had to be moved (behind a hill on the southeast side of the site). The pit is now host to the tokamak complex composed of three buildings hosting the reactor, the tritium storage facility, and the diagnostics facility. Interestingly, the excavation led to a number of archaeological findings such as a fifth-century cemetery and an eighteenth-century glass factory. Today’s visitors hold their breath when they see this huge worksite for the first time. This is quite understandable since ITER is currently one of the largest worksites in Europe in terms of surface area, volume, and cost of construction. If you drive on the D952 departmental road that leads to ITER, you will not see much since the road is lower than the worksite. Even at the roundabout where you can turn and enter the headquarters of the ITER Organization, you will see only a few cranes and the roof of the tokamak building. Until 2014, there was no signage or information on the roads or at the site entrance. ITER was invisible. This is why one of my first initiatives in Cadarache was to ask the local authorities to install signage on the neighbouring roads, on the A51 motorway some 10 km away, and an explanatory panel at the ITER entrance. A few weeks later, I received the US Ambassador at the ITER site and his first words were: “I decided to come today because my friends told me that there are secret things going on here.” In fact, even though a lot of information about ITER is already in the public domain, generally speaking, the project is still largely unknown (even in Provence). We will come back to these communication issues in the final chapters. The topology of the site does not help in this regard, and the fact that ITER is a nuclear facility (thus normally closed to the public) is also a (genuine) barrier. As it stands, few people know that France’s regional and departmental governments have invested nearly half a billion euros in ITER on top of several major in-kind contributions that I am going to describe in the following pages. In total, France’s contribution to ITER represents 20%

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of the European Union’s funding of the project, which greatly facilitated the establishment of the ITER Organization in Provence.

Constructions Worth EUR2 Billion Between 2007 and 2010, France paid for and carried out major preparatory works in the Cadarache forest to allow the construction of 39 buildings. The first trucks and diggers arrived on-site in 2007 soon after the ITER Agreement was ratified. Agence ITER France, a department created within the CEA to manage France’s in-kind and financial contributions to ITER, led two years of preparatory works such as clearing, levelling, fencing and installing networks for water and electricity. They created a space of 42 ha (about 50 soccer pitches), one of the largest areas ever levelled in Europe, to host all the buildings. Within this space, there is also a “contractor area” extensive enough for 1000 employees to work in and a complete selection of equipment and services such as meeting rooms and canteen. This work was part of the commitments undertaken by France (the host country) and Europe (the host partner). They amounted to a total cost of EUR150 million, 40% of which came from Fusion for Energy and 60% from Agence ITER France. This preparatory work left a bitter taste in the mouth of the local population who did not appreciate the destruction of centuries-old oak trees. However, Claude Cheilan, the Mayor of Vinon-sur-Verdon, puts into perspective the local opposition and acts as the voice of the silent majority: “So few areas gain this type of economic development that it would be stupid to bite the hand that feeds you.”7 As the project owner for the preparatory work, the CEA was required by French law to compensate for the devastation of this wooded part of the Cadarache forest. Thus, the CEA took a series of measures including the acquisition and preservation of 480 ha of forest, ecological surveying and preserving of 1200 ha of ground around the ITER site, and a programme (particularly targeting schoolchildren) to raise awareness on biodiversity. Today, experts in the field refer to this innovative environmental programme as a model compensation initiative.8 Alongside Fusion for Energy, France, also financed the construction of the ITER Organization’s headquarters. It used to be the most photographed building of the site, as it is the only one that is wholly visible from the 7 8

Arnoult [3]. Mercier and Brunengo-Basso [4].

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road. The building was designed by two architects native to Provence: Rudy Ricciotti and Laurent Bonhomme. In order to minimise its visual impact on the landscape, they designed a building that was long rather than high. With only four floors, it can accommodate over 800 people. It has about 20 meeting rooms, an amphitheatre with 500 seats, a library, a restaurant and a virtual reality room. Extended by 3500 m2 in 2014 to cope with an increase in staff, the building is now over 200 m long. The vertical sunshades on the northwest façade create a striking visual effect. Because of budget restrictions, Rudy Ricciotti only put sunshades on one side of the building. He opted for the northwest façade as the side most visible from the road. However, this side of the building doesn’t receive any direct sunlight rendering the blinds useless! The electricity supply to operate the facility is another contribution arranged and paid for by France. In 2012, RTE (Réseau de transport d’électricité), the French electricity transmission system operator, installed a 3 km high voltage (400 kV) line and a switchyard to connect ITER to the grid. With nearly 105,000 km of lines, RTE’s grid is the largest in Europe. Electricity is channelled from a giant switchyard located to the west of Avignon in Tavel (famous for its rosé wine). From Tavel, electricity travels 125 km to a large substation in the village of Boutre, some 3 km southeast of the ITER platform. The 400 kV Boutre-Tavel power line also supplies electricity to the vast Provence area including since the late 1980s CEAEURATOM’s Tore Supra. The main electricity consumers at ITER will be the tokamak-cooling water system (using 40% of the net plant power drain, i.e. the total electrical power required by the plant), followed by the cryoplant (30%), and the building services and the tritium plant (10% each). Ironically, the ITER fusion reactor will be powered by nuclear fission reactors in the Rhône valley. France also set up 36 km of hydraulic networks to connect ITER to the French sewerage system including a huge storm basin and four water-cooling test basins. Some of the pipes are over 1.5 m wide! Part of this network will be used by the pressurised tokamak-cooling water that circulates through the reactor. The aim is to remove the heat load from the vacuum vessel, its plasma-facing components and plant systems such as heating and power. The water will circulate through a cascade of cooling loops to the heat rejection zone located on the northern edge of the site where it will be cooled through evaporation in cooling towers and test basins. The towers have been manufactured in India. After water has spent some time in the basins, it will be tested for various parameters such as temperature (water cannot be released until it has cooled to 30 °C), pH level, and the presence of hydrocarbons,

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chlorides, sulphates and tritium. Only water that meets the stringent environmental release criteria established by local authorities can then be released into the nearby Durance River. Cooling water will be taken directly from the Canal de Provence, an artificial network of channels a few kilometres distant from ITER that delivers drinking water to more than 2 million people in 110 villages and towns including Marseille, as well as 6000 farms and 500 factories large and small. The network is the result of a vast hydroelectric development programme that was undertaken in the late 1950s providing the Durance and Verdon rivers with powerful dams, huge water reservoirs and wide canals. Like other projects in Cadarache, ITER will draw water from the Canal. Cooling the machine will require some 1.7 million m3 of water a year, two-thirds of which will evaporate and one-third of which will be returned to the Durance River. Altogether ITER’s consumption will account for less than 0.25% of the 230 million m3 that flow through the Canal every year.

A New Scientific Village From the laying of the first foundation, stone construction work was rapid and Fusion for Energy quickly took over from the French government. So far, over some thousands of contracts have been signed with EU companies to carry out the construction work, provide equipment for the buildings and undertake the manufacturing work that had been assigned to Europe. This represented over 260 million working hours and a total investment of over EUR6 billion for the period 2008–2019.9 The biggest financial commitment concerned the TB04 contract (Tender Batch No. 4) for provision of the mechanical and electrical equipment of nearly all buildings on the site (for a value of EUR530 million at the time of its signature). The contract was won by the French Engie Group (formerly GDF Suez) and the German M + W Group. Another large contract was TB03 covering civil engineering work for the tokamak complex, 11 other buildings and some other structures such as bridges (valued at EUR300 million at the time of its signature10 ). This contract was won by a French-Spanish consortium composed of Vinci, Razel-Bec and Ferrovial Agroman. Given the complexity of the work required and the risks associated with such a major project as ITER, participating companies (even those of large 9

European Commission [5]. Following many amendments and technical modifications, the value of this contract has more than doubled.

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size) often prefer to respond to calls for tenders as a consortium or together with other partners in order to offer more flexibility, resources and know-how. It is also the most effective way to develop a long-term working relationship and implement the multicultural approach that is required to deal with the Tower of Babel that is the ITER Organization. This was particularly the case in the field of engineering, with the creation of a French-EnglishSpanish consortium called Engage that brought together the companies Egis, Assystem, Atkins and Empresarios. Engage works as the architect engineer for Fusion for Energy11 . Similarly, a French-English-Korean consortium called Momentum won one of the main contracts to assemble the tokamak itself from the multitude of components arriving from the four corners of the globe. Today (mid 2023), around 700 companies (80% of them French) and close to 5000 people work on the ITER site making it one of Europe’s largest worksites. Fusion for Energy is responsible for placing the construction contracts, the total value of which was initially estimated at over EUR2 billion. The first stage of construction and installation work should be finished before 2025 (now likely to be around 2030) in order to complete commissioning and achieve First Plasma. Some buildings and installations will have to be finalised later (initially between 2025 and 2035) to allow the start of operation with D-T plasmas. Laurent Schmieder, the Project Team Leader of the Buildings Infrastructure and Power Supplies project for ITER and belonging to Fusion for Energy, coordinates all the construction taking place on-site. This is not his first worksite, as he previously worked for CEA in Polynesia and Siberia and participated in the construction of the Laser Mégajoule near Bordeaux. But the challenges of ITER’s construction surpass everything he has seen before. “At the beginning of construction,” he explained to me during an interview on July 10, 2017, “the main difficulties were related to the absence of a finalised design for the reactor. As a result, almost every day brought changes to the design of the tokamak, and by extension, its technical buildings. From my arrival in 2009, I repeatedly urged the scientists to freeze the design and interfaces of the reactor, but it took six years for this to happen. The result: during these first years, we used to receive approval for the construction plans from the ITER Organization only a few weeks before the start of work, making it impossible to do any long-term planning and make real progress on construction. Now, we have a better grasp of the timetable. Even 11 The architect engineer assists Fusion for Energy during the entire construction process from the elaboration of the detailed design to the final acceptance of the work including the ITER buildings, the site infrastructure and the distribution of power supplies.

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though we are building the fifth level of the tokamak building, we have already signed the plans for the seventh one. Each day brings its share of challenges and issues to address. But we have also achieved a lot of successes. Like the day in September 2015, when we lifted the 730 tonne roof of the assembly hall to a height of 60 m as a single piece. Under the watchful eye of 25 engineers and support staff, we used 22 hydraulic jacks, all connected to six hydraulic pumps, to carefully lift the roof from the ground. It took 16 h to be completed! Then the structure, measuring 60 long and 25 m wide, had to be precisely fixed on the 22 vertical pillars, with a tolerance of only 2 cm on each side. And it worked! Only 4 plates out of 66 could not be bolted immediately and were corrected in the following days.” This achievement was confirmed by the building tests performed in December 2017 when the two overhead building bridges were brought into operation. Together the two cranes are capable of handling 1500 tonnes— or the equivalent of four Boeing 747s fully loaded with passengers and fuel. The building behaved in exactly the same way as provided for by engineering studies. For a single structure specifically designed for ITER, this result is quite remarkable. Cadarache has become a genuine scientific and international commune. When experiments are scheduled to end in 2047, there should be at least 1000 people working there on a permanent basis. Some 30 nationalities are already represented among the staff. Even though there is no accommodation on the site, ITER still provides almost all the daily necessities such as a cafeteria, canteen, library, recreational space and even a bank. Employees are also helped with things like taking their car to a garage, arranging housekeeping and babysitting, and contacting plumbers, electricians and travel agents. Moreover, a commune also means a social life: you can see Chinese employees playing pétanque in Manosque, German physicists giving fusion lectures in the thermal spa of Gréoux-les-Bains and Koreans attending dance courses in Aix-en-Provence…

References 1. Clery D (2013) A piece of the Sun: the quest for fusion energy. Duckworth Overlook, New York, p 241 2. Wagner F (2017) The history of research into improved confinement regimes. Eur Phys J H

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3. Arnoult D (2010) Dans les communes proches du siège d’ITER, l’euphorie a cédé la place au doute. Le Monde. http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2010/ 05/12/dans-les-communes-proches-du-siege-d-iter-l-euphorie-a-cede-la-place-audoute_1350249_3244.html#k4tSr8IAfGbxHhFw.99 4. Mercier V, Brunengo-Basso S (2016) Compensation écologique: De l’expérience d’ITER à la recherche d’un modèle. Presses Universitaires d’Aix-Marseille, Aixen-Provence 5. European Commission (2021) Follow up study on the economic benefits of ITER and BA projects to EU industry. https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-det ail/-/publication/3db11048-6a89-11eb-aeb5-01aa75ed71a1/language-en?WT_ mc_id=Searchresult&WT_ria_c=37085&WT_ria_f=3608&WT_ria_ev=search

6 A Machine Manufactured in Thirty-Five Countries

Abstract The ITER project’s founding fathers decided to divide the tokamak’s manufacture among the 35 participating countries. A total of 1 million components comprising 10 million pieces are converging to Cadarache in France. In this chapter, we will look at how all these parts interconnect in assembly. This is another logistics challenge with thousands of annual deliveries and millions of coded products stored in facilities both on-site and off-site. Something that couldn’t be done without a sophisticated materials management system. ITER will be the world’s largest technology puzzle! On June 27, 2016, the ITER Organization signed a major contract to provide assistance for the assembly of the tokamak and related systems. Under this contract, worth EUR174 million, a consortium of three companies (from the UK, France and Korea) is overseeing and coordinating the assembly activities, whether carried out by the ITER Organization or by subcontractors of the Domestic Agencies of the ITER members. The consortium is working with the ITER Organization to plan, manage and supervise the work on-site. In particular, the consortium is tasked with ensuring that all the different work crews are able to work as efficiently as possible in handling the million components, drawings, documents and facilities involved in constructing the ITER Tokamak and plant systems to the highest quality, on time and within cost. Transport is yet another challenge within the challenge since around 10,000 shipments of many kinds (road, rail, inland waterways, maritime and air) are bringing ITER components on-site. Of these shipments, 270 heavy exceptional loads are foreseen to deliver the very large components of ITER. They are using a huge 352-wheeled platform (46 m long and 9 m wide) © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_6

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that takes at least three nights to cover the 104 km ITER itinerary from the Mediterranean Sea to Cadarache. The nerve centre of all these transport operations is located near Marseille where a performant control room with state-of-the-art technology allows technical staff to track the movements of every component shipped by the ITER Domestic Agencies to the ITER site. Keywords ITER · Assembly · Transport · Logistics Why make things simple when they can be complicated? When the project’s founding fathers decided to divide the tokamak’s manufacture among the 35 participating countries, they were acting in the spirit of collaborative education but they were also acting in their own interests. The main purpose of ITER is indeed to enable the participating countries to learn and develop the most advanced fusion technologies together and to share the experimental results and any intellectual property that will be generated by the project since the project is funded by public money. However, there is the secondary aim for members to support the development of their respective fusion industries. This is why the decision was taken in 2001 to decentralise manufacture of the machine. Presumably, they were not aware at the time that this task would be much more complicated than they had imagined. At present, ITER is being assembled but it exists also in the form of an electronic “package” over 2 TB (two thousand billion bytes) in size containing the detailed plans of the machine and buildings. To avoid a catastrophic loss, these plans are saved every night on ITER’s 3000 computers and 600 servers. It took almost 20 years for 100 designers to finalise these detailed threedimensional (3D) models that can be viewed through specialised software (CATIA, developed by Dassault Syst`emes). The designers constantly improve and update the 3D models working closely with the ITER Organization’s technical departments. In the early 2000s, these models were sufficiently precise that the “value” of construction and manufacturing could be estimated and each member’s contribution in 2001 could be established. With the exception of Europe, which provides 45.6% of the value of construction and manufacturing, each member contributes 9.1% of ITER’s total value. After the project started in 2007, difficulties quickly appeared as a result of scientists and engineers proposing modifications to certain elements to improve ITER’s performance. However, in some cases modifying a component or a system necessitated changes in other parts of the machine, sometimes even in other buildings. The experts speak in these cases of “nonconformities” or “physical incompatibilities.” In some cases, the departments

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concerned refused the changes for technical reasons; in others, the Domestic Agencies in charge declined to bear the additional costs refusing to take responsibility for these changes or corrections. As a consequence, the list of Project Change Requests awaiting decision has been steadily growing since construction started in 2010. This explains a good part of the delays that have accumulated over the years. It could be argued that such delays started at the very beginning since the very first schedule from 1993 anticipated that the machine would be ready in 2010.

A High-Tech Meccano The division of procurements needed for ITER was decided in 2001 during the negotiations before the ITER Agreement was signed taking into account each member’s expectations and technical and industrial capabilities. Therefore, through the ITER Council, it was the members themselves who distributed the work, but they pushed this logic to its extremes. For example, the manufacture of key systems was distributed across several members: Europe and Korea share the nine segments of the vacuum chamber; the central solenoid is the responsibility of the United States and Japan; Europe, Russia and Japan are collaborating on the divertor; India and the United States share responsibility for the water cooling system; the manufacture of blanket modules is distributed among China, Europe, Korea, Russia and the United States; and six of the seven members have been involved in the production of superconducting cables and magnets. The ITER Organization, the design authority and coordinator of the whole programme, has placed over 100 procurement arrangements with the Domestic Agencies representing more than 90% of the total value of the machine and buildings. These agencies have in turn launched calls for tenders to their respective industries, resulting in over 3000 design and manufacturing contracts signed so far. In Europe, in Asia, on the American continent, thousands of factories are working at full speed to build the world’s largest Meccano set with more than 10 million parts. Since the first deliveries arrived on-site in the third quarter of 2014 the pace has intensified substantially with several trucks arriving on-site every day bearing the fruits of many different factories’ labour. There are often deliveries that are highly unusual in size, weight or shape delivering the largest parts of the tokamak and the technical

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systems. The ITER Organization’s Director General announced on October 11, 2018, that “All the main components of ITER will be on-site in 2021.”1 The complexity of such an operation is clear for all to see; all these components, some of which have to be strictly identical despite being manufactured in different countries, have to arrive in France in full conformity with the technical specifications and compliance with the necessary standards and requirements. There is no room for error. For some components, tolerances are less than a millimetre. The consequences of this are, first, that the technical specifications had to be drafted with the utmost accuracy and, second, that quality assurance and quality control are key elements of the project. A whole department of the ITER Organization is dedicated to these issues. The terms of reference are clearly specified in the procurement and tender specifications. The ITER Organization is also responsible for the evaluation and selection of the subcontractors and for the inspection and verification of components produced under the responsibility of the Domestic Agencies. Every week several employees of the organisation leave Cadarache to visit companies in the seven members to verify that product requirements are conformed with and quality procedures are fulfilled. The inspection may also include performance testing during manufacturing. If everything goes as planned a conformity report is signed, then an interim payment will generally be made to the manufacturer. In most cases, ITER’s components are high-tech objects with very precise specifications. The safety–critical components are subject to particularly strict controls. In addition to the company’s own quality control procedures, progress is regularly reviewed by representatives of the corresponding Domestic Agency, the ITER Organization and external experts. ASN2 inspectors may also travel abroad to check manufacture of the most sensitive elements.3 Participating in ITER imposes severe constraints on the companies involved, which their staff are keen to underline when they meet the project’s senior management. This is a fair reaction. The first-of-a-kind nature of ITER and the risks posed by the tight schedule and technological requirements create genuine challenges for the companies taking part as well as ITER’s management. The conditions of their contracts require them to take a significant technical and financial risk. Most contractors have to cope 1

GCR Staff [1]. ASN (Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire) is the French nuclear safety authority. 3 The first visit outside France took place on December 19, 2013: ASN inspectors visited an Italian enterprise involved in the vacuum vessel manufacturing https://www.asn.fr/Informer/Actualites/ITERpremiere-inspection-sur-le-site-d-un-fournisseur-etranger. 2

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with unforeseen events and last-minute changes. Working in an international context adds additional complexity. However, in one-on-one meetings the businesses involved in ITER generally acknowledge that the benefit is considerable, probably less in terms of immediate profit than in terms of the company’s development. By manufacturing parts of the machine, a business that has won a public tender for ITER becomes well-placed to develop its technological and methodological know-how and boost its international reputation. These will be precious assets that can be deployed in other projects or when fusion becomes a commercial reality. ITER therefore builds bridges and creates new links between the organisation, the seven members, and the businesses involved, even though several thousand kilometres may separate them geographically. Beyond professional relationships, the project fosters trust and friendship between the members of the “ITER family” (i.e. people working in Cadarache, China, Europe, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States). The programme is clearly an investment in the present and the future. Hubert Labourdette, the Vice-President of Assystem, compares ITER with the European Union’s famous Erasmus student exchange programme. Taking part in ITER was a strategic and beneficial decision for his company: “It is a wonderful melting pot for the development of high-performance engineering and the emergence of companies capable of managing complex international projects. This is done collectively, at both company and employee level, where it represents a sort of Erasmus programme, allowing them to immerse themselves in another country, acquire a high level of expertise and discover other cultures, including professional cultures.”

The World’s Biggest Puzzle A paradox of the ITER programme is that one of the most visible and anticipated activities (namely, assembly of the reactor itself ) has long been one of the most discreet and underestimated. With a budget largely under evaluated in the ITER Organization’s forecasts until 2015, assembly of the machine was missing from the agendas of senior management meetings, and when it was on the agenda the directors would either quickly move on to the next point or say that there was not enough time for a substantive technical discussion. I found this so puzzling that I ended up drawing a parallel between the assembly of a fusion reactor and the dismantling of a fission reactor, which

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are incomparable at first glance. In most developed countries the decommissioning of nuclear power plants remains a very sensitive and political issue, although very technical in nature. The crux is of course the budget. Why is this part of technological projects not taken more seriously? In ITER’s case, the reason is quite simply that the Director General focussed on and prioritised the most critical and pressing problems until 2015. “Assembly is for the future,” we were often told, a response that could be interpreted as either “we are not there yet” or “there are more urgent things to do.” However, experts appreciate good planning and preparation. As Ken Blackler, then Head of Assembly in the ITER Organization, used to say, “The efficiency of the assembly process will depend on the quality of the upstream work.” The point is that ITER is now in a critical phase. ITER’s engineers and hundreds of businesses are now building their gigantic jigsaw puzzle. In parallel with this, they will install plant systems such as radio frequency heating, fuel cycle, cooling water and high-voltage electrical systems. So, any mistake or missing item in planning the plant’s assembly will impact the overall project schedule. And everybody recalls the words of the previous Director General in 2015: “One day of delay means an extra cost of one million euros.” Much like rockets, interplanetary probes and medical imaging ITER is based on state-of-the-art technology that is constantly evolving and improving. After all, magnetic confinement, cryogenic pumps, superconducting coils and vacuum vessels are not new. However, ITER pushes its technology to the limit. The people who promoted ITER used to say that the reason the technology will innovate for it is because the project is the first of its kind. Actually, ITER innovates by its sheer size. The machine’s complexity is unparalleled made as it is from about 10 million parts produced in 35 countries. The precision required and tiny tolerances allowed are particularly demanding. Moreover, this is but one of ITER’s many challenges. Once delivered to the site—another logistical challenge (as we will see)— the components will be assembled in predetermined sequences. The accurate alignment of components is essential to successful operation of the machine. For example, the 17 m high toroidal magnets have to be positioned within a tolerance of 1 mm. Assembly sequences have been planned with this in mind. The first components arrived on-site in 2013 seven years before the start of assembly. At the time of their arrival they were inspected and assigned a location in one of ITER’s five storage areas. This is another logistical challenge. With thousands of annual deliveries and millions of coded products

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stored in facilities both on-site and off-site, a sophisticated materials management system is essential. In principle, components should arrive on-site a minimum of 90 days before they are needed to allow time for proper labelling and storage. The ITER Organization has developed a centralised system that collects product information from the seven Domestic Agencies and is linked to other databases. Without it, it would be like finding a needle in a technology haystack! The order and timing of the assembly from now to the start of operation have been carefully considered in an assembly plan that—for the tokamak alone—is over 40,000 lines long and describes in detail almost hour by hour, the sequence of operations to be carried out. These activities will require 1.5 million person-hours over five years and approximately 1000 workers. On June 27, 2016, the ITER Organization signed a major contract to provide assistance for the assembly of the tokamak and related systems. Under this contract, worth EUR174 million, a consortium of three companies (Wood from the UK, as system from France and Kepco from Korea) will oversee and coordinate, as the construction manager as agent (CMA), the assembly activities whether carried out by the ITER Organization or by subcontractors of the Domestic Agencies of ITER members. The consortium is working with the ITER Organization to plan, manage and supervise the work on-site helping in particular to ensure that all the different work crews are able to work as efficiently as possible in handling the million components, drawings, documents and facilities to construct the ITER Tokamak and plant systems to a high quality, on-time and within cost.

The Assembly Heart The ITER tokamak will probably be the most complex machine ever built. The size and weight of the major components, tiny tolerances, careful handling required for the assembly of huge and unique systems, diversity of manufacturers, tight schedule, management of the components on-site … all these elements combine to make ITER an engineering and logistical challenge of enormous proportions. Unsurprisingly, assembly of the tokamak and its systems is also a huge challenge for the project managers. After some time and several false starts the ITER Organization decided to regroup the assembly contracts into three categories: assembly of the tokamak itself, installation of technical subsystems and electrical integration of both elements. Principal assembly activities are performed in the tokamak building, where the reactor is being installed inside a 3.2 m-thick concrete bioshield that is

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partially underground. During assembly, the tokamak building is operated as a “clean area” and maintained at a constant temperature to avoid the largest components growing or shrinking. Preassembly activities are taking place in the adjacent assembly hall whose atmosphere is monitored in such a way as to maintain a uniform temperature of between 20 and 25 °C in the summer and a relative humidity of less than 70%. The heating, ventilation and airconditioning system and the antidust coating on the floor will help guarantee the air quality required to assemble the components of the vacuum chamber. All in all over 100 different types of custom tools are required to assemble, lift and finally manoeuver ITER’s supersized components. These tools have been installed in the assembly hall. Assembly is proceeding in a “bottom-up” fashion (see also Chap. 17). It began with the base section of the cryostat, continuing with the lower cryostat components and magnets, the nine large pre-assembled sectors of the tokamak (each made up of a vacuum vessel sector, its surrounding thermal shields and two toroidal field coils), and finally components at the top of the machine, including two poloidal field coils and the top lid of the cryostat. Engineers need to precisely align the tokamak’s critical elements, especially the magnets and components of the vacuum vessel, for it to function optimally. Assembly tolerances for many of the machine’s largest components are on the order of 1–3 mm! Optical metrology techniques are used at each stage of the assembly process. These three-dimensional controls play an essential role in ensuring that tolerances are respected. Engineers are also verifying in real time, thanks to computer-aided design (CAD) models, the tokamak’s compliance with the detailed drawings of the machine and buildings. This allows them to correct any errors in alignment before fixing the components in place. During my discussion with the late Ken Blackler on July 24, 2017, I found him much more serene than three years earlier. “We have now a real strategy for the assembly of the tokamak and the technical systems. It is true that until the arrival of Mr Bigot, we did not have a clear vision. Thanks to the CMA contract, we have now integrated the expertise of the industry into the assembly activities. We are no longer willing to do the work alone, which is a good thing. We also have sufficient information to establish a realistic schedule and a precise budget estimate for the complete assembly (the cost of which exceeds one billion euros). At present, approximately 10% of the elements of the technical systems have arrived in Cadarache and are stored in one of the five dedicated buildings. Almost no parts of the tokamak have been delivered so far. The assembly operations are divided into three areas: the tokamak, the nuclear buildings and the rest. For each of these areas, an

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assembly team, set up by the ITER Organization, brings together employees of the CMA contract (for on-site activities) and engineers from the different technical departments to ensure the coherence of activities and the inclusion of all relevant information. The assembly of a large part of the technical systems is under the responsibility of the Domestic Agencies, which will send representatives of their own contractors, who will in turn recruit local staff to avoid sending hundreds of workers from China, Japan, etc. Our main challenges now concern the reception of parts and components within the time allowed. Each item must be on the site as soon as possible. The quality check of the assembly will also be an essential activity in order to avoid negative surprises during the implementation of the tokamak. In short, we tackle this stage of assembly in a professional manner, being also aware of the many challenges we have to face.”

Transporting an Airbus A380 on the Road When members of the ITER project decided to build ITER in Cadarache in France—not in Rokkasho-Mura in Japan—they knew that they would have to solve the major logistical problem of delivering parts and components of the machine to the site. This was a real issue as it was clear from the outset that several nonEuropean countries would have to deliver magnets and other equally huge components. The French and European managers of the ITER project therefore had to figure out the most efficient and economical means of transporting large components to the ITER site taking into account that they would be shipped from factories all over the world. Closer to home, how could they be transported from the harbour of Fos-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean Sea (where most ships were likely to dock), to Cadarache, some 80 km north, and at the same time guarantee the safety and security of both components and local residents? Together with French experts, the ITER Organization explored various solutions such as transport by rail and by airship. It was finally decided to get traffic destined for Cadarache to use a special ITER itinerary, a 104 km route connecting the small harbour of La Pointe de Berre (near Fos-sur-Mer) to Cadarache (see Fig. 6.1). This route has been operational since 2013. Although essentially using the existing road network, it has been necessary to adapt and strengthen certain parts. Some roads were widened, bridges reinforced, villages bypassed, turnouts installed and roundabouts modified to make them compatible with the weight and size of the special convoys. The French government took responsibility for

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these large-scale public works including the financial responsibility as part of its commitments to ITER. From the first technical studies in 2006 until the completion of the major works in 2011, the total cost was estimated at EUR110 million and was shared by the Departmental Council of Bouchesdu-Rhône (66%) (the département of France that the route is in) and the French State (34%). Fortunately, ITER benefited from the experience gained by the European aerospace company Airbus in France for the transport of its A380 aircraft. Almost 230 km of roads were reinforced from Langon harbour (50 km from Bordeaux) to the Aéroconstellation assembly facility in Toulouse. The public works and the modus operandi have much in common with those of ITER. Indeed, in much the same way as ITER the Airbus itinerary uses seaways, inland waterways and public roads showing the greatest respect for the natural, historical and cultural heritage of local areas. Components of the Airbus A380 built in several European countries are transported in many different stages: sea transport to the harbour of Pauillac (in the Gironde estuary), then special barges on the Garonne river down to the harbour of Langon, and then road transport to Toulouse. In much the same way as in Provence, the work needed was an opportunity to improve road safety: turnouts were redesigned, crossings with poor visibility were rebuilt, and crossroads were rearranged to facilitate passage. Measures have been put in

Fig. 6.1 Map of the 104 km ITER itinerary. It is expected that 270 very exceptional convoys called HELs (highly exceptional loads) will use this route. The first of these HELs arrived at ITER on January 14, 2015. From CEA-AIF

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place to ensure the safety of both residents and road users and to manage the traffic lights to allow the convoys to drive smoothly and safely. The ITER team involved in the transport of the large components met their Airbus counterparts on several occasions to discuss and build on the experience acquired since 2004. However, while the Airbus aircraft are transported in smaller parts, some of ITER’s components weigh more than an entire aeroplane! The 104 km itinerary connecting the harbour of La Pointe de Berre (situated on lake L’Etang de Berre) to Cadarache through the Durance Valley forms the route that since 2014 and probably until 2025 the vast majority of ITER’s components take towards their final resting place.

A Huge Logistical Challenge A huge logistical challenge is represented by the 270 HELs or so foreseen to deliver ITER’s large components between now and 2025, which means on average about 60 convoys per year. Although this might appear quite easy to manage, we have to take into account that these convoys are not allowed to drive during the weekends, in July and August (because of tourism), or during school holidays. Actually, between 2019 and 2023, there will be a succession of HELs. It is hoped that the public will remain cooperative and not regard them as a nuisance. Some of these HELs will use a 352-wheeled platform with a second and rear double cabin and 88 multidirectional axles (see Fig. 6.2). Its dimensions (46 long by 9 m wide) enable the trailer to carry a payload of about 1000 tonnes and move at a maximum speed of 5 km/h. This platform is unique in Europe and belongs to the German subsidiary of the French company Daher), who have sanctioned its use to carry the largest components of the tokamak such as the stainless steel segments of the vacuum vessel (7.45 m from top and over 400 tonnes each) manufactured in Italy and Korea, the toroidal coils (17.30 m high and 530 tonnes each) sent by Japan and Italy, the cryostat segments from India and two poloidal coils that arrived from China and Russia, respectively in 2020 and 2023. Once each component is delivered to the site the platform is dismantled, and all its elements are put in a regular truck that drives back to the Daher site near Marseille. Interestingly, it is impossible for the platform to take the ITER route in the opposite direction. Therefore, a defective large component cannot be returned to sender by road…

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Fig. 6.2 352-wheel platform unique in Europe used to transport ITER’s highly exceptional loads from the Mediterranean Sea to Cadarache. From ITER Organization

Following a well-established protocol ships unload the components in Fossur-Mer, a port that vessels from the Asian ITER members take an average of 45 days to reach. Then their onward journey takes them along the Canal de Caronte and across the large lake L’Etang de Berre using a 75 m-long barge before road transfer to Cadarache. Road convoys normally start in the evening (around 9:30 p.m.) and travel overnight (until 6 a.m. at the latest) to minimise traffic congestion. Within this time frame, the convoy progresses 5 km at a time and the road is blocked off to create a kind of “security bubble” in which to move and protect the main actors (i.e. the components, the technical staff, and of course the local residents). The route is reopened once road signage had been reinstalled and clearance has been given by the local authorities. The convoy consists of more than one vehicle: the 46 m long transport trailer carrying the load is preceded by French gendarmerie (military police) motorcycles, technical cars, a pedestrian escort leader, guiding motorcycles, a pilot car transporting the Head of Convoy, and an emergency tractor to pull the trailer in case of engine breakdown. The transport trailer is followed by a rear escort, assistance vehicles and further gendarmerie motorcycles. Additional personnel and vehicles tasked with removing and reinstalling the traffic signs before and after the passage of the convoy are also present. In total, about 200 people and 40 vehicles accompany the convoys.

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Since this operation began in June 2014, about 40 motorcyclists from the Garde Républicaine 4 have been sent from Paris to accompany each “highly exceptional” convoy (i.e. unique in its own right) sealing the security bubble that encapsulates and protects it. This is the same security bubble that materialises every summer to protect cyclists in the Tour de France as they travel some 3500 km throughout the French provinces. In parallel with this, the police force manages tens of kilometres of road diversions, closes and reopens the A7 and the A51 motorways at three points where the convoy crosses them, and deals with various contingencies. Between 2008 and 2011, France carried out major works to make the necessary adaptations along the 104 km of the ITER itinerary. Agreements were signed between Agence ITER France who coordinated the work, and the 41 communes or municipal administrations affected by the convoys (16 communes located along the itinerary and 25 others affected by diversions and bypasses) to determine logistical matters (management of road signage, lighting, street equipment, etc.). These agreements also set out how the public is informed about the schedule and timetable of operations and relevant diversions.5 For most local residents, this information is their first contact with ITER. Happily, despite the fact that roads are regularly closed (almost once a week, albeit temporarily and only at night) the public is by and large cooperative. From September 16 to 20, 2013, and from March 31 to April 8, 2014, two test convoys were organised. The first one replicated the dimensions of the most extreme loads and successfully verified that the stresses caused to the roads, bridges and roundabouts were as calculated. The second test looked into the logistics and organisation related to future transports including crossing the Etang de Berre on a specially designed barge. In addition to the two main actors—Agence ITER France and the logistic services provider Daher—the planning needed for coordination involved dozens of public services representing the four départements concerned, government agencies, specialised technical providers and local governments. This time the convoy was early. I remember the gendarmes waking me up at 3 a.m. to welcome the convoy and the journalists who accompanied it. No significant incident has occurred so far, but more than 100 convoys are still expected to take place over the next years. However, a memorable incident did occur during the second rehearsal when the gendarmes tried to stop two cars to make way for 4 The Garde républicaine (Republican Guard), an elite unit of the gendarmerie, provides security services for the highest authorities and also for the public. 5 The schedule of exceptional convoys is available online (in French): http://www.itercad.org/itiner aire_calendrier.php.

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the convoy, but the drivers decided to force their way through. They were eventually arrested by police who then realised the occupants of the cars had stolen boxes of wine from a cellar near Lambesq. During these two rehearsals, large crowds of residents and tourists welcomed the convoys throughout their four-night-long journeys. The atmosphere was very positive and participants were impressed by the size of future ITER components, even though in these cases the trucks only carried concrete blocks. There was much emotion when the first convoy reached its final destination on September 20, 2013, at 4:45 a.m. and was welcomed by Director General Motojima at the entrance of the ITER site. These successful test convoys paved the way for the real components to begin travelling along the itinerary in 2015.

A Nerve Centre Close to Marseille Fewer than 10% of the 3000 special convoys planned for ITER will be “highly exceptional” either by weight (more than 60 tonnes) or by size (more than 5 m in length). From 2014 to 2022, 132 HELs have been organised. The European Domestic Agency pays for transportation services to the ITER site from Fos-sur-Mer (or, in the case of air transport, from the MarseilleProvence airport). Before reaching these points the Domestic Agency sending a component is responsible for the cost of transport. Since highly exceptional convoys are more expensive and more disruptive for the local population Fusion for Energy makes every effort (in agreement with Daher) to reduce the number of this type of convoy. The nerve centre of all these transport operations is located in Marignane near Marseille, where Daher has installed a control room with state-of-theart technology (right next door to the site occupied by Airbus Helicopters). Located in a modest building, the room allows Daher staff to track the movements of every component shipped by the Domestic Agencies to the ITER site. During the operations, the technical staff can zoom in on any area to see what is going on. Images from several cameras including a live video stream from the gendarmerie helicopter cover the largest wall in the room. Operators in the control room can verify that the convoys are passing smoothly across bridges, roundabouts and anything else that might arise on the road. Thanks to global positioning system (GPS), technicians know immediately when the convoys are being moved. If a road appears to be closed, they can quickly suggest alternative routes compatible with this type of load. The scope of Daher’s work goes even farther. Using its own software, which includes an

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“E -road book,” operators in the control room can follow the component’s progress all the way from its initial starting point to the ITER site allowing them to anticipate any manufacturing delay and propose alternative solutions to limit any delay in the construction of the tokamak. The logistics arrangements put in place are truly outstanding and representative of the project as a whole. As Laurent Schmieder underlines, “The main difficulty today consists of coordinating all the works on the site. Given the intense activity, more than two thousand people are working for the construction and there are many requests for special access, parking areas, exceptional deliveries, etc.” François Genevey leads the ITER transport sector within Daher and knows what “international cooperation” means in reality. “Daher,” he explained to me in an electronic interview conducted in early 2018, “is probably the only company that has a contractual relationship with both the ITER Organization and the seven Domestic Agencies. The legal specificities of each member’s national law had to be incorporated into each contract, which required a great deal of effort, negotiations and back-and-forth exchanges with the national administrations, all having their own rules, not always compatible with those laid down by the ITER Organization. The main challenge now lies at the level of the planning, as there is sometimes an incompatibility between construction requirements—with accelerations or delays—and the need to ship components as soon as they are available on the industrial sites of the Domestic Agencies. In order to reconcile these objectives, several storage sites have been constructed to act as buffers.” Daher expects to manage around 10,000 loads in total (road, rail, inland waterways, maritime and air transport), but maritime will be the main means of transport given the geographical locations of the Domestic Agencies. All Domestic Agencies have a contractual obligation to work with Daher for their HELs. This allows the process to be harmonised and the upstream logistics simplified. “Our experience,” François Genevey explained, “demonstrates the importance of logistics integration from the manufacturing company until delivery on the construction site. Having a complete picture of the components allows us to organise their transport and reduce the risks. It is obviously complex work, which comes with its fair share of challenges and anecdotes.” “We had for example a striking experience,” he told me in the interview, “which illustrated the impact of weather conditions on our work, and the limits of our sophisticated technology. It happened in September 2013 when we were preparing the first test convoy, with all the key actors involved in ITER transports, in particular Agence ITER France and Fusion for Energy

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and also the media. We wanted to test the maritime leg of the ITER itinerary, in particular the crossing of the lake Étang de Berre. An innovative barge was going to be used for the first time. The 26-km voyage would take four hours.” “But the barge was not yet there, as its production had been contracted in Turkey. The Turkish shipyard had had some delay, and the delivery schedule to France was a bit tight. Nevertheless, we were still confident and we were monitoring the progress of the barge from Daher’s control room. Unfortunately, just one week after the departure, strong winds in the Aegean Sea prevented the vessel moving forward according to the planned itinerary.” “During that time, in Fos, we were organising all the logistics and we had assembled the dummy load to be transported (600 tonnes, 19 m long, 9 m wide), which had been loaded onto the trailer of 352 wheels. Unfortunately, the barge was still blocked between Greek islands, where strong winds were blowing. Finally, five days before the planned arrival, the barge was moving on. But then bad news again: a storm happened and, despite its powerful tugboats, the barge ended up on a beach in the south of Corsica! We then decided to cancel the test of the maritime leg and confined ourselves to testing the road itinerary. All’s well that ends well!”

Reference 1. GCR Staff (2018) Energy of stars: e19bn fusion reactor “to be in place by 2021.” Global construction review. http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/ innovation/energy-stars-19bn-fusion-reactor-be-place-2021/

7 Those Who Are Against ITER

Abstract Although ITER is actively supported by the international scientific community, the project is quite often criticised (as you may have read on the Internet and in the media). Most of these criticisms focus on the budget (exploding, as they say) and the delays (recurring). ITER would be too big, too complex—in short, a financial black hole! In this chapter, we will see that some critics expound more subtle and more relevant arguments. Some nuclear opponents and some scientists belong to this category. Such arguments are of course invaluable to those who oppose ITER but do not have the same scientific background. There are also (as you will see) a number of opponents who do not have a direct link to ITER either professionally or personally. Nevertheless, they like to express publicly their disagreement with the ITER programme. This category includes green activists, trade unionists and more generally people opposing more general developments such as nuclear energy, globalisation and the market economy. More recently a new kind of opposition to ITER grew up. It mainly involves trade union activists and anticapitalistic groups, who are very active on social media and in public debates. We will carefully analyse the arguments put forward by some Nobel laureates and other famous scientists who have strongly criticised the scope of the project and have questioned its funding, real utility and future impact. Needless to say, these arguments usually trigger a lot of interest and comments in both the scientific and political spheres. The Frenchman Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, a winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1991, unambiguously criticised the ITER programme. His arguments related mainly to the budget and waste management. Georges Charpak, another Nobel laureate, also criticised © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_7

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ITER as is clear from the title of an article of his published in 2010: “Nuclear: Let’s stop ITER, the useless and overpriced reactor.” Recently a few scientists and journalists criticised the project on the basis of the alleged performance of ITER, which they say has been largely overestimated. Keywords ITER · Opponents · Scientists · Ecologists · Cost If you walk through the villages around Cadarache, such as Vinon-surVerdon, Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, Jouques or Saint-Julien le Montagnier, it’s unlikely that you’ll meet someone who is dead set against fusion and ITER. Most of ITER’s neighbours have known the CEA for many years and have at least one member of their family working there. They will not change their minds just because there is one more nuclear reactor in the region, especially one still under construction. In fact, you’d probably be struck by their ignorance of ITER. Most of them don’t actually know what is going on there and very few have visited the site.1 Nevertheless, you can read many criticisms of ITER on the Internet and in the media. Most of them focus on the budget (exploding, as they say) and the delays (recurring). ITER is too big, too complex, they say—a financial black hole! In this chapter, we will see that some critics have expounded more subtle and more relevant arguments. Some nuclear opponents and some scientists belong to this second category. Such arguments are of course invaluable to those who oppose ITER but do not have the same scientific background. There are also a number of opponents of the project who do not have a direct link to ITER professionally or personally. Nevertheless, they like to publicly express their disagreement with the ITER programme. This category includes green activists, trade unionists and people who oppose more general developments such as nuclear energy, globalisation and the market economy. Such opposition is sometimes organised and publicised in a very professional way. However, it remains localised around Cadarache. I have hosted several groups of ITER critics in Cadarache, but I can’t report any significant incident. What struck me is that the opposition to ITER has changed over time. In the early 2000s, the opponents were mainly antinuclear. They considered that fusion, as a nuclear energy (which is correct), is destined for the technological rubbish heap. Fission and fusion—the same fight! This is the angle taken by Greenpeace, the French party Europe, Ecologie, les Verts, 1 Just watch the hilarious interviews (in French) realised in 2009 by the local television channel “Télé Locale Provence” on the “ITER people”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h13Y6j7D_ok.

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the German Grünen and many other ecologist associations regarding ITER. However, in recent years some ecologists have started advocating for nuclear energy and ITER. For example, the UK has pronuclear environmentalists and France has its Association des Ecologistes Pour le Nucléaire (AEPN) who came to visit ITER in 2016. Last but not least, the people of Provence will remember that in 2005, shortly after the decision was taken to build ITER in Cadarache, the fear surfaced that the project would have a negative impact on the environment and trigger a rise in local property prices. The ITER itinerary was also a source of concern. “We need to fight against this road project which will disfigure the region,” said a member of the Stop ITER movement during a protest of about 1000 people in Marseille on November 10, 2007.2 More recently a new kind of opposition to ITER has materialised. It mainly involves trade union activists and anticapitalistic groups, who are very active on social media and in public debates. They argue that ITER does not respect French law. They claim that many workers are either undeclared illegal immigrants or seconded by European companies who, they say, do not pay French social security contributions and offer very low wages. This prevents, they argue, local residents accessing ITER jobs. I remember a public debate during which some activists accused me of being a slave driver and a “technology capitalist.” ITER endured its first “real” protest on February 5, 2015, when nearly 300 delegates from the Confédération générale du travail (CGT), a major French trade union, chose ITER’s iconic site to demonstrate against the EU directive on posted workers. The event gained some media coverage because local television channels showed a couple of small tents at the entrance of the ITER site that the organisers presented as being the houses of ITER’s “low-cost” workers! You can easily find websites on the internet that claim that foreigners are working at the ITER site for a monthly salary of EUR400.3 However, unlike some other major worksites in France, the French authorities4 did not find any evidence for such practices. An important and not well-known fact is that all site workers are protected by French legislation that specifically stipulates that all enterprises operating in Cadarache, whatever their nationality, must comply with French labour law and, more particularly, with the collective 2

https://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/Les-opposants-A-ITER-se-font. https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/provence-alpes-cote-D-azur/alpes-de-haute-provence/iter-la-cgtdenonce-L-esclavage-moderne-des-travailleurs-low-cost-648743.html. 4 ITER falls under the responsibility of two French authorities: DIRECCTE (Regional Office for Competition, Consumption, Labour and Employment, representing two ministries) and URSSAF (Organizations for the Collection of Social Security and Family Benefit Contributions). They are both responsible for labour law enforcement. 3

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agreements of the various industries. So, by law all workers on the ITER site receive at least the French SMIC (minimum guaranteed wage). This would also apply, for example, to a Chinese company that signs a contract or a subcontract in Cadarache. In the event of an infringement Fusion for Energy would refuse to accept the contractors or subcontractors. Although the situation is crystal clear, there is still plenty of “fake news.” For example, in 2014 the French newspaper Libération wrote: “The ITER worksite—although located at the heart of the PACA region—operates under an international flag. It is therefore difficult to invoke French social law.5 ” This is totally false (as I explained earlier). Laurent Schmieder confirmed that no infringements have so far been found.

Scientific Criticisms Although the ITER programme is actively supported by the international scientific community, some Nobel laureates and other famous scientists have strongly criticised the scope of the project and questioned its funding, utility and future impact. Needless to say, these arguments usually trigger a lot of interest and comments in both scientific and political spheres. But we must not fail to see the wood for the trees since the vast majority of scientists support the ITER programme. Moreover, many more support fusion energy such as the late British physicist Stephen Hawking. In a video for BBC future released on November 18, 2016, the world’s most famous physicist presented nuclear fusion as a project likely to transform our society6 : “Nuclear fusion would become a practical power source and would provide us with an inexhaustible supply of energy, without pollution or global warming.” This statement was obviously very much appreciated by fusion fans. Prior to Hawking, the Frenchman Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1991, also shook the fusion community. In this case, however, it was for other reasons. In an interview published by the French economic daily newspaper Les Echos on January 12, 2006, de Gennes unambiguously criticised the ITER programme. His arguments related mainly to its budget and waste management. In his own words: “I find that far too much money is spent on things that are not worth it. The European governments, as well as Brussels [the European Commission], rushed into the ITER experimental reactor without any serious reflection on the potential impact of 5

Raulin N [1]. Video for BBC Future, November 18, 2016, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161117-stephenhawking-why-we-should-embrace-fusion-power. 6

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this huge project. I used to be a great defender of the big European machines 30 years ago and, as a former engineer of the CEA, I witnessed with enthusiasm the early years of fusion. But I don’t believe anymore. Why? A fusion reactor is both Superphénix [a fast breeder reactor that was closed down in 1998] and La Hague [a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant] in the same place. Although we managed to create one fast neutron reactor like Superphénix, it would be difficult to replicate this experience—we need about 100 reactors in France to meet its energy needs—as this facility required the best technicians to produce excellent results under optimum safety conditions. This would be totally impossible in the developing world. And we would need to build a plant like La Hague around each reactor in order to process the hot [radioactive] materials, which cannot be transported by road or rail. Just think about the scope of such a project! And then, I would have a last objection. I am familiar with superconducting alloys and I know they are extremely fragile. I cannot believe that the coils that will confine the plasma, which will be subject to rapid neutron fluxes similar to an H-bomb, will be able to last for the lifetime of such a reactor (10–20 years). The ITER project has been supported by Brussels for political image reasons and this is a mistake.7 ” The reason I extracted such a long quote from the interview is because de Gennes’ arguments concerning ITER’s budget and materials should be carefully considered. However, the point that he raised about waste processing is quite strange. There are indeed question marks about the way that hot materials will be managed. The ITER Organization is still considering several options for their management, storage and decay, within or outside the site. However, this is an issue that ASN is following very carefully. By raising lots of questions, organising several thematic exchanges per year and requesting technical changes on a regular basis the French nuclear regulator is already heavily scrutinising this part of the project. Georges Charpak, another Nobel laureate, also created a bit of a storm in the fusion world when he published an opinion piece in Libération in August 2010. The piece was cosigned by Jacques Treiner, emeritus professor at the Pierre et Marie Curie University, and Sébastien Balibar, a research director at the Centre National de la Recherche (CNRS) and Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA), a respected higher education institution in Paris. The key message of these famous scientists is conveyed in the title of their article: “Nuclear: Let’s stop ITER, the useless and overpriced reactor.8 ” More than 13 years after publication, the arguments put forward by Charpak and

7 8

Houzelle [2]. Charpak et al. [3].

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his colleagues remain valid and have been taken up with some variations by other researchers. So, let’s have a look at their criticisms of ITER. Their first point is that there are many research priorities that are “much more important” and that “the immediate priority is to make energy savings […] and replace fossil fuels.” The truth of the latter, at least, is undeniable. Claiming that research on ITER is less important than other research is a value judgement made by the three scientists. It is likely that researchers in other fields would have a different opinion. Charpak, Treiner and Balibar also underline the fact that fusion poses problems for which “after more than 50 years of research we still do not have a solution” and it will be only from 2019 onwards that ITER “will start” to address these outstanding issues. They have a point here too (except that the ITER’s commissioning is now scheduled for 2030–2035). Plasma physics and tokamak technology still face a number of difficulties (namely, relatively short plasma confinement times and absence of materials for the inner walls capable of withstanding conditions inside the reactor). According to the three physicists, these arguments alone mean that the decision to build ITER was taken prematurely. Perhaps they are right, perhaps not. Only time will tell. However, large projects such as ITER are so difficult to get off the ground because the “launch windows” are few. You need all the parameters, such as political support, financial means, scientific justification and societal acceptance to be all aligned at the same time. For ITER, the stars aligned over Geneva in 1985. It was definitely a “now or never” moment; I’m not sure that the project would have got the right support 20 or 30 years later. History never repeats itself. Decisions, whatever they may be, sometimes depend on small but essential details. Then the three scientists moved on to the issue of cost. “The estimated construction cost of ITER just rose from EUR5 billion to EUR15 billion, which is likely to impact the European budget allocated to scientific research funding. That is exactly the disaster that we feared,” they wrote. This point isn’t credible. Since 2010 the EU funding for ITER has come directly from the EU budget and is no longer taken from the EU research Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development. French and European researchers are therefore immune from budgetary restrictions caused by ITER. Furthermore, there are no direct links between the national research budgets and the European Framework Programmes. Therefore, ITER has no direct impact on national research priorities and funding in the European Union9 . This is not necessarily the case for the other ITER members. In the 9 Over the period 2021–2027, the EU will allocate EUR6 billion to finalise the construction of ITER. One fifth of this budget, i.e. approximately EUR1.2 billion, will be provided by France.

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United States, for example, the budget allocated by the Department of Energy for fusion research affects ITER and national initiatives alike.

Astrophysics and Flying Saucers Other scientists have criticised ITER, but none have had their ideas reverberate so extensively through the international community as Charpak, Treiner and Balibar. The only exception to this could be Jean-Pierre Petit, whose messages managed to reach several European politicians such as the Ecologist Michèle Rivasi, a Member of the European Parliament. Controlled nuclear fusion is probably no great mystery for Jean-Pierre Petit. With a background in fluid mechanics and plasma physics, a former CNRS research director and a retired astrophysicist from the Marseille observatory, he is wellqualified for this field. He is also a good public speaker, skilled at using all the tools at his disposition to put across his ideas and convince his audience. However, as a victim of his successes (and excesses) his scientific credibility has now dwindled to almost zero10 . In summer 2016, I was invited to a public debate with Jean-Pierre Petit in the city of Gap in France. I was pleased to accept. However, a few weeks before the debate Petit started to spread unfriendly information about me on social media. He was questioning my competence as I am a chemist by training rather than a physicist, while specifying on the positive side that I am a “kind” person. The organisers decided to cancel the debate. One of Petit’s favourite criticisms about ITER concerns disruptions. According to him, plasma physicists and fusion engineers are still not masters of such phenomena, which may occur in a tokamak and pose a serious threat to the integrity of the device. Disruptions are instabilities that may develop within the plasma. They lead to the degradation or loss of magnetic confinement. Because of the high amount of energy contained within the plasma loss of confinement during a disruption may create a significant thermal load on plasma-facing components, as well as strong forces on the vacuum vessel and the magnetic coils. In some cases, electrons will be accelerated to form a relativistic beam with velocities close to the speed of light because of the large electric fields created

10

Jean-Pierre Petit is well-known for having supported conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks on the Pentagon. He is also an expert on flying saucers (UFOs), and asserts that aliens (“Ummits”) live among us and exchanged letters with him for some time. He has underlined many times that his correspondence with them inspired him in his research in magneto-hydrodynamics and cosmology. See Petit [4].

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during disruptions. These “runaway electrons” as they are called may penetrate several millimetres into the in-vessel components when they eventually leave the plasma. They may therefore damage the interior walls of ITER. All tokamaks have to deal with disruptions, and ITER is no exception. Nevertheless, all the world’s tokamaks have been operating in a completely safe and satisfactory manner since the early 1950s. During dedicated experiments to study instabilities and their mitigation as well as when exploring new plasma regimes physicists have noted that, even though disruptions may occur several times a day in a device, they have never led to the destruction or rupture of any vacuum vessel. There is abundant literature on disruptions and on strategies to avoid them and mitigate their effects. It is also an active research field. ITER will therefore benefit from the latest developments in this area and will incorporate an automatic prevention and mitigation system in its design. Since scientific experts advising the ITER Council consider disruptions “a serious threat to ITER’s mission” a special task force has been set up to explore new techniques and strategies for their mitigation. Experts recommended that the ITER disruption mitigation system should be based on a technology called “shattered pellet injection” that has been developed mainly in US laboratories. This technology involves injecting massive quantities of frozen neon and deuterium into the plasma. To ensure that the plasma can assimilate them the pellets will be shattered into small pieces just before they enter the vacuum vessel. The largest pellets will be shaped like a wine cork and have a diameter of 3 cm. The system will function automatically, triggered by specific sensors and algorithms that will evaluate the likelihood of an impending disruption. With at least 10 pulses planned per day during operational phases, and disruptions expected in approximately 10% of these it is fair to say that the mitigation system will operate routinely—probably daily—during operation, at least during the initial phases as scientists develop ITER’s operational parameters. The bad news is that the cost of the disruption mitigation system calculated in 2018 after finalisation of its design, is now EUR175 million—over twice the initial estimate. In 2011 Jean-Pierre Petit sent a 32 page letter signed by a “group of physicists” (made up of himself and three others) to the French authorities asserting that disruptions will seriously damage ITER’s interior wall11 . However, the group’s arguments came across as quite weak, especially as they referred several times to Masatochi Koshiba, another famous discredited scientist.

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The letter can be consulted online at, http://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/IMG/pdf/Lettre_Enquete_ Publique_juillet_2011.pdf.

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The winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 2002, Masatochi Koshiba is a professor at the University of Tokyo. According to him ITER is fundamentally dangerous: “ITER, containing as it does four kilograms of tritium, could kill up to two million people,” the physicist wrote in a petition sent to the Prime Minister of Japan on March 10, 2003, during negotiations on where to locate the device12 . However, most scientists do not see how Professor Koshiba arrived at this conclusion. The lethal dose of tritium is of course 2 mg. Hence, 4 kg (the amount of tritium on the ITER site) in theory is a large enough lethal dose to kill 2 million people. But how would that work in practice? You would need to gather 2 million people on the ITER site at the same time, open a flask of tritium and ask them all to inhale the gas. I am sure you don’t take my explanation seriously but I don’t see any better one to explain Koshiba’s conclusion. Experts in environmental protection working for the ITER Organization have simulated the tritium storage building exploding. The resulting surge in local radioactivity would be just 0.5% of the natural background radiation level, so there would be no need even to evacuate the nearest villages. A member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences (which awards the Nobel Prizes) confirmed that they had written to Professor Koshiba and asked him to explain his reasoning13 . They are still awaiting his answer…

False Claims and Miscommunication In 2017 and 2018, US physicist Daniel Jassby gained some popularity through writing some critical articles on ITER14 . Working for 25 years in plasma physics at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Jassby used to be an ardent promoter of fusion. However, recently his tone has changed. In his own words, “Now that I have retired, I have begun to look at the whole fusion enterprise more dispassionately, and I feel that a working, every day, commercial fusion reactor would cause more problems than it would solve.” There is nothing very new here as most of Jassby’s arguments have been discussed before. His main points concentrate on the reference to “unlimited energy” (which was until September 2022 the first thing you could see

12

Although I was unable to find a copy of this letter, a number of sources told me that Masatoshi Koshiba wrote to the Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi: “the ITER nuclear reactor, which uses tritium, is extremely dangerous from the point of view of safety and environmental contamination. The four kilos of tritium stored at ITER could kill two million people”. 13 Personal communication of Professor Michael Tendler. 14 Jassby [5].

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on the ITER Organization’s home page15 ), the balance between the output fusion power and electrical consumption (see below), the supply of tritium, and the management of radioactive waste. However, Jassby also makes points in favour of ITER, which I will discuss in the next chapters. His message is clear in that there are still uncertainties and problems to sort out before we can see fusion energy supplying our electricity. Since 2016 US investigative journalist Steven B. Krivit has been writing to several fusion research organisations asserting that some of their publications and websites contain false statements about the performance of the two best-known fusion tokamaks: JET and ITER. In brief, Krivit argues that some key fusion players overestimate the performance of tokamaks to gaslight the public (and the decision-makers) into believing that the ITER reactor is designed to produce net power, i.e. more power than it will consume. Most websites, Krivit argues, say nothing about the huge amounts of electrical power that will be needed to operate all of the reactor’s systems. Following up on the articles published by Krivit several organisations corrected the information on or even removed the contentious pages on their websites16 . We will come back to this controversy in Chap. 12. In summary, most of the criticisms voiced by the scientific community about ITER are of course relevant (in particular, those concerning materials and the industrial development of tokamaks). However, we cannot credit these experts when they challenge the funding of ITER and claim that it will exhaust research budgets. This is not the case (particularly, in Europe). In any event ITER was a political decision and the seven members committed to it with their eyes wide open. Claiming that ITER was launched without performing any feasibility studies is simply wrong. Several hundred studies, scientific papers and technical works (in particular, by the CEA and the ITER Organization), accompanied the preparation and launch of the project. This should remind us that the modern scientist is part of a very competitive system in which as a good tactician he or she has learned to negotiate contracts, obtain funding, convince decision-makers and the media and build his or her own “niche.” The dramatic expansion of the scientific community since the second half of the last century, both in countries with a long scientific history and in emerging ones, has created new sociological phenomena such as fads (arguably the most trivial phenomena of them all). Few people realise that some research managers invest a lot of their time and energy into obtaining the most fashionable technology for their laboratory. Other scientists generally react to these happy few with a subtle mix of jealousy, 15 16

www.iter.org. Krivit [6].

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indifference, excitement and minimisation. Incidentally, it often happens that these laboratories equipped with the most sophisticated (and the most expensive) instruments are devoid of humans as the director forgot to pay attention to his or her team.

References 1. Raulin N (2014) Le chantier des travailleurs détachés. Libération, 11 May 2014. http://www.liberation.fr/france/2014/05/11/le-chantier-des-travaille urs-detaches_1015152 2. Houzelle C (2006) Recherche: le cri d’alarme d’un prix Nobel. Les Echos, 12 Jan 2006. https://www.lesechos.fr/12/01/2006/LesEchos/19582-047-ECH_ recherche---le-cri-d-alarme-d-un-prix-nobel.htm 3. Charpak G, Treiner J, Balibar S (2010) Nucléaire: Arrêtons Iter, ce réacteur hors de prix et inutilisable. Libération, 10 Aug 2010. http://www.liberation.fr/ sciences/2010/08/10/nucleaire-arretons-iter-ce-reacteur-hors-de-prix-et-inutilisa ble_671121 4. Petit JP (1995) Le Mystère des Ummites: Une science venue d’une autre planète. Albin Michel, Paris 5. Jassby D (2018) ITER is a showcase … for the drawbacks of fusion energy. Bull Atomic Sci, 14 Feb 2018. https://thebulletin.org/iter-showcase-drawbacksfusion-energy11512 6. Krivit SB (2017) Evidence of the ITER power deception. New Energy Times, 11 Dec 2017. http://news.newenergytimes.net/2017/12/11/evidence-of-the-iterpower-deception/

8 Why So Many Delays and Cost Overruns?

Abstract Although few people are well informed about the progress of fusion, many more are aware of ITER’s delays. The commissioning of the tokamak was first scheduled for 2016. The ITER Council postponed that date to November 2019, and in 2015, the date of First Plasma was rescheduled for December 2025, with D-T operations by the end of 2035. However, early 2023, the ITER Organization announced that it was facing several technical issues and that an additional delay of “several years” had to be taken into account. Similarly, the ITER budget almost increased tenfold its original size (according to the latest estimates, the construction only will cost more than EUR40 billion although, as we will see, the concept of “cost” is here meaningless). In fact, ITER is exposed to every possible potential causes of delay you could imagine such as technological showstoppers, design changes of the machine and buildings, late signature of contracts, manufacturing difficulties, late deliveries, quality problems, detection of nonconformities, underestimated risks and contingencies. You could argue that most of the big technological projects of recent years have accumulated operational delays and budget increases. However, such an attitude is not acceptable when dealing with public money. A better approach would be to address programme-specific management issues and risks at all stages of production. These are two areas where the ITER Organization failed to address during the first years of the project. Everybody is ready to accept that the unprecedented complexity of ITER and its first-of-a-kind nature may cause delays in the manufacturing and construction—let alone the financial and political context. However, with more than 100 tokamaks operating in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_8

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the world it can hardly be said that ITER is “first-of-a-kind.” So, does the problem lie in its management? Keyword ITER · Delay · Cost · Budget Although few people are well informed about the progress of fusion, many are aware of ITER’s delays. At present, the shining achievement of demonstrable fusion energy is conspicuous by its absence. The arrival of fusion energy has long been announced and hoped for. Bolstered by impressive international research efforts, scientists confirmed in the last century that the demonstration would come soon. However, as delays accumulate so fusion opponents cannot resist repeating the well-known joke: “Fusion energy is 30 years away, always has been and always will be.” The problem is not new as shown in the brief history of the ITER project presented in a previous chapter. After signature of the ITER agreement, commissioning of the tokamak was first scheduled for 2016. In July 2010, the ITER Council postponed that date to November 2019. In 2015, after an in-depth analysis of ongoing work, the date of First Plasma was rescheduled for December 2025 with D-T operations by the end of 2035. The ITER Council were unwavering in their conviction that the 2025 deadline will be met. However, recent information shows that the Council position is no longer valid (see also Chap. 17). Quite rightly, politicians, media, students and the general public are all asking why ITER is so late and when can the first results be expected. Everybody is ready to accept that the unprecedented complexity of ITER and its first-of-a-kind nature may cause delays in the manufacturing and construction—let alone the financial and political context. Difficulties of all kinds (technological, organisational, financial, geopolitical, etc.) may arise in any technological project and create delays in delivery, costs overruns, and even reduced safety margins in design and implementation. However, the key question remains: Why have there been so many delays in ITER’s case? With more than 100 tokamaks operating in the world it can hardly be said that ITER is “first-of-a-kind”. So, does the problem lie in its management? We have seen that technical, budgetary, political and other difficulties have slowed down the project since its beginning. It took no fewer than 20 years to get the foundations of the project right and 10 more years to transform it into a genuine programme. Then institutional and organisational difficulties emerged. A management assessment report released in 2013 described ITER as a highly complex structure with a bureaucratic mode of operation in which efficiency, staff and central authority were lacking.

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In fact, ITER is exposed to every possible potential cause of delay that you could imagine such as technological showstoppers, design changes of the machine and buildings, late signature of contracts, manufacturing difficulties, late deliveries, quality problems, detection of nonconformities, underestimated risks and contingencies. Nobody was able to predict the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11, 2011. However, this event alone delayed the Japanese contribution by a year and hence the project as a whole. You could argue that most of the big technological projects of recent years have accumulated operational delays and budget increases.1 But this attitude leads to a sort of technological fatalism, which is not an acceptable attitude when dealing with public money. A better approach would be to address the programme-specific management issues and the risks at all stages of production. These are two areas that the ITER Organization failed to address until a few years ago.

“Concrete” Delays Three specific examples of delays to ITER’s construction now follow. It goes without saying that these are only “case studies” and that there are many other delays. However, these three will serve as concrete examples of delays that have impacted the programme. Our first case relates to the foundations of the tokamak complex (in particular, completion of the level B2 basemat slab). B2 stands for the second level of the basement, or the second level below ground floor. Work started in December 2013. The concrete slab, with a surface area of over 9000 m2 , is 1.5 m thick. It rests on 493 pillars topped with antiseismic bearings. This structure serves as the “floor” of the tokamak complex and sits on bedrock 17 m below ground level. Thanks to the seismic columns the basemat has a capacity for lateral movement of up to 10 cm in any direction (there is a gap of approximately 1.5 m between the B2 slab and the surrounding retaining walls). In summer 2013, the companies responsible for the construction of the tokamak complex started to install the formwork and steel reinforcement. However, during an inspection on October 24, 2013, ASN staff detected noncompliance in certain steel bars in the central reinforcement area. Some 1

This was particularly true of France’s European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) nuclear plant in Flamanville. Originally scheduled for 2012 commissioning of the EPR was postponed to the beginning of 2024. Initially estimated at EUR3.3 billion, the cost of the reactor has almost tripled as it was readjusted in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2018 and 2022 to be (currently) EUR19.1 billion.

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rods were found to have a smaller diameter than expected and were therefore likely to weaken the whole basemat. A few days later ASN wrote to the ITER Organization requesting corrective action and imposed a hold point on the pouring of concrete in the central area.2 This was not a trivial issue; the B2 slab had to support the whole tokamak complex (i.e. three buildings plus the reactor itself—400,000 tonnes in total!). The inspectors also noted that subcontractors working on the site did not seem aware of the quality procedures and the technical context of their work, something that inspectors had pointed out during previous visits. “The workers present on-site, belonging to the manufacturer, the architect engineer and the ITER Organization, were unable to provide precise or clear answers to the inspectors’ questions,” read one of the letters from ASN. Fusion for Energy scrutinised the central area of the tokamak pit where the reinforced steel created a particularly tight and complex grid pattern. They recalculated the resistance of the steel and concluded that, as suggested by ASN, it needed to be strengthened in several places. Once these corrections were completed the ITER Organization replied to ASN on January 20, 2014, asking for authorisation to resume pouring concrete in this area. It took a few months and more correspondence between the two organisations for such authorisation to be granted on July 10, 2014. Pouring started a few days later (14,000 m3 of concrete in total) and ended on August 27, 2014, at 6 a.m. with the pouring of concrete to make the 15th and last segment of the slab. Besides illustrating how a technical problem caused a 6-month delay to construction of the tokamak complex this case also demonstrates ASN’s key role in regulating construction and manufacturing. This role extends not only to Cadarache but to all of the participating countries; ASN’s inspectors regularly travel to all seven of its members to carry out inspections for ITER.

Poloidal Coils and Cooling Towers Our second case relates to significant delay is in the production of the poloidal field magnets. In this case, the problems had nothing to do with technology or manufacturing itself. You may remember that one of the six circular magnets has been supplied by Russia (the smallest one, PF1, 6 m in diameter) and the five others by Europe (PF2–PF6) as their huge dimensions (9–24 m in diameter) prevent them from being transported by road. 2

Most of these emails and letters are available on ASN’s website: https://www.asn.fr/L-ASN/ASN-enregion/Division-de-Marseille/Activites-de-recherche/Site-de-Cadarache/Iter/(rub)/106342.

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These five magnets had therefore to be wound and assembled in Cadarache. These are the only components of the tokamak that were manufactured onsite. Fusion for Energy constructed a dedicated building 257 m long for the production of these five magnets—the longest building on the site. At the beginning of 2012, Fusion for Energy published a European call for tenders to select a company to manufacture the five European poloidal magnets. Within the time limit set for the tender only one bid was received at the Barcelona headquarters of Fusion for Energy. However, the European experts who assessed the quality of the bid at the technical and financial levels concluded that the prices proposed were very high. As a result, they decided to try and negotiate lower prices with the tenderer. Discussions lasted several months. However, the management of the tendering company didn’t budge, explaining that manufacturing the world’s largest magnets represented major risks for the company technically and financially speaking—hence the relatively high prices. They criticised the general conditions and the compensation system described in the annexes to the contract proposed by the European Agency. As a result Fusion for Energy cancelled the call for tenders in summer 2012 deciding to divide the work into five lots in order to reduce their size and the related risks. A few months later the call for tenders was republished. By the end of 2013, the first contract was signed covering manufacture of the magnets. It was followed by four others covering the supply of machine tools, site and infrastructure management, manufacture and tests at low temperature. In the end, production of the poloidal magnets had to endure over a year’s delay for reasons related to the rules of European public procurement and the contractual obligations of the companies selected. These issues seem far removed from the high-tech world, but reality is always more complicated than it appears. Indeed, selecting companies best suited to work on ITER is a challenge in itself. What criteria should be used to make the decision? The quality of the product? But the product has never been made before. The company’s experience in this field? But ITER is a world first. The prices proposed? This is of course an important factor, but the tenderer should not be selected purely as the cheapest option disregarding all other considerations. Cost certainly cannot be the sole or even the most important criterion. In addition to these technical aspects, neither Fusion for Energy nor its parent organisation (the European Commission, which is accountable for the EU public funds) can tolerate any misconduct. They must implement sound management practices. Last but not least, our third case relates to delay in construction of the cooling towers. ITER will have two independent water-cooling circuits. The

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first will extract the heat generated in the plasma during the deuteriumtritium reaction. The heat will then be transferred to the second system incorporating multiple closed heat transfer loops plus an open-loop heat rejection system. In operation, the tokamak and its auxiliary systems will produce an average thermal power of 500 MW during a typical plasma pulse cycle, and all of this heat will need to be dissipated out into the environment. This will be accomplished by water evaporating as it passes through 10-cell, 20 m-tall cooling towers. The towers have been manufactured in India. However, at the end of 2015 managers at Fusion for Energy realised from the first plans sent by their Indian counterparts that the tower would be larger than foreseen and could therefore not be installed in the building designed for that purpose. There were intensive discussions between the two organisations but the Indians had the last word. They explained that they had scrupulously followed the technical specifications attached to the procurement arrangement that had been signed. They rejected any liability in this case. The Europeans therefore had to urgently modify the building plans since the construction was going to start very soon. The result was another 6 month delay effectively because of miscommunication between two Domestic Agencies. According to Laurent Schmieder, “At the beginning of the project, the industrial dimension (or best practice) was sometimes missing. Imagine that you want to manufacture a phone: you cannot manufacture the shell without knowing before all the components that will be inside. That is what happened with the cooling tower in ITER. Indians worked on their side, the Europeans on their own and we believed our requirements were sufficiently robust. This is the usual problem with so-called functional interfaces, which are at the junction of integrated systems and buildings. They can only be finalised with the agreement of all the actors involved. But we have learnt from this misfortune. Now progressively all the project interfaces are part of a database that is accessible to everyone that is involved.”

The Complexity is “Built-In” As can be seen from these cases, there are many kinds of problems that can delay implementation of a project like ITER. We will see more recent examples of delays in the penultimate chapter. Compared to the initial schedule, the accumulated delays are now estimated at fifteen years in total, meaning that the construction time has tripled since the project’s launch.

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Despite these problems, it is important to stay focused on the big picture. The delays come mainly from the very fundamentals of the project. In 2001, experts thought that the design was 80% complete, but this was far from being the case. Moreover, many design modifications were still being accepted up to 2013. While most of these changes had limited consequences, some led to changes in auxiliary systems or even in some buildings. This also meant that as long as the reactor’s design was not frozen, the construction could not begin. Finally, in 2014 the ITER Director General decided once and for all to “freeze” the design of the tokamak. Another fundamental difficulty has to do with the way the project is organised and the work divided. This is particularly the case for the vacuum vessel, but it also applies to other essential elements such as the magnets. Six countries were involved in the manufacture of superconducting strands, some of which were tested in Switzerland. Production of the cables was then contractually guaranteed by nine companies worldwide. They had then to be transported to Italy, Japan or the United States so that the magnets could be manufactured. Although the process can break down at many places and at any time, the components must be identical irrespective of the place of manufacture. In short, ITER’s complexity is “built-in.” It is an integral part of the programme’s structure as decided by its founders. Late delivery of components would naturally lead to the schedule for assembly being squeezed. Although this type of risk could be anticipated, it was not until 2018 that the ITER Organization was asked to clarify how this would be handled. It was well known that there will be significant additional delays. The good thing is that the impact of a technical issue on the project schedule can now be quickly estimated because the ITER Council is closely following the performance of the ITER Organization and the seven Domestic Agencies through a series of well-defined milestones. The construction and manufacturing activities have been split into 18,000 individual tasks that are listed in a database making up what is called the Master Schedule. Details of these tasks including the date of finalisation or delivery are updated every month. Thus, any delay or cost increase can be quickly identified, as can the possible consequences for other systems. Any reason for such a delay or cost increase is carefully examined and mitigated as appropriate. The system feels a little like emergency doctors monitoring their patients’ health by seeing how they stack up against a set of vital parameters. During my discussion with Robert Aymar in Paris in December 2017, he was quite philosophical about these delays and considered them part of a necessary learning curve. “Over a hundred people designed the detailed

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plans of the machine from 1994 to 2001 but only a small number of them joined the ITER Organization. It took between five and ten years to train the designers and let them become familiar with the work that preceded them.” Such delays are problematic for the ITER project itself since they lead to cost increases. Perhaps more importantly, ITER’s slow progress is not good for fusion itself. Sceptics are keen to exploit this situation by campaigning to reduce fusion investment in favour of technologies providing a faster return. Others say that turning fusion into a disruptive and successful energy technology is impossible without the interest and backing of private entrepreneurs. There are even some who argue that fusion development is being deliberately slowed down by the governments involved conspiring against the generation of unlimited energy because of vested interests. After more than 10 years of working in this field, I haven’t seen any evidence to support such a claim. Furthermore, the influence of industry and the urgent need to fight climate change provide a strong incentive for fusion to be developed. Nevertheless, these views and those who hold them should be taken seriously since they have the potential to affect political support for the project.

How Much Will It Cost? This is the “$64,000 Question” or more precisely the billion-dollar question systematically raised in all visits, discussions, lectures and interviews about ITER. Although this is understandable since ITER is financed by taxpayers’ money and everyone has heard about the seemingly never-ending delays and budget increases, it is also a frustrating question, because no one is satisfied with its answer. It is not possible and never will be possible to give a precise figure regarding the cost of constructing the tokamak. In fact, we will never know the exact cost of ITER because close to 90% of the members’ contributions to the programme are made in kind. Contributors do not wish to disclose the cost of the parts they have produced in most cases. This is the reality. However, when I was in Cadarache, I stopped giving this explanation to the press after some journalists wrote that not even ITER’s staff knew the cost of the machine they were building. Since each of the ITER members is responsible for providing in-kind components that have been manufactured on its own territory and paid for in its own currency, conversion of the estimated cost of construction into a single currency is not appropriate. The authors of the ITER Agreement understood this and decided to follow up a proposal made by Robert Aymar.

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This involved creating a single currency (a sort of “fusion euro”) called the ITER Unit of Account (IUA3 ). This system takes into account the different exchange rates as well as changes in the cost of living so as to distribute the value of each procurement arrangement between the members of the project in the fairest way possible. In 2010, the European Union valued its contribution to ITER as EUR6.6 billion up to 2020 (of which EUR6 billion is for construction and manufacturing and a further EUR600 million is for management and administration, participation in the Broader Approach, etc.). On this basis, the total cost of constructing ITER over this period could be estimated at close to EUR15 billion.4 The contribution of the other parties is in principle set at 9% of the total value of the programme, but in practice depends on the industrial costs specific to each country that may be higher or lower. France’s situation is somewhat unique. As the host country France pays 20% of the European contribution to the construction of ITER, slightly more than EUR1, 1 billion (including EUR220 million of the EUR467 million contribution provided by the local authorities and regional governments of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region). France’s contribution to the ITER programme is therefore on the same order as that of the non European members. France’s contribution is almost equal to what it pays to CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research based in Geneva. However, at the ITER Council meeting in November 2016 the members adopted a new baseline that integrated new delivery dates for all components under a revised construction budget. The result was an additional five years of delay, meaning that the commissioning of the tokamak and the first experiments (“First Plasma”) were scheduled for December 2025 (although we know now that this date is not guaranteed anymore as a new baseline is in preparation). For Europe, this meant an additional budget of EUR3.9 billion, making an estimated total cost of EUR10.4 billion (2008 values) up to December 2025. But this not the end since adjustments to the machine will still be necessary before 2035 for the real (D-T) fusion operations to start. The estimated additional cost of this is EUR3.2 billion for Europe.

3

1 IUA is defined as the equivalent purchasing power of USD 1000 as per January 1989. Since Europe contributes 45.6% of the construction simple cross-multiplication allows us to find the total cost: 100*6.6/45.6 = EUR14.5 billion. However, this calculation would be relevant only if ITER was built entirely in Europe, which is obviously not the case. As the ITER Organization explains on its website: “Because multiple members are collaborating to build ITER, each with responsibility for the procurement of in-kind hardware in its own territory with its own currency, a direct conversion of the value estimate for ITER construction into a single currency is not relevant”, https://www.iter.org/faq#collapsible_5. 4

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All in all the total European contribution to the ITER tokamak in its final configuration (capable of delivering D-T fusion reactions) will therefore be EUR13,6 billion allowing us to calculate an estimated cost (to date) for the whole machine of EUR30 million in 2008 values5 and about EUR41 billion in current values. However, this assumes that all the manufacturing is carried out in Europe and paid for in euros, but this is not how the project works.6 This figure is most likely an overestimate. Another possible basis is the value of ITER, which was estimated in 2016 at 7.800 kIUA, i.e. about EUR13.9 billion.7 However, this is an underestimate since it does not take such things as insurance and administration fees. What we can say with some confidence is that the cost of ITER is today around EUR41 billion (based on the European Union’s contribution8 ). For the other phases of the ITER Project, the cost estimates have not changed. Operation of the ITER installation during its experimental lifetime (approximately 20 years) is estimated at 188 kIUA (EUR334 million) per year. For the deactivation (2037–2042) and decommissioning phases, the costs have been established in euros at EUR281 million and EUR530 million, respectively (2001 values). This means a total cost of close to EUR50 billion. By way of comparison, the LHC particle accelerator in Geneva cost EUR6 billion. ITER is likely to be the most expensive scientific facility on Earth.

First Plasma in 2035? The current economic context explains why the governments financing ITER do not appreciate cost increases or delays. In Europe, the Parliament and Council at first refused the new ITER budget in 2009 and 2010. At that time discussions in the corridors of the ITER Organization were often about possible termination of the project. A precedent for such a termination was the US Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) project called the Desertron. It was supposed to be the world’s largest and most energetic particle accelerator. Constructions started in 1987 in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas, but the project was cancelled in 1993 due to budgetary issues.

Using the previous formula: 100*13.6/45.6 = 29.8. This is why the DoE estimates today ITER at USD65 billion, based on their own contribution to the construction. Again, this estimate would be relevant only if ITER was built entirely in the United States. 7 1 kIUA = 1000 IUA. Today (2022) the conversion factor of the ITER Unit Account is 1 IUA = 1776.15 euros (as set by the ITER Organization). The conversion factor is updated every year and takes into account changes in the cost of living in the seven member countries. 8 The DoE estimates the costs of ITER at USD65 billion based on the United States’ contribution to ITER. 5 6

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No mention whatsoever of the total cost of construction of the tokamak can be found in internal documents of the ITER Organisation. There are two reasons for this. Members do not report the actual costs of their contributions (as they have committed themselves to delivering their contributions irrespective of the real costs), and the ITER Organization does not manage their costs. Most of the financial data refer to the value of the machine estimated in 2001 (expressed in IUA) allowing each member to convert the figures in their own currency. However, none of the press releases issued at the end of the ITER Council meetings mention this value or its corresponding total cost. Most members do not wish to publicly communicate these amounts or increases in them. It is possible to consult documents belonging to the European Commission since this institution keeps accurate and accessible accounting documents (as appropriate for public funding). This led to the cost estimates presented in the previous pages. Unfortunately, it is true that until 2022 there has been a lack of transparency around ITER that could create a climate of suspicion undermining public communication of the ITER Organization on the project. Since 2001 ITER’s baseline has been revised twice. Table 8.1 very briefly summarises the original baseline and each revision. The table shows that in 2010 and 2016 the date foreseen for the First Plasma was shifted by about ten years. As a further revision is expected in 2024, will the First Plasma happen in 2035? These figures show that as a result of each revision the European contribution has almost doubled and is now more than five times its value in 2001. It can safely be assumed that the contributions of other members have increased in a similar way. Therefore, this begs the question as to why the cost of ITER or more precisely, the European contribution to the programme increased by so much. No doubt the delays have contributed to the increase, but it turns out that there are many other reasons. Table 8.1 Schedule and European funding for the three successive ITER baselines defining the budget, scope and schedule of the project

Baseline

Date foreseen for the First Plasma

European contribution to the construction (billions of euros, 2008 value)

2001 2010 2016

2016 2019–2020 2025

2.4 6.5 13.69

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One is the late finalisation of the design of the tokamak. The first estimates were based on a “generic” machine that was designed in 2001, but whose plans were still not detailed enough to make a robust cost estimate. Moreover, this theoretical machine had to be adapted to the situation in Cadarache, which meant certain buildings had to increase in size. At that point, the buildings as a whole were considered little more than “standard components” without a detailed technical description of their structures and interfaces. Moreover, the 2001 estimate did not include changes in labour costs or inflation and did not provide any margin for contingencies. It also underestimated the complexity of the installation and assembly operations and did not provide for on-site storage of components. More fundamentally, by 2008 research in the field of fusion had made significant progress and modifications were made to the machine as part of a detailed design review such as the addition of some magnets for the control of instabilities. These changes substantially increased the overall cost of the project. At the same time, the number of ITER members grew from four to seven, thereby increasing the number of interfaces in the machine’s design. Moreover, construction costs have significantly increased since 2001 (e.g. steel has quadrupled in price and concrete has tripled—and this does not take into account the galloping inflation across the world since 2022). Finally, the disastrous accident of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant impacted ITER. As a result of the disaster certain safety and security measures were reviewed with consequent budget increases and construction delays.

The ITER Budget is “Peanuts” Unsurprisingly, politicians and decision-makers do not look favourably at these successive budget increases. This is particularly true of Europe since the European Union is the partner with the biggest share of the construction costs of the project. Furthermore, the European Union’s budgetary procedures are not suitable for major and regular revisions. As already mentioned, the Council and Parliament refused the new ITER budget in 2009 and 2010. The US Senate has advocated leaving the ITER project, and the administration is six years behind in paying its cash contribution.10 The same is true of the Indian government. 10 The US fusion energy programme budget will increase 7% in 2023, reflecting the growing interest in fusion. It should also bring the United States up to date with deferred payments to ITER.

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Although the Council of the EU confirmed “its unanimous support to the project” in November 2009, ministers have made their support conditional and demanded that ITER complies with the boundary (financial) conditions laid down by the Commission, improves its project management, and defines clear cost containment measures. Following explanations given by the European Commission in a communication published on May 5, 2010,11 calling for a revision of the project’s governance and proposing some mechanisms to remain within budget, in July 2010 the Council finally approved additional funding of EUR1.4 billion using unused funds in the EU budget and redirecting EUR460 million from the Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. This episode had a profound effect on EU institutions by pushing EU procedures to their limits. Senior officials realised that ITER posed a serious double risk not only to the European Union’s but also to ITER’s very existence. Therefore, just a week later the Commission suggested removing ITER from the Framework Programmes that had funded the project up to that point and to creating a new line in the EU budget specifically for ITER. Finally, on December 1, 2011, the Council and the European Parliament agreed to allocate unused EU funds worth a further EUR1.4 billion as additional funding for ITER in 2012 and 2013 to fully cover the cost overruns. As already explained, nowadays the ITER Organization monitors the project’s day-to-day progress, thereby immediately identifying problems. There is a detailed schedule covering the period from now to First Plasma (still officially December 2025) and then up to full-performance operation (the D-T phase) in 2035. However, this is not the end of the story. In June 2018, when the time came to fix the budget for the period 2021–2027, the Commission proposed the allocation of EUR6.07 billion to ITER. However, we now know that the revision of 2016 is definitely not the last one and many surprises, good and bad, may happen between now and 2025—let alone up to 2035. In December 2016, only a month after the adoption of the new baseline, there were some whispers behind-the-scenes about even the current deadlines not being met. The truth is that delays are used as strategic weapons by certain members of the project because they allow budget increases to be extended (and diluted) over a longer period of time thus reducing the annual impact. Moreover, the Domestic Agencies are still discovering work to be done that has not yet been included in the overall project budget.

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This explains why the Council of Ministers urged the management of the ITER Organization and Fusion for Energy to adopt further cost containment and risk reduction measures. They called on all stakeholders to rigorously commit to successful, cost-efficient and on-schedule completion of the ITER project within budget and stressed the importance to stay strictly within the baseline. Despite its bureaucratic style, the message was clear. At the ITER conference held in Monaco in February 2013, I invited a number of high-level financiers and investors as speakers. I wanted to get this community to interact with fusion scientists since these two groups generally never meet or work together. Daniel Allen, an executive manager of several investment funds, confessed that he didn’t understand why ITER’s budget has created so many issues. For a technology that could revolutionise the future and change the course of civilisation, EUR20 billion, EUR30 billion or even EUR40 billion are, he said, “peanuts.” Just compare that with the financial exchanges taking place every day and the amounts invested in some projects that clearly do not warrant the investment. For example, the European contribution to ITER, which was valued at EUR 6.6 billion up to 2020, equalled the fine paid in 2013 by the French bank BNP Paribas to the US justice for unauthorised financial transactions. The estimated cost of ITER is about 1% of the civil research budget of its members.12 Is it too much? Or not enough? What do you think? In any case, the decision to build ITER was a political one.

References 1. Communication from the commission to the European parliament and to the council (2017) EU contribution to a reformed ITER project COM (2017) 319 final. European Commission, Brussels. https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ ener/files/documents/eu_contribution_to_a_reformed_iter_project_en.pdf 2. Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council (2010) ITER status and possible way forward COM (2010) 226 final, European Commission, Brussels. https://publications.europa.eu/en/publicationdetail/-/publication/ba4e3187-f032-4443-8e4a-2eef5e7c5812/language-en

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However, according to IEA data, the construction cost of ITER represents up to twice the world’s annual public spending on energy research estimated at USD21.6 billion in 2017, https://www.iea. org/tcep/innovation/tracking-rdd/.

9 How to Manage Such a Complex Programme?

Abstract Few will disagree that ITER is a huge multifaceted project management challenge, one that is technological, industrial, organisational, and logistical and concerns people. How can decentralised manufacturing be managed across over 35 countries? How can any timetable be respected when industry itself generates many risks and unforeseen events because it is dealing with a unique and unprecedented programme? How can budget increases be kept at least to a minimum if not completely avoided? How can such a complex endeavour that involves several thousand people all over the world be kept under control? How can staff be motivated staff when high pressure and heavy workload are part of daily life? Moreover, most important of all, how can a unique and unprecedented programme that has no reference point be managed when it comes to its organisation and management? This chapter explains the management and the governance that have been put in place by the ITER Organization and the seven Domestic Agencies under the supervision of the ITER Council. Many changes were brought in after the publication of a management assessment report in 2013 that was highly critical. Although the full report has never been made public, the summary was crystal clear: “There has been a lack of strong project management culture inside the ITER Organization. The ITER Organization’s culture appears to be more academic and research oriented, which has often led to protracted debates and impeded rapid progress. […] As a result, many of the best ideas were never heard nor expressed and key decisions lacked ownership.” ITER can be described as a political project in that it is managed by politicians.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_9

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However, despite featuring what Robert Bell calls political technology (technology developed and showcased for political reasons) ITER is a driving force behind research and industry in fusion. ITER governance reflects the importance of the “technostructure.” As argued by John Kenneth Galbraith, the stockholders are without real power and decisions are effectively taken by groups of experts. ITER also bears out the theses of French sociologist Jacques Ellul who came to the conclusion that humankind today can play only a secondary role in the development of technology. Keywords ITER · Management · Governance · Political · ITER council · Delays · Cost You don’t need to be a specialist in the field to appreciate that ITER is a huge multifaceted project management challenge, one that is technological, industrial, organisational, and logistical and concerns people. How can decentralised manufacturing be managed across 35 countries? How can any timetable be respected when industry itself generates many risks and unforeseen events because it is dealing with a unique and unprecedented programme? How can budget increases be kept at least to a minimum if not completely avoided? How can such a complex endeavour that involves several thousand people all over the world be kept under control? How can staff be motivated staff when high pressure and heavy workload are part of daily life? Moreover, most important of all, how can a unique and unprecedented programme that has no reference point be managed when it comes to its organisation and management? Scientists are not natural managers as many of them will freely admit. The first Directors General knew this and decided that the management of the ITER Organization would be evaluated every two years. Each member of the ITER Council takes on the responsibility of evaluation on a rotating basis. So, since 2007, a dozen of management assessment reports have been completed despite not being made available to the public. As we will see, their conclusions have all been generally the same from one to the next, except for the report of 2013. Why? As already pointed out the project’s difficulties date all the way back to its beginning in 2007. One of the top priorities was to launch the first procurement arrangements and calls for tenders as quickly as possible so as to make a start on manufacturing. With 7 members, 7 Domestic Agencies, 35 countries, and what would grow to several thousand companies all over the world the ITER Organization’s management also had to figure out how all

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of the actors would work together. Another top priority was the design and implementation of the quality assurance and quality control procedures. These difficulties were compounded by the ITER Organization’s senior management posts being filled late—often several weeks or months after its establishment. In accordance with the Broader Approach Agreement reached between EURATOM and Japan on May 5, 2005, the first Director General of the ITER Organisation would be Japanese. Kaname Ikeda was chosen, a diplomat with a nuclear engineering background who had held several research-related posts in the Japanese government. Ikeda quickly appointed Norbert Holtkamp, a German physicist, as Deputy Director General. They could not have been more different. Ikeda was very much a diplomat, always polite and impeccably dressed, while Holtkamp gave the impression of a stereotypical scientist, a poor manager but always cool and resistant to constraints. There were delays and cost increases even within the first few months of the project. The ITER Organization’s managers realized that the detailed design of the tokamak was far from completion. As early as 2008 they understood that the original schedule was not viable, and that they would have to increase the budget for construction and manufacturing. At the end of 2009, the ITER Council approved the first schedule change postponing the first experiments to 2018–2019 (instead of 2016) and the deuterium-tritium (D-T) experiments to 2026. However, EURATOM’s representatives argued that it would be impossible to complete construction by 2018. At the next Council meeting in spring 2010, the seven members decided to postpone First Plasma to November 2019, the latest possible date at that time. In parallel, as we have seen, the European Commission was working hard to obtain an agreement from the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament for additional funding totalling EUR1.4 billion for 2012–2013.

New Directors General At that time most ITER members came to the conclusion that a change was needed at the top of the ITER Organization. They even agreed on the desired profile of the candidate: a senior manager with professional experience in a major fusion project. On July 28, 2010, the ITER Council terminated the contract of Kaname Ikeda and appointed Osamu Motojima. Another Japanese national (since the term of office of the first Director General was not completed in the usual way the agreement between the European Union and Japan was still applicable) Motojima was a physicist by training and a

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former director of the Japanese National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS) in the city of Toki between Tokyo and Osaka. From 1990 to 1998 Motojima oversaw the construction of the Large Helical Device that at that time was the world’s largest superconducting stellarator, located in Naka. He seemed to be the right scientist in the right place at the right time. However, it seems that the Council didn’t realise they asked a scientist to lead a construction project… The ITER Council tasked Motojima the priority objective of controlling costs, maintaining the timetable, and simplifying project management. Motojima made every effort to fulfill this objective. To improve project coordination, notoriously ineffective given the distribution of work over eight sites, he tried to unify the staff and create a Unique ITER Team by getting the heads of the Domestic Agencies to come to Cadarache for a week once every month to review progress and sort out problems. The idea was good, but the problems went deeper. Motojima’s experience, certainly very relevant to managing a fusion research programme, was probably not ideal when it came to coordinating an international project struggling with industrial and organisational difficulties. Furthermore, Motojima made the mistake of not using his first few months to review the situation himself and make his own recommendations. He had the unenvious task of informing the ITER Council of further delays and cost increases. This led to criticism of the management surfacing again. The situation culminated in 2013, with the publication of the biennial management assessment report, this time drafted by three US experts. The report was highly critical. Much like previous management assessments the Madia Report (named for its lead author) highlighted the lack of cooperation between the ITER Organization and the Domestic Agencies. This was anything but new. Can employees working 10,000 km from the ITER site be blamed for lacking team spirit? However, this report highlighted other critical issues. The assessors stressed that the lack of cooperation extends to within the ITER Organization itself. They were highly critical of senior management and the decision-making process. The full Madia Report has never been made public,1 but the summary was very clear: “There has been a lack of strong project management culture inside the ITER Organization. The ITER Organization’s culture appears to be more academic and research oriented, which has often led to protracted debates and impeded rapid progress. There 1

The report has never officially been published, but the executive summary was put online by a journalist from The New Yorker, Raffi Katchadourian, who investigated ITER over several months and published one of the best articles (in my opinion) on the subject: Katchadourian R [1]. The summary is available at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1031934-2013-iter-managementassessment.html.

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has been too much focus on achieving organisational ‘harmony’ instead of tangible project management results. The management assessment team was unable to observe a sense of urgency, a ‘passion’ for success, a commitment to rapidly finding solutions for every problem, or an agile and nimble project organization. Too often the culture lacked a ‘constructive confrontation’ component between staff and management, and even between managers. As a result, many of the best ideas were never heard nor expressed and key decisions lacked ownership.” Nobody seemed to want to make decisions in a multibillion-euro programme. This pithy conclusion might appear too strong from the outside since the programme was making steady, if not rapid, progress. However, given the nature of the evaluation and the project’s specific troubles it is no surprise that the Madia Report presented management and organisational shortcomings as the source of the problems. But at what level? These issues are not uncommon for major technology projects, and experience shows that projects like this tend to cost around three times their initial estimate (sometimes called the pi factor as pi is roughly 3.14). So, why blame management? Reading the Madia Report in detail provides a nuanced perspective. There were some management issues of course, but the report also highlighted a number of very good points in the project. Although real progress had been made, issues were still evident. The fact is that you cannot manage a project like ITER by focusing only on its technical aspects. Concentrating on the traditional quality-schedule-cost triangle and risk management is not enough. So, what would you do if you were appointed Director General of the ITER Organization? According to established best practices in project management2 you would probably ensure that all stakeholders actively cooperated. You would also make sure to integrate all staff irrespective of their geographic location and promote team creativity. You would implement the best professional practices and try to get the best out of every employee. Last but not least, you would try to be a charismatic and enthusiastic boss facilitating quick decisions and providing strong leadership. However, all this is easier said than done. From this point of view, the first two Directors General of the ITER Organisation were probably not the best people for the job. They were not natural communicators or used to working with industry. In the last months of their mandates, the number of working groups, task forces and subcommittees exploded. Clearly, there was something wrong.

2

See, for example, Drucker [2].

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The Madia Report shook up things in the fusion world. The ITER Council decided to replace Osamu Motojima at the beginning of 2015 and invited the seven members to submit applications. The context was difficult because at the time the United States was considering leaving the project for the second time. And some said that it was the Madia Report that paved the way for another US withdrawal. And some say that the Madia Report has been drafted by the US… Inside the ITER Organization, the staff knew very well that the change of Director General, although desirable for the continuation of the programme, would not solve its problems. This is a fundamental point since some key decisions were not in the hands of top management. We will come back to this. Now, a final remark on the Madia Report. In my opinion, it failed to identify the crucial issue of staff management and recruitment. Indeed, almost no two ITER employees benefited from the same conditions since there were so many different types of contracts, grades, and geographical locations. Correctly, the Madia Report recommended using “human resources and tools as a strategic asset for performance improvement and change.” However, the report did not mention the fact that for several years the number of employees was capped at 600 as per a decision by the ITER Council. Everyone knew that this was ridiculously low given the project’s complexity and challenges. The ITER Organization circumvented this constraint by recruiting subcontractors, who did not officially appear on the ITER Organization’s payroll. This practice terminated when the Director General discovered that ITER’s designers, who were genuinely building the machine, were all external to the organisation. The report also said nothing about the “political” recruitments and the issues inherent to using scientists as team leaders. There has been little change in recent years. The appointment of senior managers is still not sufficiently transparent. Staff motivation was quite low, given the heavy workload and the incompetence of some senior managers. As we will see in the last two chapters, several wrong decisions have been taken in the last years. Moreover, the ITER Organization failed to consider the ITER staff in its globality (i.e. combination of the teams in Cadarache and in the seven members) and not just the personnel of the ITER Organization. Human resource management is still ITER’s Achilles’ heel. Following the decease of Bernard Bigot on May 14, 2022, Pietro Barabaschi has been appointed as the fourth Director General of the ITER Organization, starting his five-year term on October 17, 2022. Trained as an electro-mechanical engineer, Pietro Barabaschi has spent virtually his entire career in the service of fusion research. From 2008 to 2022, he has been the

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Head of Broader Approach Programme and Delivery for Fusion for Energy. Most ITER staff were relieved by his appointment as Pietro Barabaschi put emphasis on scientific integrity right from the beginning of his mandate: “We need to stop hiding problems to our stakeholders and to ourselves. The more you ‘decorate’ the truth, the harder it will eventually hit you back. In a firstof-a-kind project such as ITER, issues, challenges, setbacks and errors are to be expected. So let’s get rid of whatever fear permeates reports and interactions; let’s get rid of what is antagonistic in the ITER Project’s present culture,” he said in one of his first interviews.3

“The Project Progresses Alone” One of the things that I find most extraordinary about ITER is that despite its many complexities the machine continues to grow and inch forward day by day. As a chemist, I have basic knowledge of such fields as physics, thermodynamics, magnetism, material science, and information technology. However, I will never have a complete understanding of the ITER project. The problem is not my personal education and training. It is simply impossible for anyone to understand every facet of ITER in all its intricacies. No one can say that he or she knows ITER completely. At the very most someone could probably demonstrate a full understanding of a number of components (out of approximately 1 million) or certain technologies. Since ITER’s technology is split into a myriad of subsystems that are more or less closed and as we ourselves are fragmented into many similarly closed professional subgroups, everyone operates in a small community and has difficulty communicating with other communities. This is reflected in the usual way of managing complex projects. There is an idea in project management called “slicing the elephant” that involves breaking down a complex issue or project into welldefined and easy-to-manage chunks. For ITER this would involve breaking down the entire project into systems, subsystems, and components; breaking down all required work into work packages; and establishing a schedule governance that incorporates the activities of all the partners. However, such a reductionist approach may not be best suited to ITER as shown by the endless series of delays and accumulation of cost overruns. Reductionism is a direct illustration of the scientific approach. However, it has its limits. When studying components, even in minute detail, you cannot recreate the complexity of the system. These ideas have been explored

3

ITER Organization [3].

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further by, among others, Edgar Morin, one of France’s leading contemporary thinkers. He expressed concern about the inability of traditional knowledge to grasp the complexity of reality and for many decades urged a shift towards complex thinking.4 In an interview given to Nature in July 20145 shortly before leaving his post Osamu Motojima acknowledged the great complexity of relations between the ITER Organization and the seven members: “About two years ago, I created the Unique ITER team with the ITER Organization and seven Domestic Agencies to tackle this problem. The situation has improved a lot, but you are right: the problem comes from the basic design, that ITER is an international project. We are working hard every day—we want each member to maximise their benefit while cooperating. But some parts of ITER’s structure that make it complex are important to fulfilling the project’s other big objective: that all the intellectual property obtained is available equally to all seven members.” I believe Motojima wanted to stress here that the project’s culture had to be more academic than industrial to effectively share knowledge. In my view perceiving decision-making processes as deficient is common to all high-tech projects. Such a perception is reinforced by the feeling that the absence of a global mastery of the project—mastery instead being shared by all the experts and technicians working for it—implies that no one is in control of the project as a whole. This particularly applies to management who are prone to developing a genuine ambivalence, either fundamental or existential. Can we build a machine nobody fully grasps (i.e. has a global understanding of )? Individual technical systems are generally well understood since they involve people belonging to the same discipline or profession. The real challenge lies in the interfaces where these systems come into contact and interact with each other. Under these circumstances, managers can be tempted to postpone decisions or delegate them to others. Despite featuring what Robert Bell calls political technology (technology developed and showcased for political reasons)6 ITER is a real driving force for research and industry in fusion. However, it must be acknowledged that the project generally implements technologies that have already been developed and reflect the state of the art rather than actively being at the cutting edge. This is recognised by the project’s promoters. Motojima used to say that ITER would not create any major innovation. Putting aside specific historical circumstances the decision to build ITER could be seen as a natural, 4

Morin [4]. Gibney [5]. 6 Bell [6]. 5

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almost inevitable extension and translation of the scientific and technological fusion knowledge at the end of the last century. Taking that view to the next level it could be argued that the only real decision that has ever been made about ITER was the initiative taken in 1985 by Reagan and Gorbachev. Looked at cynically implementation of the project depended less on managerial decisions than on finding solutions to technical problems. As pointed out by the Madia Report in 2013 the project’s leadership was not very strong, at least until 2015. Inside the ITER Organization, there was the general impression that the project was moving forward all on its own. Milestones were still being reached, even though there was some delay. This seemed to justify the management’s focusing on noncritical decisions and trivial issues. My colleagues and I used to amuse ourselves with Gedankenexperiments (“thought experiments”) when it came to imagining an ideal candidate for the top job at ITER. A scientist, a politician, an industrialist, or maybe all three7 ? We could only wonder. After his appointment in March 2015, Bernard Bigot, the ITER Director General as he liked to introduce himself (rather than the ITER Organization’s Director General), quickly made a number of good decisions. He convinced the ITER members to set up a “reserve fund”, a special budget line enabling him to approve and finance missing components or changes in certain components compared with the baseline so as not to delay the whole project (previously, changes would lead to endless discussions between members about how to finance them). However, this fund is still somewhat controversial, as some reports have given contradictory feedback about its exact impact on the project. Bigot also set up an Executive project board composed of ITER’s senior management and the heads of the Domestic Agencies that initially met once a month, strengthened the operational management of the organisation and improved communication with the industry as a key stakeholder. However, some decisions came quite late. The ITER Organization made the decision to handle risks and contingencies that could affect ITER’s construction together with the Domestic Agencies only five years ago. Risks are everywhere in such a complex and sophisticated project such as late

7

The current ITER Director General, Pietro Barabaschi, is a scientist by background who got acquainted with major fusion projects (he is a former head of the JT-60SA tokamak built by Europe and Japan). The previous one, Bernard Bigot (who passed away on May 14, 2022), a former head of the CEA, had a triple profile of being a scientist, a manager of large technology programmes and experienced in international politics. The dark side is that he was used to managing staff as in a ministerial office, and he liked to fire people with immediate effect. The ITER Organization has been condemned in several cases by the administrative tribunal of the International Labour Organization (ILO) based in Geneva.

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delivery of a component, detection of a nonconformity, a budget shortage, and bankruptcy of a contractor. Managing ITER could be seen as essentially a giant risk management exercise. Therefore, it is odd that risk management was so decentralised for so much of the project. However, despite all the best attempts to predict the unpredictable no one can achieve the impossible. ITER has been a formidable challenge from the very beginning and will remain so until the end.

ITER, Ellul, and Galbraith The ITER Council is the governing body of the ITER Organization and makes the major decisions such as appointing the Director General and senior staff, steering the project’s overall direction, and approving the annual budget. Unless something unforeseen happens the Council meets twice a year (in June and November). Each member has three seats on the ITER Council. Normally, the members send a delegation of about ten people to accompany them (experts, interpreters, etc.). The meetings are in general very well prepared and run smoothly. Almost all of the substantive work is carried out in advance by the various technical committees (four in total) that advise the Council.8 In fact, the system resembles a sort of United Nations of technology. This method of governance is common to major international organisations and reflects the importance of “technostructure.” As argued by a number of authors including John Kenneth Galbraith9 modern organisations and even society as a whole are often characterised by the fact that the locus of power and decision-making is divorced from the formal hierarchy or government. The power is not always where or with whom we think it is. Group decision-making in a complex structure like the ITER Council is not solely contained in the hierarchy and the representatives who sit on it, but is influenced by specialised tacit knowledge, peer review and expert advice. The effective power lies in the many levels and sublevels of the organisation chart; in the galaxy of experts, technicians, and other specialists linked to the different departments; and in the contractors who prepare the technical documents that should in principle support the decision (but which, in practice, often already contain the decision). Modern organisations are thus governed 8 The ITER Council is supported by the following advisory bodies: the Science and Technology Advisory Committee (STAC), the Management Advisory Committee (MAC), the Financial Audit Board (FAB), and the Management Assessor. 9 See, in particular, Galbraith JK [7].

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by their techno structure: the stockholders are without real power, the board of directors is a passive instrument, and decisions are effectively made by groups of experts. All that is left to management is mainly the organisation of the follow-up work, the composition of technical committees, and public relations in the broad sense of the word. ITER also bears out the theses of sociologist and theologian Jacques Ellul, a leading French thinker. In the second part of the twentieth century, Jacques Ellul was fascinated by the rapid and uncontrolled (perhaps uncontrollable) expansion of technology. He identified universal trends such as self-augmentation and developmental autonomy of technology.10 In pursuit of a fundamental logic, Ellul came to the conclusion that humankind today can play only a secondary role in the development of technology. Ellul’s books are amazingly modern and prophetic in their analyses. He writes: “Technique 11 is the driver of everything else, despite appearances and despite man’s pride, which claims that his philosophical theories still have determining power and his political regimes are decisive for progress. Technique is no longer determined by external necessities but by internal ones. It has become a reality in itself, sufficient unto itself, with its particular laws and its own decisions.” ITER is a very good manifestation of these ideas. We will come back to them in the conclusion.

A Political Project Is ITER a political project? The idea of course was launched by two political leaders, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, when they jointly advocated “the widest practicable development of international cooperation in obtaining [controlled thermonuclear fusion] energy, which is essentially inexhaustible, for the benefit of all mankind.” However, this proposal was actively supported, if not entirely conceived, by the scientific community. This is often the case when politicians make decisions to build very large-scale scientific instruments or launch major research projects. Expert committees will draw up proposals taking into account the current state of the technology, the available budget, and above all the expected results, which they then submit at the appropriate time to their political decision-makers who will then decide to move forward—or not. So, how is ITER different? Why would ITER be any more (or less) of a political project? 10

See, for example, Ellul [8]. French scholars of the time used the word technique in their analysis to refer to technology, although their meanings are not exactly equivalent. 11

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ITER can be considered a political project in that it is managed by politicians. The ITER Council is composed of representatives of the governments of each member. They are either ministers or very high-level officials. It is indubitably a political body. Hence, the ITER Council is very different from the board of a company. The negotiations that take place within it are negotiations between governments, and yet it is the ITER Council that has to endorse industrial contracts, manage a huge worksite and work out long lists of technological issues. These duties do not exactly fit the archetypal profile of a government envoy; however, there is no doubt that the members of the Council are committed to the project and are making every effort to ensure its success—first and foremost to maximise its financial return. The investments already made and the project’s international reputation confirm this. However, the reasons for the ITER project being political are in fact more profound. Fusion by magnetic confinement has been since the first tokamaks supported by the highest political authorities who want to maintain control of nuclear technology and at the same time benefit from its potentially considerable benefits. Remember that the Soviet scientific delegation that visited the Harwell Centre in 1956 was led by Nikita Khrushchev himself and that a speech on “Atoms for Peace” was given by Eisenhower. The ITER project was born in a political context and supported not only for scientific reasons, but also for diplomatic and strategic ones. Let’s again quote the Nobel laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes: “The ITER project has been supported by Brussels for reasons of political image and this is a mistake.12 ” Nuclear fusion is very different to fission. Magnetic confinement offers governments an opportunity to develop a new nuclear energy that is safer (therefore, more marketable) and devoid of military applications. An ITER Council meeting runs like a Council of Ministers. The main objective of the Chair and the participants is to seek consensus. The reason for this is that most decisions need to be taken unanimously. There is no room for long debates and confrontations. The dark side is that the primary objective is often to satisfy the government of individual ITER members. According to some representatives, the documents prepared by the ITER Organization for the ITER Council paint a picture of a very well-functioning project, which does not always reflect the reality. When I started drafting the Council’s press releases I quickly realised that no ITER delegation wanted to put forward a particular proposal or disclose a precise estimate of the construction costs. Most members just relay the instructions of their governments who generally avoid giving publicity to budgetary data since it may

12

Les Echos of January 12, 2006.

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open a new political discussion on ITER. The bottom line is to show that the project is progressing. The Council’s meetings are carefully prepared, have a detailed agenda, are precisely timed, and dozens of working papers and presentations are distributed in advance; there is little room for improvisation. Moreover, if participants do occasionally make somewhat ferocious comments, it is generally because they want to send a signal to the other delegations about their position or to show their own government that they have put their message across. The decisions of the ITER Council are built on the preparatory work of four expert committees that provide strong and well-documented recommendations to the Council. At first sight, this system of operational functioning does not seem ideal. Indeed, it is ineffective when the Council is facing difficulties or crises. However, in 2015, the Council gave more responsibility to the Director General of the ITER Organization making it easier for him to manage difficult situations. Moreover, this proximity to government circles has even been an advantage since the adoption of the first baseline in 2001 rather than being negative. It facilitated the translation of cost increases into budgetary revisions, although these proved nevertheless to be difficult. Without this link between scientific players and political spheres, things would have been much more difficult. What is sometimes perceived as a slow, ponderous system has helped to overcome difficult times and get through problems that otherwise would have ruined the project. However, to be fair, these achievements are also attributable to those who have led the project and chaired the ITER Council.

Compensation and Benefits The political dimension of the ITER programme is also demonstrated by member nations being allocated compensation for political decisions. The selection of Cadarache as ITER’s location was a political decision, and it was only made possible thanks to compensation offered to Japan (particularly the funding of a dedicated research programme and allocating the appointment of the first Director General of the ITER Organization to the Japanese government). Along the same lines, the Spanish government’s decision to withdraw Vandellòs candidature to host ITER was followed by a decision to establish the European Domestic Agency in Barcelona. Until 2015 the two Japanese Directors General of ITER were required to have seven deputy Directors General, one from each member, to respect political balance

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and national sensitivities. Actually, things remained much the same and any attempt to change the geopolitical forces within the ITER Organization has little chance of success. Politics have affected recruitment since the very beginning in 2007 when some parties proposed only one person for “their” deputy Director General. As a result, the Council was unable to select the most competent person. The political dimension was also very visible when responsibility for manufacturing two sectors of the vacuum chamber was proposed to be transferred from Europe to South Korea. The decision even sparked concerns in the European Parliament where some members expressed worries about the negative consequences of this change in terms of market shares and corporate image. Similarly, no one member is prepared to take responsibility for delays. The project’s history also demonstrates the advantages of its political dimension. By means of policy-makers the fusion community has found a way to anchor itself to the real world. With all due respect, scientists are not necessarily best placed to manage a programme like ITER since so much of it is located in industry. Nevertheless, this proximity is sometimes perceived as a threat since policy-makers have the ability to turn the subsidy tap off. Finally, although I consider magnetic confinement fusion as a “diplomatic technology”, it is important not to overestimate the political aspects of the project. At Council meetings, the representatives do try to act in the most responsible way. They are aware they are managing public money and are acting in the public interest. Everyone is aware of other representatives’ difficulties, and nobody wants to lose face. There is undeniably a genuine sense of solidarity. During my five-year contract in Cadarache, I witnessed but a couple of decisions that were taken in a partisan or political way. The most visible one (although it had little impact) was the decision to move an ITER Council meeting from Moscow to Cadarache in 2014 as a result of there being at that time intense political tensions between Russia, on the one hand, and the United States and Europe, on the other. However, for a “political” project the extent to which it is affected by geopolitics is quite trivial. This was further confirmed by the war between Russia and Ukraine. Many people were surprised to learn that Russia delivered poloidal field coil PF1 to ITER on February 10, 2023, showing that the cooperation with this country was still continuing (see Fig. 9.1). The reality is that, first, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and related sanctions appear to have only caused relatively minor delays to the timeline and that, second, the ITER agreement does not allow members to kick one of them out of the project. Let us not forget here that science has always had and will always have a political dimension. Of course, the detection of gravitational waves or the

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Fig. 9.1 Poloidal field coil PF1 arrived from Saint Petersburg at the ITER site on February 10, 2023, after a journey of more than three months. This circular magnet is the most massive contribution of Russia to ITER (it measures 9 m in diameter and weighs 160 tonnes). From ITER Organization

discovery of a new elementary particle will probably have no impact on government elections. However, our access to high-level scientific knowledge, such as the secrets of the universe and the construction of reality, is inseparable from the social, economic, and political context in which scientists work if only because the resources devoted to these activities are allocated right from the top. Moreover, because scientific research is carried out by ordinary men and women, scientists’ opinions and ideologies interfere and may distort their work. The idea that science is pure, represents a neutral force independent of the real world, has never been true and is probably less so today than ever. Politics directly influences the development of scientific knowledge, and not just through decisions about funding. Galileo was imprisoned because the Roman Catholic Inquisition declared that heliocentrism was formally heretical. The rejection of Gregor Mendel’s genetics research by the Soviet Union was based until the 1950s on pseudo-scientific ideas. On the positive side, it was French President Charles de Gaulle, inspired by the success of the Manhattan Project during the Second World War, who decided to build the CEA in 1959 along with other governments that launched major scientific programmes to develop civil applications (together with military ones).

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More recently, we have seen in the United States and other countries that public opinion on scientific subjects, such as climate change or vaccination, can also be influenced by politics and ideologies. Remember Alan Sokal’s 1996 hoax, which showed that an ideological and political construction can go through the peer-review filters of specialised journals and be accepted as a scientific article.13 Paul Feyerabend goes so far as to assert that politics is present in science itself.14 According to the famous epistemologist the very essence of science—how it is built (through scientific publications and peer reviews) and the way in which paradigms change—is of a political nature. He challenged the universal belief that the so-called scientific method can produce scientific progress: science can progress only if it builds on nonscientific elements. Galileo, Feyerabend argues, would not have advanced heliocentric cosmology if he had followed the pure scientific method. This is why Feyerabend advocates an “epistemological anarchy” as opposed to the scientific method. Science casts a penetrating light on the world around us and offers us powerful tools, but these are all but neutral and “pure.”

References 1. Katchadourian R (2014) A star in a bottle. The New Yorker. http://www.new yorker.com/magazine/2014/03/03/a-star-in-a-bottle 2. Drucker P (1993) Management: tasks, responsibilities, practices. Harper Collins, New York 3. ITER Organization (2022, October 10) An Emphasis on Collaboration and Integrity. Newsline, https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3792 4. Morin E (2008) On complexity. Hampton Press, New York 5. Gibney E (2014) Five-year delay would spell end of ITER. Nature. https://doi. org/10.1038/nature.2014.15621 6. Bell R (1998) Les Péchés capitaux de la haute technologie. Seuil, Paris 7. Galbraith JK (1967) The new industrial state. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 8. Ellul J (1980) The technological system. Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon 9. Sokal A (1996) Transgressing the boundaries: towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity. Soc Text (46/47):217–252 10. Feyerabend P (1975) Against method: outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge. Verso Books, New York

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Sokal A [9]. Feyerabend P [10].

10 Is ITER Really Safe and Clean?

Abstract Can we say that magnetic confinement fusion is a clean technology when several thousand tonnes of radioactive material will be produced during ITER’s lifetime? And what about safety? True, the deuterium-tritium reaction is not a chain reaction, but does this allow us to say that fusion is completely safe? Such major questions call for clear answers. However, as often happens it is not easy to find the relevant information in the available technical literature. Although nothing is hidden and relatively detailed documents are in the public domain, such reading is not easy for the layman, in this chapter I summarise the main information available about ITER’s impact on the environment, safety, and waste management. Despite some well-known problems, magnetic confinement fusion is undeniably a cleaner technology than nuclear fission since it will produce no long-lived radioactive waste and less waste overall. ITER has been designed to withstand all possible and conceivable accidents. The fact that very little fuel will be needed in the device at any one time is of course very reassuring. Another strong argument in favour of ITER’s safety is that it is under the control of the French nuclear regulator (ASN), one of the most rigorous ones in the world. However, experts consider that the fusion community will soon face new safety challenges because future demonstration reactors will be different from ITER. Such differences will have a significant impact on the design and hence on safety. Keywords ITER · Safety · Risks · Natural · Waste · Radioactive · Tritium · Hazards

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_10

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Introduction When I was working in Cadarache, I remember that meetings would sometimes get stuck—not because of everyday issues—but because of fundamental disagreements between participants. I noticed this phenomenon even at the highest level. The reasons for these tensions are as varied as the programme is complex. For my part, I found the issue of public communication a struggle, especially when presenting the project to a general audience. The Director General liked to say that we were going “to bring a Sun to Cadarache.” However, we found that the locals took this expression literally and found it scary. I therefore recommended not to use this expression any more. Other colleagues raved about ITER and its objectives going so far as to present fusion as a “renewable” energy that was safe, clean, produced zero waste, and for which there was unlimited fuel. From this perspective, ITER represented the cure to all of the world’s ills. The question was no longer how to get out of nuclear energy but how to get in! I do not subscribe to this view. Proclaiming that fusion is a renewable energy is simply incorrect. It is true that we have enough deuterium in the oceans to produce fusion energy for millions of years, but it won’t be renewed. Can we say that magnetic confinement fusion is a clean technology when several thousand tonnes of radioactive material will be produced during ITER’s lifetime? And what about safety? True, the D-T reaction is not a chain reaction, but does this allow us to say that fusion is completely safe? Everyone agrees on at least one point: such major questions call for clear answers. But, as often happens it is not easy to find the relevant information in the available technical literature despite nothing being hidden and relatively detailed documents being in the public domain. For example, on the ITER Organization’s website, you can find the 2000 page safety file that was submitted to ASN in March 2010 as part of ITER’s nuclear licensing process.1 Much information is in the public domain but such reading is not easy for the layman. In this chapter, I will summarise the main information available about ITER’s impact on the environment, safety and waste management. If you want to skip this chapter and move on to the next, then all you really need to know is that ASN controls the entire site (particularly, those elements that have an effect on the environment, health, and safety). Given that it is widely accepted that ASN is one of the most rigorous nuclear regulators in the world you should be able to sleep soundly… 1 However, somewhat unexpectedly the information and the documents on this important issue exist only in French: http://www.iter.org/fr/dac.

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ITER is the first fusion device ever to go through the licensing process as a basic nuclear installation’ (BNI) under French law.2 This is mainly because ITER will have a significant inventory of tritium, a radioactive element, on-site—about 4 kg in total. Therefore, throughout construction, commissioning and operation, ITER’s safety processes have to comply with French regulations, as regularly verified by ASN through audits and inspections. Thus, since 2005, the ITER site has been the subject of very strict regulation; ASN carries out unannounced inspections on the Cadarache site once every two months on average. Some ITER members find it quite strange that an international project like ITER falls under the remit of French law. The answer lies in Article 14 of the ITER Agreement3 : “The ITER Organization shall observe applicable national laws and regulations of the Host State [France] in the fields of public and occupational health and safety, nuclear safety, radiation protection, licensing, nuclear substances, environmental protection and protection from acts of malevolence.” Therefore, before ITER could be built the ITER Organization had to provide the French authorities with evidence that every effort was being made to limit and monitor the impact on the environment and public health and that in any event it complied with the legislation in force. The ITER Organization submitted a preliminary safety report in March 2010 to ASN with a view to obtaining the authorisation to create the ITER BNI.4 Almost exactly one year later, the French Environmental Authority—whose opinion on ITER’s nuclear licensing files was required in accordance with the EEC Directive 97/11/EC of March 3, 1997, on environmental assessments— delivered a favourable opinion that included several recommendations to the ITER Organization. The next step was submission of the application to a public enquiry as required by the 2006 French Act on Nuclear Transparency and Safety. This investigation took place in the 13 municipalities closest to Cadarache between June 15 and July 20, 2011. However, taking account of the fact that some of 2

The BNI order setting the general rules relative to basic nuclear installations was published in the Official Journal of the French Republic on February 8, 2012. It incorporates rules corresponding to the best international practices into French law. As explained on the ASN website, “The provisions of the BNI Order primarily address the organisation and responsibilities of the BNI licensees, the demonstration of nuclear safety, the control of nuisance factors and their impact on health and the environment, waste management, and emergency situation preparedness and management.” See http://www.french-nuclear-safety.fr/Information/News-releases/General-technical-regulations-applic able-to-nuclear-facilities, accessed on May 6, 2019. 3 https://www.iter.org/doc/www/content/com/Lists/WebText_2014/Attachments/245/ITERAgreement. pdf. 4 This report is accessible online in agreement with article 29 of the French Act 2006–686 of June 13, 2006, on nuclear transparency and safety, http://www.iter.org/fr/dac (however, the link doesn’t work on some computers).

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the residents would be away at some point during the summer, the Commission in charge of the public enquiry decided to prolong the consultation until August 4, 2011. For almost two months, the public had the opportunity to make comments on and ask questions about the ITER project (in particular its environmental impact and its safety aspects). For my part, I was impressed by the high-quality work carried out by the members of the Commission.5 They really delved deep into the details of the file and developed a good understanding of it, studying technical documents for several months and having multiple contacts with the staff and management of the ITER Organization. They made every effort to understand the issues at stake, the principles of tokamak technology and the complexities of the project. I was also pleasantly surprised by the fact that they took into account all of the contributions that they received, even those that arrived well after the deadline. They received 10,606 documents in total, only 90 of which were unique—the other 10,516 were photocopies of an antinuclear petition. Therefore, the commissioners carried out not just a quantitative analysis but a genuine qualitative assessment. On the basis of these contributions the public inquiry Commission issued a “favourable advisory opinion” to the ITER programme on September 9, 2011, with a few recommendations. This opinion was an essential step towards the establishment of the ITER facility. A few weeks later, in September 2011, the Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), acting as ASN’s technical expert, submitted a 300 page report that included 800 questions about the ITER Organization to a group of 30 experts appointed by ASN called the Groupe Permanent. The Groupe Permanent issued a favourable report at the end of 2011. With this, nothing could prevent ITER being set up in France. On June 20, 2012, the Director General of the ITER Organization was officially informed by ASN that the in-depth technical analysis of the ITER design and the operational conditions of the reactor had been concluded and had produced a favourable outcome. Coincidentally, on this date the ITER Council was in the middle of its 10th meeting in Washington, and I remember the members of the seven delegations warmly applauding this announcement. On November 10, 2012, the French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault signed an official decree authorising the ITER Organization to create France’s 174th BNI under the name of “ITER” in the commune of Saint-Paul-lez-Durance (Bouches-du-Rhône). In parallel with this, the ITER Organization had to submit a nuclear safety 5 Presided over by André Grégoire, Honorary Senior Member of the Court of Auditors and appointed by the Bouches-du-Rhône administrative court, the ITER commission had five members, all volunteers.

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“stress test” report to ASN in late 2012. This kind of report was requested from all nuclear power plants and research infrastructures in France following the Fukushima Daaichi accident in March 2011. ASN recommended that the ITER Organization study, in particular, the potential impact of extreme climatic conditions such as tornadoes and hailstorms. However, the stress test report did not lead to any additional costs.

What Kind of Waste? A plasma is never completely isolated. Losing energy through heat makes it more difficult to maintain conditions in which fusion can take place. Impurities should also be avoided since they “pollute” plasma and degrade energy confinement and the device’s performance. Therefore, a strong vacuum is essential. These “boundary conditions” combined with the very little fuel that will be in the chamber (maximum 1–2 g) imply that a D-T fusion reactor like ITER will never produce large quantities of waste. Keep in mind that the fuel “burned” fuel in a fusion reactor after the reaction is helium, an inert gas. Nevertheless, it is estimated that ITER will generate about 100 tonnes of “hot materials” per year during operation. Neutrons hitting parts of the device will produce waste that is classified as very low-, low-, or medium-activity waste. All waste materials (such as components removed by remote handling during operation) will be treated, packaged and stored on-site. Because the half-life of most radioisotopes contained in this waste will be less than ten years, in 100 years the radioactivity will have diminished to such an extent that the materials could be recycled for use in other fusion plants. This timetable of 100 years could possibly be reduced for future devices through the continued development of “low-activation” materials, an important part of fusion research programmes today. Unlike conventional nuclear (fission) reactors, fusion reactors do not produce long-lived radioactive waste. High-energy neutrons, another product of the reactions (as well as helium), are not classified as waste. Nevertheless, neutrons will be responsible for the activation or contamination of some tokamak components such as the vacuum vessel, the fuel circuit, the cooling system, and even buildings. During operations, some irradiated material will be transferred within a confinement cask to enclosed, shielded compartments (“hot cells”). Inside the hot cells, several operations will be performed such as cleaning and dust collection, detritiation, refurbishment and disposal. The waste, which is classified as medium level, will be stored in the hot cells. In addition, ITER will produce an estimated 30,000 tonnes of waste that will be

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removed from the reactor after its decommissioning. Over the entire lifespan of the programme it is expected to produce around 40,000 tonnes of waste. The most problematic waste in ITER is tritium (one of the fuels). The machine will operate in successive “pulses” during which fusion reactions will take place. With an expected duration of about 400 s, each pulse will use only a few milligrams of tritium. However, since tritium is one of the lightest gaseous elements at room temperature, it will spread to almost every part of the tokamak: it will of course be mixed with fusion reaction products and diffuse in some of the reactor’s structures, which researchers are working hard to control and limit as much as possible.6 Unfortunately, the scientific literature shows that tritium behaves quite complexly (particularly, in its interaction with other materials7 ). In a fusion experiment as much tritium as possible should be recovered, purified, recycled and reused whenever possible. Finally, ITER will also produce nonradioactive waste some of which will be toxic. This includes beryllium dust, which will be released by the 440 “first wall” panels each covered with 1 cm of beryllium armour totalling approximately 12 tonnes of metal overall. The quantity of beryllium that will be released is estimated to be less than 6 g per year during construction (mainly through suspended dust particles following installation and cutting work) and approximately 1 g per year during the D-T phase. Beryllium is considered carcinogenic in France. Thus, this is another area in which the ITER Organization will be obliged to observe the French legislation and regulations that apply to beryllium with regard to health and safety at work. Despite such problems magnetic confinement fusion is undeniably a cleaner technology than nuclear fission since it will produce no long-lived radioactive waste and less waste overall. This is a direct consequence of the very small quantities of fuel involved. Using 1 g of tritium, it is far removed from the hundreds of tonnes of fuel contained in a nuclear fission reactor. Nevertheless, tokamak technology cannot yet be described as a “green” energy source.

On Safe Grounds I have to confess my favourite science fiction author is Arthur C. Clarke. In 1962 he wrote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I often referred to this powerful adage when I received groups of visitors at ITER. Indeed, most visitors are quite intrigued by the tokamak’s 6 7

Causey et al. [1]. Gastaldi [2].

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science-fictional qualities: How can we effectively trust a machine that seems to defy the laws of physics? How can we imagine confining plasmas as hot as 150 million °C? How close will we be able to get to the reactor itself? Could ITER create a black hole? After a while, it dawned on me that these questions were put forward by people who felt uneasy about the technology despite all their efforts to understand the science. True, ITER has a magical side but it is also a challenge since we all have some difficulty in accepting that it will contain a “small star.” How is it possible to conceive the temperature of 150 million °C at the core of ITER when even a temperature of 1000 °C is difficult to imagine? Huge numbers whatever the context are a test of our intelligence. And when our understanding is challenged our brains turn to less rational thinking. Having recently undergone an MRI scan I have witnessed this effect firsthand. I am very familiar with the principles of MRI, since I spent part of my doctoral thesis using this technology. However, once in the machine I felt overwhelmed and even afraid by the movements of the table that were caused by the machine’s high-frequency sounds. I would have accepted them without any problem had I been given some basic explanations before the examination. When asked to talk about safety at ITER I used to give my visitors explanations that focused on magnitude. For example, when it comes to fuel the vacuum chamber will contain at the most 2 g of hydrogen. When it comes to physics the D-T reaction produces just one neutron making a chain reaction impossible. There is therefore no risk of a runaway reaction. Simulations and studies carried out on ITER and tokamaks, in general, show that this technology poses no major risk to the environment or human health. The fundamental characteristics of fusion physics and technology make a fission-style nuclear meltdown impossible. A Fukushima-type or Chernobyl-type accident could not happen at ITER. In the event of any disturbance, such as the optimum operating conditions (temperature, magnetic field, etc.) being degraded by the failure of any of the systems, the reactor will be unable to sustain the high temperatures required and the reaction will stop automatically leaving virtually no residual heat. Hypothetically, if the cooling system stopped working (e.g. in the event of an earthquake), there would be no impact on other systems such as the containment barriers, the large heat evacuation system, and the vacuum (which constitutes a very efficient insulator). The temperature of the walls of the vacuum chamber, the first barrier of confinement, will always remain below the melting point of the materials.

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Tritium and Safety Although very little tritium will be used during operation, confinement of this radioactive isotope within the fuel cycle is one of the project’s most important safety challenges. ITER will be the first fusion reactor in the world to be controlled by a nuclear regulator, in this case ASN, since neither JET in the UK nor TFTR in the United States were considered “nuclear” installations despite also operating with tritium. Tritium has long been a bugbear of ecologists.8 They argue that safety at ITER is currently purely theoretical since it remains to be seen how the safety measures will be implemented and how effective they will be. They have a point there. A multilayered barrier system has been created to protect against the spread or release of tritium into the environment. The walls of the vacuum chamber will be a first (passive) safety barrier. A second (active) confinement system will consist of the buildings and advanced detritiation systems for the recovery of tritium from gas and liquids. Where tritium is handled an efficient static confinement barrier (brought by air pressure dropping in the buildings) will inhibit its outward diffusion. The ITER detritiation system will be a world first in terms of the quantity of material that it will treat. This will of course be crucial to protection of the environment. In its favourable opinion issued on September 9, 2011, the French public inquiry Commission included a recommendation “that the optimisation phase of the detritiation systems [and robotisation] [is] carried out before the start of the experiments.”9 The official reply came a few years later, when the ITER Director General publicly acknowledged that the ITER Organization is “obliged to manage tritiated waste but not to detritiate the waste.”10 The somewhat strange nature of the situation should be noted. In 2011, construction work was already well under way despite public consultation being in progress, something that was necessary before establishment of ITER as a basic nuclear installation could be authorised. This makes the public consultation seem like a formality, but managers at the ITER Organization explained to staff that they had pre-empted the French government’s decision and taken the risk that authorisation might be refused.

8 Like all radioactive substances tritium is a carcinogen, a mutagen, and a teratogen. However, given its low energy (beta) emission, tritium poses a health risk only when ingested, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin. 9 https://www.iter.org/doc/www/content/com/Lists/Stories/Attachments/888/conclusionsiter.pdf. 10 http://cli-cadarache.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Cadarache/PV_REUNIONS/REUNIONS_PUB LIQUES/CLI_CADARACHE_PUBLIQUE_29_09_2016_PV.pdf.

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Of course, the availability of documents on the safety of tokamaks is quite reassuring. The ITER Organization’s preliminary safety report concluded that under normal operation the radiological impact of the installation on the most exposed populations would be insignificant since it would be about one-thousandth of the background level of radiation from natural sources. ITER’s design is such that the radiation level outside the ITER site would still be very low even if containment was accidentally breached. In worstcase scenarios, such as an explosion of the tritium plant, evacuations or other countermeasures for the local populations would not be required.11 As already mentioned, in 2011 ASN compelled the ITER Organization to carry out additional stress tests to verify the safety of the installation and the relevance of its emergency measures. Helped by ASN proposing only a few improvements,12 such tests confirmed the robustness of the safety design. However, a recent report from IRSN that we will discuss further in the next few pages points out a number of risks and issues to be considered when building the next generation of fusion reactors.

Natural Hazards ITER’s safety management is based on relatively simple principles. All possible and conceivable risks both natural and artificial are identified including the most unlikely. On this basis, specific countermeasures are proposed and integrated into the design of the tokamak, buildings and auxiliary systems as long as such countermeasures are accepted by the ITER Organization. The consequences of the earthquake and tsunami that occurred in Japan on March 11, 2011, created legitimate questions and concerns about ITER. The number of hits on the ITER Organization’s website increased substantially during the weeks that followed showing that the public had renewed its interest in and concern about the project. The ITER Organization also received many emails almost all asking the same question: What would happen if a major earthquake, a freak flood, or a tsunami hit Provence? Cadarache is situated in a low-level to moderate-level seismic area at the edge of the Durance River fault that extends for 100 km from Sisteron to Aix-en-Provence. The fault is responsible for small surface movements of up

11

As already indicated, this report is part of the request to obtain authorisation to create the ITER BNI, http://www.iter.org/fr/dac. 12 https://www.asn.fr/sites/rapports-exploitants-ecs-2012/Autres/Iter/Iter-Cadarache.pdf.

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to 0.1 mm per year that can cause slight tremors in the region. These movements are caused not by plate tectonics but by the collapse of the nearby Alps Mountains slowly spreading horizontally “like a ripe camembert”—not by plate tectonics. Provence has recorded two recent earthquakes: one in the area around Manosque in 1708 that led to the destruction of several hundred houses with no human casualties, and another more serious earthquake around Lambesc on June 11, 1909. With a calculated magnitude of 6.2 on the Richter scale, the latter is the largest earthquake ever recorded in metropolitan France. In total, 46 people died and another 250 were injured. Approximately 3000 buildings were damaged. There are also geological traces of a paleo-earthquake that occurred in the Middle Durance Valley some 9000– 26,000 years ago. Experts analysed all these events to calculate the maximum historically plausible level of a seismic event in the region. Reinforced by a strong safety margin experts used a hypothetical 7 magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale to determine the seismic resistance of ITER’s nuclear buildings. According to experts, a tsunami would be impossible in this region since the volume of the Mediterranean Sea, the size of submarine fault lines, and the speed of the Eurasian and African plates would be insufficient to produce waves as large as those that struck Japan in 2011. This is the basis on which seismic risk has been taken into account in ITER’s design. The second basemat, which supports the three buildings of the tokamak complex, rests on 493 columns each 1.7 m high and topped with antiseismic bearings 90 wide and 20 cm thick (Fig. 10.1). These bearings are made of ten alternating layers of steel and synthetic rubber. With a capacity for lateral movement of ten centimetres, they are capable of filtering and absorbing any motion linked to earthquake-induced ground movement. Together with the columns, the 493 bearings support the 400,000 tonnes of the tokamak complex. The risk of flooding has also been taken into account in ITER’s design. Although Provence is not vulnerable to a tsunami, a major flood is possible. Hence, it’s the potential origins of such a flood have been taken into account in the site plans. ITER’s engineers calculated that a 100 year flood13 of the Durance River would reach a maximum height of 265 m. Therefore, the basemat of the nuclear buildings at 298 m above sea level is safe. The experts also took into account the possibility a spectacular elevation of the water table in which the water reached a height of 305 m from its normal base level below the ground. In preparation for such an event, the lower floors of the 13

A 100 year flood is a flood event that has a 1 in 100 chance (1% probability) of occurring in any given year.

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Fig. 10.1 ITER’s ground support structure (photo taken on November 6, 2012). The 17 m deep, 1.5 m thick basemat, the retaining walls and the 493 separate columns constitute ITER’s seismic isolation pit. From ITER Organization

tokamak complex will be sealed up to 315 m to provide an additional safety margin of 10 m. The experts even simulated a catastrophic scenario in which a 100 year flood of the Durance occurred at the same time as a failure of the Serre-Ponçon Dam located 120 km north of the site. They concluded that it would have no impact on the tokamak complex. Nevertheless, the safety margins were increased and the platform was raised by 10 m so as to protect it against every conceivable risk of flooding. In the most extreme hypothetical situation visualised as a cascade of dam failures in the region over 30 m will remain between the maximum height of the water and the first basemat of the nuclear buildings. In the event of a major natural hazard, the ITER installation would immediately be switched to safe mode, meaning that any ongoing experiments would be interrupted as would injection of fuel gas into the vacuum vessel. The residual fuel left in the injection circuits of the vacuum chamber would then be extracted using a number of pumps powered by independent batteries and then trapped by molecular sieves. In principle, a few minutes will be sufficient to carry out these operations. Elsewhere, the other systems involved in the fuel cycle (injection, processing, recovery, etc.) would also be isolated. Interruption of the cooling system would have no environmental or health impact and would not jeopardise the safety of the installation.

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In short, ITER has been designed to withstand all possible and conceivable accidents. The fact that very little fuel will be needed in the device at any one time is of course very reassuring. Another reassuring element of ITER’s safety is that it is under the control of ASN, whose approach has been summarised by previous IRSN Director Jacques Repussard: “We have to imagine the unimaginable.”14 However, the local community has asked the ITER Organization to improve its transparency and communication on these topics and to make it a priority. On the other hand, IRSN believes the fusion community will soon face new safety challenges because “the future demonstration reactors will be different from ITER, in particular by using tritium breeding technology and operating significantly longer hours. These differences will have a very significant impact on the design and, as a result, on safety.” The issues raised by IRSN include the removal of residual power (estimated to be between one and two orders of magnitude higher than in ITER), which will pose rather strict constraints on cooling systems, and the presence of more tritium both in the vacuum chamber and in other reactor structures like bricks. Such an increased amount of tritium will also require the designers to reexamine the consequences of possible accidents and even consider other types of accidents. Nevertheless, the ITER installation opens up interesting prospects for the industrial exploitation of fusion. Unlike nuclear fission plants, it is possible to envision within a few decades fusion reactors where the risk of a serious civil nuclear accident would be virtually zero.

References 1. Causey RA, Karnesky RA, San Marchi C (2012) Tritium barriers and tritium diffusion in fusion reactors. In: Konings R (ed) Comprehensive nuclear materials. Elsevier Science, Amsterdam, pp 511–549. http://arc.nucapt.northwestern.edu/ refbase/files/Causey-2009_10704.pdf 2. Gastaldi O (2007) Problematics due to tritium in materials in the nuclear field—some examples. INIS Repos Colloq Mater Mech Microstruct Hydrog Mater 39(43). http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/ 40/034/40034735.pdf 3. Menessier M (2011) Accident nucléaire: “Il faut imaginer l’inimaginable”. Le Figaro, 17 June 2011. http://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/2011/06/17/01008-201 10617ARTFIG00610-accident-nucleaireil-faut-imaginer-l-inimaginable.php

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Menessier [3].

11 ITER is Heating up the French Economy

Abstract A large project like ITER can only generate an economic benefit only if the host territory is prepared to welcome it and make the effort to meet its specific needs. This was well understood by the French government. However, some political intentions failed to be implemented (as shown in this chapter). The available data confirm that ITER is indeed boosting the host region’s economic development. Private employment was very dynamic in this area after 2008, the first year of the financial crisis, whereas it was subject to a sudden slowdown everywhere else. Since 2007 the ITER Organization, Fusion for Energy, and Agence ITER France have awarded contracts worth a total of EUR8.5 billion. Over half of this has been awarded to French companies (contracts worth EUR4.9 billion). This is not really a surprise because major scientific installations like ITER creates jobs directly and indirectly. They also stimulate employment in the local economic system. The examples of JET in Culham (UK), CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in Geneva (Switzerland) and the ESRF (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility) in Grenoble (France) have shown that constructing a very large scientific facility has a positive and lasting impact on its surroundings. All these projects have been found to stimulate local development and attract new talent to the area. In their immediate neighbourhoods, they stimulate new social, industrial, economic, technological, and cultural dynamics. They also create synergies and boost new initiatives and structures, such as hightech start-ups, laboratories, and service providers. Economic models for the period 2018–2030 predict that ITER should generate EUR15.9 billion in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_11

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gross value added. Over the same period, 72,400 job-years should be created, mainly in the business services and industry sectors. Keywords ITER · Economy · Jobs · Employment · Host region · Contracts · Value Even if you’re not familiar with the details, it is easy to guess that ITER provides an economic advantage and an opportunity to showcase expertise for its host country. Many French politicians shared this conviction before the start of negotiations over where to locate the project, even including thenPresident Jacques Chirac. They were not alone. The Spanish and Japanese governments also believed that ITER would give a boost to the host economy. They were not mistaken. On June 30, 2005, the local elected officials did not hide their satisfaction when President Chirac went to Cadarache two days after the ITER Council’s decision to build it there. Whatever their political affiliation all the representatives clustered behind the President shared the feeling that France’s excellence had been internationally recognised and that benefits would follow. However, even in the best of all possible worlds not everything is necessarily for the best. Despite a warm welcome from the elected representatives of the PACA region,1 some members of the local population were not so positive about ITER being implemented in the region. As we have seen, some local residents consider it responsible for inflating the local property market; others complain that few jobs have been created in the municipalities around Cadarache; and, finally, some associations close to trade union circles accuse the ITER Organization of recruiting illegal and underpaid workers. A large project such as ITER can only generate an economic benefit and imprint a social dynamic only if the host territory is prepared to welcome it and make the effort to meet its specific needs. This was well understood by the PACA authorities. However, some political intentions failed to be implemented (as we will see).

1 As there will be much discussion of regions, prefectures, municipalities, etc., in this chapter, I will pause here and provide a quick review for the benefit of those not familiar with French public administration. Mainland France is divided into 12 large regions (régions) and 95 departments (départements). ITER is in the region called Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) in the south-east of the country and ITER’s department is called Bouches-du-Rhône. The administrative headquarters of a department is called a prefecture (préfecture). Each department is further divided into arrondissements, then cantons, then finally municipalities (communes). With the exception of certain large cities, municipalities represent the lowest level of administrative division in France, but they have significant power and autonomy. ITER’s municipality is called Saint-Paul-lez-Durance.

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In the mid-1990s, about 10 years after the Reagan and Gorbachev initiative, the prospect of ITER arriving in the region was already triggering much interest and many discussions in political and economic circles. Public debates took place in Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Manosque, and other big cities and villages in the region. The enthusiasm created by the first attempt to host ITER in Cadarache quickly spread again. As a consequence, the decision was taken to build an international lycée 2 in Luynes in the suburbs of Aix-en-Provence. This represented the first initiative specifically designed for future ITER employees who would arrive from abroad. Commitment came from the highest level with the French government deciding to coordinate ITER-related services itself. On November 23, 2005, the French Council of Ministers appointed François d’Aubert as High Representative of the State for Realisation of the ITER Project in France (HRFI) and giving him the title “Ambassador of France to the ITER Organization and the ITER members.” This official support filtered down to the local level when the PACA regional authorities3 got involved in the programme and made a significant financial contribution estimated today to total EUR467 million. The socialist Jean-Noël Guérini was one of the first local political leaders to support ITER quickly seizing the opportunity that it represented for economic development of the region. As early as 2002 the Departmental Council of Bouches-du-Rhône, of which he was the President, voted to commit a sum of EUR152 million to the project, the highest contribution allocated to ITER by a local authority to date. Eight years later, Guérini was ready to go even further: “If it is justified, then we will continue to fund ITER. Why? Because this international project is essential for the future and for research; it will create thousands of jobs and ensure the longevity of the CEA’s Cadarache Centre.4 .”

2

In the French educational system, a lycée is a state-funded school for students from 15 to 18 years old. 3 The Departmental Councils of the six departments closest to ITER (Bouches-du-Rhône, Alpes-deHaute-Provence, Var, Vaucluse, Alpes-Maritimes et Hautes-Alpes), the Regional Council of ProvenceAlpes-Côte d’Azur, and the Communauté du Pays d’Aix. 4 Video published on March 25, 2010: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcpmll_iter-est-un-projet-essentiel-pour_news

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No Accommodation for ITER The neighbouring CEA research centre was also a supporter of the ITER project. By conducting studies of the site it helped to get the local political actors involved in the application. The centre also welcomed the first employees of the ITER Organization by providing land, temporary offices, electricity and water networks, and other essential services such as transport, canteens and nurseries (the very first ITER team composed of six staff, set up in Cadarache at the end of 2005). In 2006 the CEA established Agence ITER France, which acts as an interface between ITER and the host country and implements France’s commitments to the project. It welcomes newcomers to the ITER Organization by finding accommodation in the region and providing integration services such as French language courses. Agence ITER France also set up the ITER Industrial Committee that facilitates relations between the ITER Organization and local and European industry (particularly, by providing information on calls for tenders in the construction and assembly phases). In addition, 12 universities and schools of engineering have combined their resources to propose a master’s degree in Fusion Science to promote scientific training in the field of fusion. In addition to the CEA setting up Agence ITER France, there was financial support provided by other local and regional actors. However, local residents were disappointed by the lack of concrete actions. In a region, where real estate prices are particularly high and housing and land available for construction quite scarce house prices noticeably inflated following Cadarache being chosen as ITER’s host. The arrival of foreigners with high purchasing power was perceived as a threat to quality of life in the region. As a result of property speculation, many inhabitants of Manosque and surrounding municipalities were forced to move to other cities and villages offering more affordable housing. However, the real estate bubble collapsed relatively quickly. This was due in part to the fact that ITER’s staff arrived gradually. The public authorities did not directly support any accommodation-related projects. The only significant initiative was the construction of the International School in Manosque led by the local Prefecture’s ITER Mission. The ITER Mission can be credited with the longer-term strategic and economic development plan for the Durance Valley regarding ITER. The aim was to assess the situation, propose an action plan to assist the implementation of ITER in the region and reconcile the resulting economic development with environmental and social issues (in particular, providing housing to several hundred construction workers). The plan addressed local problems

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that arose from “institutional fragmentation” and the many public services involved. This was a clear warning to local authorities to get their act together and stop obsessing about describing the Durance River valley as a “Silicon Valley for innovative energies.” At the same time, another project set up to establish a public interest grouping (GIP) to integrate and coordinate the efforts of all the departmental authorities involved was abandoned in 2012 for political reasons (the local Green Party blocked the Regional Council’s initiative). This came as a surprise to many observers.

Contracts Worth EUR4.9 Billion Available data confirm that ITER is indeed boosting economic development of the host region. On a map showing France’s employment published by Le Monde on July 24, 2013, the area around Manosque was the only one coloured green (indicating that more than 6% of jobs had been created between 2008 and 2012) in contrast with both the north of the country (almost all in red, indicating a loss of more than 6% of jobs) and the south (yellow or pale green meaning that employment was stable or slightly increasing).5 Manosque was unique in mainland France with a record growth of 6.8% in the number of jobs created during the same period. Of course, this rapid increase cannot be attributed wholly to ITER. However, the impact of the programme in terms of jobs (direct, indirect or induced) is undeniable and spectacular.6 The French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) published a study on the “30 min” territory around ITER (the 36 municipalities home to 130,000 people that are within a drive of 30 min from ITER).7 The experts note that private sector employment was very dynamic in this area after 2008, the first year of the financial crisis, “whereas it was subject to a sudden slowdown everywhere else.” Although private sector employment rose by only 0.8% per year between 2004 and 2014 in similar areas, such as Sofia-Antipolis close to Nice in the AlpesMaritimes, the growth rate around Manosque was almost three times as high

5

Chastand and Baruch [1]. However, it should be pointed out that unemployment increased in the region by 2.6% between 2007 and 2012 and by 0.3% between 2012 and 2016. These increases are close to the national averages (+2.1% and + 0.4%, respectively, over the same periods). It is well-known that regions with a high unemployment rate may also be economically healthy. Conversely, a low unemployment rate may reflect local young people moving to find better work conditions: http://www.lemonde.fr/emploi/video/2017/03/29/pourquoi-un-faible-taux-de-chomage-nest-pas-toujours-bon-signe_5102550_1698637.html#7FSLeCZdwIaSLZa2.99. 7 Lassagne and Loose [2]. 6

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at 2.3% annually. This represented 4700 new jobs in ten years—an impact that the INSEE experts wrote was “partly due to the ITER worksite”.8 A recent study shows that, for the period 2008–2019, the economic impact of ITER on the European Union’s economy has been positive.9 The incremental gross value added (i.e. the value of ITER contributions less all inputs needed to produce them) equalled EUR1.739 billion for the period considered. Cumulatively, the total number of full-time jobs directly or indirectly created by ITER, in that period, reached nearly 29,500 in the European Union. For every job that was directly created as a result of ITER’s activities, the study estimated that another job was indirectly created. Those indirect jobs typically emerged in the supply chains of ITER, or as a result of ITER-related wages being spent on other products and services. This job growth parallels at least in part the activity on-site at ITER. Since 2007, the ITER Organization, Fusion for Energy, and Agence ITER France have awarded contracts worth a total of EUR8.5 billion. Over half of this has been awarded to French companies (EUR4.9 billion worth of contracts), of which 73% (worth EUR3.4 billion) was awarded to companies based in Provence in the past 15 years.10 This is not really a surprise because major scientific installations like ITER create jobs, directly and indirectly. They also stimulate employment in the local economic system. The examples of JET in Culham (UK), CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in Geneva (Switzerland), and ESRF (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility) in Grenoble (France) have shown that constructing a very large scientific facility has a positive and lasting impact on surrounding area. All these projects were found to stimulate local development and attract new talent to the area. In their immediate neighbourhoods, they stimulate new social, industrial, economic, technological and cultural dynamics. They also create synergies and boost new initiatives and structures, such as high-tech start-ups, laboratories and service providers. To deliver Europe’s contribution to the ITER project Fusion for Energy starts by looking for companies through a European call for tenders. The agency rigorously applies European Directives on public procurement that enshrine the principles of transparency, free competition and sound management to ensure that public money is used properly. The calls for tenders for construction are then advertised in the 28 (27 after Brexit) Member States of the European Union plus Switzerland (until 2020). 8

Adaoust and Belle [3]. European Commission [4]. 10 This is an extrapolation made in March 2023 from previous data published by Agence ITER France. The data is not public. 9

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Therefore, the fact that France obtains over half the contracts was an excellent result for the country. This was down to the high level of the French industry’s know-how in the construction, civil engineering and nuclear sectors. Nevertheless, I remember that Osamu Motojima avoided quoting these figures in his public presentations. He did not want to raise questions about France’s excellent performance in the construction of ITER. The figures could also be misused as evidence that one country, in particular, was receiving substantial benefits from the international project. Some people indeed argue that France has taken control of ITER and is using the project for its own ends. Putting aside the monetary value of contracts ITER’s impact is tangible and significant. For example, the TB03 and TB04 contracts mentioned earlier enabled their beneficiaries to hire almost 1000 workers. According to a study carried out by the European Commission,11 the economic model used predicts that for the period 2018–2030 ITER will generate EUR15.9 billion in gross value added, which favourably compares to EUR13.9 billion spent. Companies state that working for ITER has helped them develop new state-of-the-art technologies, improve their production and other processes, access business opportunities outside fusion, and create synergies and new opportunities. An interesting finding in this study is that “12% [of industrial participants] developed new cutting-edge technologies in areas other than fusion as a result of their contracts.” The reverse is also true. For example, Belleli Energy (Italy) is a company that operates predominantly in traditional sectors manufacturing components for the oil and gas industry, but it got involved in the construction of ITER’s vacuum vessel. Its CEO, Paolo Fedeli, said at a conference in Brussels in 2017: “Thanks to ITER, the company staff grew from 300 in 2010 to 1000 today. This includes a growth in the number of high-skilled engineers from 15 to 100. Although the ITER business represents only 10% of the company’s turnover, the ITER business line is the one giving the company the most dynamic growth. Participating in ITER has enabled our company to expand its market share in other sectors but also in the oil and gas business which still accounts for 90% of our Group business.12 ” The study also made an apt comparison between ITER and CERN since both organisations share a large infrastructure and a high cost of construction. In CERN’s case, it was shown that the profit margins of firms involved in the construction of the LHC developed favourably. This was especially true for high-tech suppliers, while the effect for low-tech suppliers did not exhibit 11 12

European Commission [5]. https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/key_messages_final.pdf.

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statistical significance. This is called the CERN effect and according to the study an “ITER effect” is entirely plausible given the larger size of the fusion industry. According to the projections of Fusion for Energy, local workers (i.e. employees who live in the municipalities close to ITER in the “employment basin” of Manosque) account for as much as 50% of the French labour force on the worksite. Local recruitment is therefore far from negligible. The number of workers on-site involved in construction activities (buildings and building systems) reached a peak in 2017–2018, with close to 2000 people. The construction workforce is expected to plateau during 2022–2024. In parallel, the assembly workforce is building up and the total number of workers regularly present on the ITER work site climbed to nearly 5000 people in 2023 (including management, engineering and supervision teams from the ITER Organization and Fusion for Energy). The majority of these contractors are French. According to recent statistics (October 2022) provided by ITER Organization and Fusion for Energy more than 90% of the contractors on-site are European. The complete breakdown is as follows: French (62.4), Italian (6.4), Spanish (5.2), Indian (3.7), Chinese (3.3), Portuguese (3.2), Romanian (2.2), British (1.4), Russian (1.4), Algerian (0.8), Croatian (0.7), Polish (0.5) and Greek (0.1%). Overall, 43 nationalities are represented on the worksite. Of course, the economic impact of ITER is larger than the jobs that are created on the worksite itself. As early as 2003 the Institut d’économie publique de Marseille (IDEP) anticipating the arrival of ITER in the region estimated that 3000 “indirect” jobs were likely to be created during the construction phase and 2400 during the operational phase.13 Any evaluation of the economic impact of ITER must also take into account the effects induced by the presence of staff, contractors and their families in Aix-en-Provence, Manosque and other cities around ITER. To meet the needs of this new (and international) population, a number of shops and services have been created or expanded. As noted by the INSEE 68% of new jobs in the “30 min” territory around ITER are in the catering/ hospitality and health/social welfare sectors. The contribution of ITER employees to the local economy in the form of wages spent in the local area represents several tens of millions of euros annually. Such an economic dynamic has been observed in the vicinity of similar projects in the past. For example, in Oxfordshire in the vicinity of the JET facility over 1000 indirect and new jobs have been created in addition to its

13

Jacquinot and Marbach [6].

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450 employees; in Geneva in the vicinity of CERN (2500 staff ) more than 7000 indirect and new jobs have been created on both sides of the border between France and Switzerland. Agence ITER France estimates that 1700 indirect and induced jobs have been created by ITER in the PACA region. While ITER is still in the construction phase the project is likely to confirm that for every euro invested in research and technological development two or three are typically generated in the form of indirect and new benefits.14 Even though little data are publicly available, similar dynamics can be observed in the other ITER members. For example, the US participation in ITER led to more than 600 contracts with companies, universities and national laboratories in 46 states, plus the District of Columbia. Most funding for the US contribution to ITER remains in the United States. These figures were published to show the US senators—known to be predominantly opposed to ITER—that participation in ITER brings in substantial benefits.

Who Works for ITER? Since well before the start of construction ITER has been giving rise to great expectations for job creation. There is a lot of interest in working for the project, and not just in France, judging by the number of applications received for any vacancy published. So, what are the profiles of ITER workers? Cadarache can boast many employers, such as the ITER Organization, Fusion for Energy, and Agence ITER France. There are also more than 700 contractors working on-site and many enterprises outside France working for ITER. The jobs on offer vary depending on the employer, the work itself, and the contractual conditions. In total there are an estimated 5000 people working for ITER in Cadarache and over 15,000 worldwide (for the seven Domestic Agencies and the thousands of contractors). Joining the ITER Organization is a good way to start an international career. The minimum requirement is to be a national of one of the ITER members. Today, around 1100 people work directly for the ITER Organization. The contracts on offer are generally for five years (but renewable) and the salaries are typical of international organisations. Something you need to be aware of is that if your contract is not renewed or extended, you are not entitled to any unemployment allowance or redundancy pay since the ITER Organization’s staff do not pay any French social security contributions. Job vacancies are published online.15 At the time of this book going to press 14 15

Mairesse and Mulkay [7]. http://www.iter.org/jobs.

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68.5% of the ITER Organization’s employees are European. The next most represented nationality is Chinese (8.9% of staff ) 107 of whom work at the ITER Organization. If you want to work for ITER but not for the ITER Organization itself, another option is to work on-site. Jobs there are mainly related to construction and civil engineering, but as assembly is progressing the range of profiles needed is widening. At present (April 2023), 707 companies and subcontractors work on the ITER site. They work for the key players in Cadarache, which are the ITER Organization, Fusion for Energy and Agence ITER France. The largest contractors present on the ITER site are Assystem—part of the ITER Organization’s Construction Management-asAgent Momentum—followed by the Engage Consortium (which is the onsite architect engineer), and the construction company GTM Sud (94). The intervention of the other major contracting companies or institutions represented on the construction site includes construction (Valérian, Demathieu Bard, Ferrovial-Agroman), fabrication (CNIM, ASG Superconductors), logistics (Daher), crane operations (Foselev, Ponticelli Frères, Vernazza Autogru), scaffolding management (Entrepose Échafaudages) and services (Sodexo, Onet Services). According to Fusion for Energy data more than two-thirds of the workers on-site are French. This clearly reflects the fact that most of the construction and civil engineering contracts have been awarded to French companies. Italian, Spanish and Indian are the next most numerous nationalities of site workers. Job profiles are typical of a large construction site: bricklayers, welders, plumbers, electricians, etc. The French recruitment agency Pôle Emploi has set up a regional recruiting team to help both companies (publication of vacancies, selection of candidates) and jobseekers.16 Until 2019 an ITER employment forum was organised every June in the village of SaintPaul-lez-Durance. It used to attract 1000 people and allowed companies working on-site to establish direct contact with jobseekers. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic this initiative was interrupted in 2020. The projections made by Fusion for Energy show that about 50% of the estimated 5000 workers on the construction site come from the “30 min” territory around ITER, 30% from other French regions, and 20% from other countries.

16

http://www.pole-emploi.fr/region/provence-alpes-cote-D-azur/actualites/iter-@/region/provencealpes-cote-D-azur/index.jspz?id=117379.

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Workers Under Control The working conditions of employees of the ITER Organization (spanning some 30 nationalities) are laid out in its staff regulations and must accord with the ITER social security system. However, employees of contractors and subcontractors present on the worksite are subject to French common law or labour regulations (particularly, the Code du Travail ). The same applies to workers on the construction site who are under the responsibility of the ITER Organization. Irrespective of the nationality of a company present on the site its employees benefit from French collective agreements (more specifically, they cannot be paid less than the regulatory minimum salary). For example, a Chinese company working in Cadarache must offer its staff the same conditions as a French company in the same sector (probably to the satisfaction of all its Chinese employees!). The ITER Headquarters Agreement that governs the relations between the ITER Organization and France (signed on 7 November 2007)17 stipulates that its Director General will cooperate with the appropriate French authorities in all the areas where French law is applicable18 including, in particular, public and occupational health and safety. The French Labour Inspector is permitted to carry out unplanned inspections, as foreseen in Article 3 of the Headquarters Agreement and in the annual programme of inspections. In addition, the ITER Organization signed a partnership arrangement on February 4, 2013, with the French social security agency URSSAF (Unions de recouvrement des cotisations de sécurité sociale et d’allocations familiales, “Organisations for the Collection of Social Security and Family Benefit Contributions”). This shows just how committed the whole project is to facilitating the agency’s mission of preventing illegal labour practices on the ITER work site through information, education and inspection. Since the provisions of French law apply to all companies present on-site irrespective of their countries of origin and workers’ nationalities, URSSAF inspectors are able to carry out checks on the ITER site in much the same way as they do at other workplaces in France. Under the terms of the ITER Agreement, the ITER Organization is committed to facilitating the access of inspectors to the site and to providing them with information related

17

https://www.iter.org/doc/www/content/com/Lists/WebText_2014/Attachments/256/Headquarters_ Agreement_ITER.pdf. 18 Article 14 of the ITER Agreement, “The ITER Organization shall observe applicable national laws and regulations of the Host State [France, AN] in the fields of public and occupational health and safety, nuclear safety, radiation protection, licensing, nuclear substances, environmental protection and protection from acts of malevolence.”.

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to the activity on-site (the Access Management System provides real-time information about the companies and workers currently on-site).

Calls for Tenders and Subcontractors Requests for information are generally a good indicator of the interest in an initiative (and sometimes of its complexity). This also applies to ITER. Questions related to contracting and subcontracting have been flooding in since 2007. There have also been many questions about the possibility of seconding European workers to ITER. In 2011, the French authorities in an effort to provide information about this sensitive issue published a bilingual document19 setting out all the obligations foreign companies operating on the ITER site have to comply with. To get a feel about the guide here is a short extract: “The salary offered to foreign nationals, even employed part time, must be at least equal to the minimum French [regulatory] remuneration (the so-called SMIC).” In particular, this guide provides the salary scales that companies have to apply for each profession. According to the division of tasks and in-kind contributions agreed among the ITER members, Europe as the host Member is responsible for building nearly of the 39 buildings and technical areas of the site. Fusion for Energy is charged with managing the calls for tenders (published in the European Union unless the required expertise does not exist in these countries) and awarding the relevant contracts. Fusion for Energy has established a rigorous qualification process for companies in which contractors must show triple conformity: administrative (compliant with laws and regulations, and contractual requirements, as well as up-to-date insurance policies and social contributions); technical (the contractor must prove that it has the technical capacity to carry out the work); and in terms of security (companies must in particular submit valid security and occupational health policies). Meeting these conditions is a requirement for any company hoping to be awarded a contract with Fusion for Energy. The European agency can exercise its right to audit a company at any time during the execution of contractual works. Contracts are currently still being awarded so at this point it is impossible to have a complete picture of all of the actors who will work in Cadarache for ITER. However, Fusion for Energy’s projections confirm that France will be the main winner of European procurements. Contrary to the claims of some associations and trade unions ITER is undeniably boosting employment in 19

“Guide on Enterprises not established in France which post their workers temporarily on the French territory for the ITER project”. The guide is available from Agence ITER France.

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the host country. However, it is also fair to say that ITER has failed in its international dimension by not employing reasonable numbers of staff from the seven member countries.20

References 1. Chastand JB, Baruch J (2013) La carte de France des pertes d’emplois. In: Le Monde. https://www.lemonde.fr/emploi/article/2013/07/24/la-carte-def rance-des-pertes-d-emplois_3452799_1698637.html 2. Lassagne T, Loose C (2017) Territoire à 30 min autour d’Iter—Un territoire attractif aux portes de la métropole Aix-Marseille-Provence. In: INSEE Analyses Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur 44. https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2662410 3. Adaoust S, Belle R (2017) Territoire à 30 min autour d’Iter—Les services aux entreprises, réacteur de l’emploi malgré la crise. In: INSEE Analyses ProvenceAlpes-Côte d’Azur 45. https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2663096 4. European Commission (2021) Follow up study on the economic benefits of ITER and BA projects to EU industry. https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-det ail/-/publication/3db11048-6a89-11eb-aeb5-01aa75ed71a1/language-en?WT_ mc_id=Searchresult&WT_ria_c=37085&WT_ria_f=3608&WT_ria_ev=search 5. European Commission (2018) Study on the impact of the ITER activities in the EU, Brussels 6. Jacquinot J, Marbach G (2004) Revue Internationale et Stratégique 3(55):173 7. Mairesse J, Mulkay B (2004) Une évaluation du crédit d’impôt recherche en France. Document de Travail du CREST-INSEE 1980–1997:2004–2043

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French nationals account for about 30% of staff at the ITER Organization. In comparison, French nationals account for less than 10% of staff at CERN, which is located on the French-Swiss border. Swiss nationals represent less than 2% of the staff at CERN.

12 Will Fusion Become Commercial?

Abstract The road to fusion energy is now in its third stage. Between 1970 and 1980 the first reactors, such as the United States’ TFTR, Europe’s JET and Japan’s JT-60, demonstrated the scientific feasibility of fusion making it clear that the concepts developed by researchers were valid and functioning. Second, a large machine had to be built to demonstrate technological feasibility by producing large quantities of energy and testing certain technologies essential to building a fusion reactor. This is the milestone that ITER represents. Third, a machine should demonstrate the commercial viability of an industrial prototype and produce electricity. This will be a demonstration fusion power reactor (DEMO). Each ITER member has already defined the broad lines of what its own DEMO might be. It may open the door to industrial exploitation. What does this mean exactly? ITER is expected to produce 500 MW of thermal fusion power, compared with about 50 MW that will be injected for the purposes of heating the plasma. This represents a “gain factor” of 10. However, if we want to estimate the energy efficiency of a tokamak and its potential use as an energy source on the industrial scale, we should consider not only the heating power injected into the plasma but also the power that will be supplied to all its equipment and systems during the experiment (all necessary to keep the plasma at a given temperature). The industrial viability of fusion energy will only be proven if the output power exceeds the power consumed by the complete installation. What would be the point from an economic point of view of ITER producing 500 MW if it turns out that the average electricity consumption on-site is the same, or perhaps even more? Before fusion can become an industrial source of energy yet another © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_12

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major challenge is to identify the best economic conditions for the industrial exploitation of fusion energy. This involves, in particular, finding new structural materials for tokamaks. Last but not least, the supply of some existing materials might be an issue in the industrial age of fusion. Keywords ITER · DEMO · Energy · Efficiency · Gain factor · Commercial · Industrial There are currently over 130 experimental public and private fusion devices operating, in construction or planned around the world.1 Only one has achieved a net power gain, i.e. produced more fusion power than the power injected to heat the plasma. On December 5, 2022, the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) used 2.05 megajoules of laser energy to produce 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy, reaching a gain value of 1.5, thus achieving breakeven—a world first. The world power record is still held by Europe’s JET, which produced 16 MW of fusion power from 24 MW of heating power in 1997 (on December 21, 2021, JET produced a record energy of 59 megajoules during a 5 s pulse, i.e. less than 12 MW of fusion power). The energy efficiency of a fusion experiment is described by a gain factor Q that corresponds to the thermal power released by the fusion reaction divided by the heating power used to bring the plasma to 100 million °C. In the case of JET’s historic experiment, Q was equal to 0.67 (16/24).2 Achieving breakeven means Q = 1 (i.e. the power released by the fusion reaction is equal to the required heating power). In a burning plasma, the fusion reaction releases so much energy that the plasma “self-heats.” However, experts tend to agree that in a typical tokamak self-heating will not match the energy required from external sources until at least Q = 5. If self-heating becomes more efficient, then less energy is needed from external sources to keep the plasma at the right temperature. Eventually, self-heating will keep the plasma hot enough allowing the external heating source to be switched off, which means that Q would achieve a value of infinity. This point is known as ignition—the goal (and the dream) of all fusion specialists. In most published material about ITER, you will read that it is expected to produce a tenfold return on energy (Q = 10) (i.e. 500 MW of thermal fusion power from 50 MW of input plasma heating power). ITER will not capture 1

IAEA [1]. This is the record for a civil experiment. We do not have much information about experiments carried out during military operations or tests of nuclear weapons, which are discussed in Chap. 15. However, the hydrogen bomb is so far the only man-made device to achieve a gain factor of more than 1.

2

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the energy it produces as electricity but—if it becomes the first tokamak in history to produce a net energy gain—it could open the door to industrial exploitation.3 What does this mean exactly? It is easy to perceive that the production of fusion reactions in a laboratory is not the same as the production of fusion energy. Here we are confronted by what engineers call “scaling-up” (i.e. the process of transforming a laboratoryscale process into an industrial operation). In the case of tokamaks, as we have seen, industrial exploitation of fusion energy would be possible only if breakeven can be reached. So, what are the factors that influence Q, the gain factor? Unlike a conventional nuclear reactor, a tokamak is not a generator but an amplifier of energy. It is necessary to heat the plasma (and therefore supply energy) continuously to start and maintain fusion reactions and then produce energy. If insufficient energy is supplied, the energy density will decrease due to various types of energy loss (conduction, radiation, etc.) To be “sustainable” fusion reactions must therefore generate enough energy to compensate for at least the losses inherent in their production. In this case, Q will be greater than or equal to 1. This is called creating a “thermonuclear plasma” (i.e. a situation in which the energy produced by fusion reactions overcomes the thermal energy of the gas during the time of energy confinement). I am now going to briefly introduce the three main factors that affect the amount of energy produced: nuclei density (n), temperature (T ) and confinement time (τE ). In the case of deuterium-tritium fusion, John Lawson, a British engineer and physicist, established in 1955 that the product of these three quantities must exceed a precise value for the energy produced to exceed the losses as expressed by the following formula: nτ E T ≥ 1.5 × 1021 m−3 keVs. The so-called Lawson criterion captures the fact that in order to achieve a net fusion energy gain you need to maintain and compress a gas with a sufficiently high density of atoms/nuclei, for a sufficiently long time at a sufficient temperature. Because we do not have much control over the first two parameters, astronomical temperatures are required. This formula also shows how two very different confinement technologies have been developed: inertial fusion, which is designed to compress and heat microspheres containing gaseous fuel to very high temperatures for very 3

This assumes that the order of magnitude of Q is confirmed and that the construction and operational costs of future tokamaks are compatible with the economic sustainability of the technology.

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short periods of time; and magnetic fusion, where a very low-density gas is contained for a much longer period of time. In both techniques, the fuel must be heated to a temperature of at least 100 million °C.

How to Maximise the Gain Factor? More concretely, Lawson’s criterion means that in a tokamak a density of 1020 ions per m3 should typically be maintained at a temperature 10 times that of the Sun’s core (i.e. 15 million °C) for an energy confinement time of at least 3 s. Achieving these values should not be a problem for ITER. The plasma should be confined for a minimum of 400 s, and its temperature should reach 150 million °C. This should be enough to reach plasma breakeven and possibly even ignition but would probably still be insufficient from an industrial point of view. However, if everything goes well, ITER’s technicians will push the machine to its limits and try to sustain fusion reactions during several tens of minutes. This will be interesting to watch! ITER is expected to produce 500 MW of thermal fusion power compared with the 50 MW that will be injected for the purpose of plasma heating. This means under these circumstances that Q will indeed be equal to ten. However, if we want to estimate the energy efficiency of a tokamak and its potential use as an energy source on an industrial scale, we should consider not only the heating power injected into the plasma but also the power that will be supplied to all its component equipment and systems throughout an experiment (all of which are necessary to keep the plasma at a given temperature) in order to evaluate the input/output power balance of the fusion power plant. The industrial viability of fusion energy will only be proven if the output power exceeds the power consumed by the complete installation. What would be the point, from an economic point of view of ITER producing 500 MW of power if it turns out that the average electricity consumption on-site is the same or perhaps even more? Thus, it is worthwhile defining an “engineering” Q factor that, following a more industrial logic, measures the profitability of the experiment from the point of view of overall energy balance. In the case of the 1997 JET experiment, the total electrical power required to run the tokamak was 700 MW, of which only 24 MW were injected into the plasma. Therefore, in this case, the “fusion” Q factor was 0.67 and the “engineering” gain factor was 16/700

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(i.e. a mere 0.02).4 Deuterium-tritium experiments carried out in 1994 in the United States’ TFTR gave similar values (i.e. 10 MW of output power for 37 MW of heating power and 500 MW for the plant’s electric consumption, providing a fusion Q of 0.27 and an engineering Q of 0.007).5 As far as ITER is concerned, I estimated in 2017 that during operations the electrical consumption of the ITER machine and facilities—what is known as the net plant power drain or the balance of plant—should be of the order of 110 MW, as at that time, the total projected electrical input power requirement of ITER was not public.6 Therefore, taking this value into account the fusion Q would be 10 and the engineering factor would be 500/110 (i.e. 4.5) for ITER. It should also be noted that the plant’s electrical consumption is likely to reach 620 MW for peak periods of 30 s durations during plasma operation. The power will be taken from the national electricity grid (provided to ITER’s site via a 400 kV high-voltage line that already supplies the nearby CEA Cadarache site—a 1 km extension now links ITER to the network). For these power peaks to not pose any problem for the power supply of Provence (possibly excepting some very cold winters), the team running experiments at ITER will have to follow a precise protocol; they will need to receive two successive green lights (i.e. 3 days and 1 h before an experiment) from the Regional Control Centre in Marseille. If we continue to pursue the industrial logic, then we need to take into account the fact that the 500 MW produced by the fusion reactions is thermal power, while the 110 MW injected is electrical power. To account for the difference, we need to multiply the first figure by 0.4 (thermal-to-electric conversion efficiency). This means that ITER’s power efficiency (measured by the engineering gain factor) will be on the order of 1.8 (500 multiplied by 0.4 and divided by 110). We are far from a gain factor of 10. As discussed previously the American journalist Steven B. Krivit argues that several fusion organisations have misled the public by using the fusion Q values to allege that ITER’s output power will be 10 times its injected power.7 Consequently, the ITER Organization corrected several pages on its website. Krivit estimated the average projected power consumption of ITER to operate the device to be 440 MW. Six years later, the ITER Organization confirmed this figure (with consumption of up to 620 MW of electricity for

4 Actually, we should take into account the fact that the 16 MW are thermal power while the 700 MW represents electrical power. As the conversion factor between thermal and electrical power is about 0.4, this means that the engineering gain factor is only 0.009. 5 https://w3.pppl.gov/tftr/info/aps9903/GP01_104-BellM.pdf. 6 Arnoux [2]. 7 Krivit [3].

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peak periods of 30 s).8 This means that the engineering gain factor will be 500*0.4/440, i.e. 0.45. In other words, the overall reactor will operate with a net loss equivalent to 240 MW of electrical power. My point here is that using the fusion gain factor to justify the industrial relevance of fusion energy is questionable. Furthermore, this discussion is irrelevant in the case of ITER as its purpose is not to produce as much energy as possible but to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion.9 We need to wait for the actual experiments to know exactly how the tokamak will operate (specifically what its precise output and input power levels will be). It is not impossible on the basis of the calculations above that ITER will yield a negative net energy balance. However, while the engineering Q will admittedly provide a good measure of the performance of a future industrial plant, fusion Q is considered more appropriate for an experimental facility such as ITER. As specified in the ITER Agreement ITER “aims to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy for peaceful purposes.” Accordingly, the work that will be conducted at ITER will focus on demonstrating the control of the plasma and fusion reactions with negligible consequences to the environment, testing different plasma parameters and exploring the most promising physics regimes. ITER is not designed for and will never produce any electrical power—the heat obtained from the fusion reactions will be collected and measured/analysed, but not converted into electricity (the design of the ITER project does not include, e.g., a turbine cycle). One thing is certain—these calculations show that ITER has a significant advantage over JET as it will use superconducting magnets, which significantly reduce electricity consumption. A tokamak with conventional resistive magnets will never be viable from an industrial point of view.

After ITER When I received visitors in Cadarache, I enjoyed making ITER accessible and explaining the physics of fusion with the help of a model of the tokamak. Quite often, the flow of questions was never-ending. My presentation often

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Krivit [4]. As explained in the final report on ITER’s technical design (ITER EDA Documentation Series n°21, AIEA, Vienna, 2001): “The overall programmatic objective of ITER is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power for peaceful purposes. ITER would accomplish this objective by demonstrating controlled ignition and extended burn of deuterium–tritium plasmas, with steady-state as an ultimate goal, by demonstrating technologies essential to a reactor in an integrated system, and by performing integrated testing of the high-heat-flux and nuclear components required to utilize fusion energy for practical purposes.”. 9

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developed into a question-and-answer session—my USB stick on which my PowerPoint presentation is saved remaining in my pocket… All good! This is for me the best indicator of a successful visit. Most visitors want to know more about the prospects of fusion and its long-term vision. Where do we go from here? What are the next steps? Will we see one day “fusion power plants” in the countryside? In short, will there be a life for fusion after ITER? At this point, my audience is usually surprised to learn that fusion scientists already have quite detailed plans for the next-generation machine (with ITER’s nuclear experiments not starting until 2035). The fact is that in nuclear fusion, research programmes are not sequential but overlap. Even when JET was still under construction at the end of the 1970s its successor was already being discussed (under the name of Intor); correspondingly, the conceptual design of a demonstration fusion power reactor (DEMO) is currently being worked on even though ITER has not yet started. It took over 20 years to translate the idea behind ITER into a real project. This may represent the approximate time required to make the European DEMO a reality. The road to fusion energy is now in its third stage. Between 1970 and 1980 the first reactors, such as the United States’ TFTR, Europe’s JET and Japan’s JT-60, demonstrated the scientific feasibility of fusion making it clear that the concepts developed by researchers were valid and would function. The second step towards the production of fusion energy was to build a large machine to demonstrate technological feasibility of producing large quantities of energy and testing certain technologies that are essential to building a fusion reactor. This is the milestone that ITER represents. The third stage, a DEMO, hopes to demonstrate the commercial viability of an industrial prototype and produce electricity. DEMO will be the machine that addresses the technological challenge of bringing fusion energy to the electricity grid. The principal goals of the DEMO phase of fusion research are the exploration of continuous or near-continuous steady-state regimes; investigation of efficient energy capture systems; achievement of power output with fusion Q values in the range of 30–50 (as opposed to ITER’s value of 10); and in-vessel production of tritium (called tritium breeding). With DEMO, fusion energy research will approach what is anticipated to be the final form of future commercial reactors. It is too early to say whether DEMO will be an international collaboration like ITER or a series of national projects. In any event, each ITER member has already broadly defined what DEMO might look like for them(). This approach derives from the very essence of ITER, which is as much an educational programme as a technological one; thanks to ITER all its

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members have acquired the experience and knowledge that will enable them to move to the next step. In short, DEMO could not exist without ITER. At an international conference on ITER and fusion energy that took place in Monaco in 2016, all ITER members already presented their plans for DEMO. While the schedules and technical specifications varied between the seven, their objectives were always the same: to build the machine by 2050 that will demonstrate that fusion can produce electricity on an industrial scale. The plans have slightly been updated: Japan, Korea, India and Russia have confirmed their intention to begin building DEMO in the early 2030s in order to operate it in the 2040s (it will be later for the European Union). China has an intermediate project that has yet to be approved. It plans to explore the physics and engineering challenges of a DEMO in a test reactor called CFETR (China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor). Three cities have been preselected to host the reactor: Shanghai, Hefei and Chengdu. China also confirmed its intention to start construction of its DEMO in the next decade. Construction of CFETR should start in the coming years. The aim is to produce 1 GW of thermal fusion power (compared with ITER’s 500 MW), with tritium self-sufficiency, and then go on to generate electrical power (by 2040). The CFETR tokamak will have a major and minor radius respectively equal to 7.2 m and 2.2 m, thus slightly larger than ITER. China established a dedicated big science and technology facility, CRAFT (Comprehensive Research Facility for Fusion Technology), to investigate and master key fusion technologies, including CFETR engineering design, experiments at EAST (the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak in Hefei) and relevant technologies for DEMO. The United States is a special case; for reasons related to how research is organised in this country, the Department of Energy did not officially commit itself to a DEMO project. But most US fusion physicists consider that they would need two “intermediate” machines; one to address technological issues and the other to carry out scientific research before launching a genuine DEMO programme. So, what will the different DEMOs look like? Most likely, they will be larger than ITER. The major radius that determines the overall size of the machine should be between 6 and 10 m compared with ITER’s 6 m and JET’s 3 m. Their power outputs range from 300 to 500 MWe (electric megawatts) for the European DEMO to 1500 MWe for the Japanese version—similar to third-generation European pressurized (water) reactors (EPR). Their objectives are roughly the same with some small differences; some DEMOs will be “preindustrial demonstrators,” while others will be “quasi-prototypes,” that would not require an additional step before

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expanding to an industrial scale. To nonspecialised eyes like ours, all these machines will probably look the same! (Fig. 12.1). In a recent article, one of my colleagues, Gunther Janeschitz, a German engineer who contributed to the design of ITER, argued that an economically viable fusion reactor should produce at least 2.5 GWe given that it will most likely cost over EUR15 billion (perhaps even 30 billion for its first model). Taking into account the physics of the process, he argues that future tokamaks will always be large machines.11 But Gunther missed one point: research is moving forward and improvements in high-temperature superconducting magnets are increasing the magnetic field strengths that can be attained, thereby enabling a corresponding downscaling of tokamak dimensions and potentially costs. This scaling underlies MIT’s recent initiative that will be discussed in Chap. 15. In the fusion world, one project stands out as being somewhat different from all others: it is the Russian DEMO (or rather pre-DEMO), which is planned to be a “hybrid” machine combining the principles of both fusion and fission. It is based on the fact that a D-T fusion reaction produces very

Fig. 12.1 This is what the European DEMO may look like. According to the European roadmap, DEMO should provide 300–500 MW of electricity to the grid.10 Construction should start in the 2040s and commissioning and operations would take place in the period 2051–2060. From EUROfusion and Fusion for Energy

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EUROfusion [5]. Janeschitz [6].

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high-energy neutrons. In a tokamak like ITER, these neutrons will penetrate the inner walls of the machine and generate heat that can be extracted to produce electricity. Some physicists consider these energetic neutrons should be better exploited. They are therefore considering breeding fission in otherwise nonfissile fuels such as natural uranium or using them to “burn” radioactive waste. So, Russia decided to put theory into practice; the T15 tokamak has been upgraded into a machine called T -15MD which will explore the possibility to operate as a nuclear fusion-fission hybrid reactor. Located in the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, it has been commissioned in May 2021. Of course, the conceptual designs of all these machines are not yet finalised—in some cases they have not even been started. Whatever options are chosen, experience from ITER will play a key role in terms of making decisions about the specifications of all DEMO machines. The ultimate key milestone in fusion history will be the large-scale production of energy. However, before fusion can become an industrial source of energy solutions will be required for at least two distinct problems. The first is determination of the magnetic configuration and optimal technical conditions for reliable and steady-state energy production, which will become the reference point for future fusion plants. Ongoing works and the commissioning of ITER are expected to provide essential information on this issue. The second challenge is to identify the best economic conditions for the industrial exploitation of fusion energy, which specifically involves finding new structural materials for the reactor’s internal walls that can withstand the high-energy and neutron fluxes (without having to replace the building bricks too frequently)—currently we have not yet identified such materials. Last but not least, the supply of some existing materials might be an issue in the age of industrial fusion. Tritium is one example. It is estimated that every commercial D-T reactor will require about 100–200 kg per year. This is far more than the entire world’s inventory of tritium. It may be possible to achieve “tritium self-sufficiency” by breeding tritium inside the reactor, if lithium is present in the walls of the vessel (when struck by a neutron a nucleus of lithium-6 transforms into one nucleus of helium and one of tritium). But this technology has yet to be developed. It is regarded as one of the most important issues to be solved on the pathway to fusion energy since commercial tritium resources are too scarce to supply the fusion projects that will follow ITER (China’s CFETR, DEMO, etc.). Another concern is the supply of beryllium and lithium-6 for the vessel’s blanket. Today, there is no device that can adequately replicate the conditions anticipated inside future industrial fusion reactors to test the resistance of

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specific materials. This is why the construction of a specific source of highflux neutrons has come to light as an indispensable complement to ITER. This is the main purpose of “Broader Approach”12 activities implemented by Europe and Japan. They are building an accelerator to irradiate and test materials under near-industrial conditions. In doing so, the European and Japanese representatives have responded to the suggestion of David King, a former scientific adviser to the UK’s Prime Minister, who proposed in 2001 launching this accelerator known as the ITER Fusion Material Irradiation Facility (IFMIF) as soon as possible and not to wait until the construction of ITER was complete as originally planned. A linear prototype of the IFMIF accelerator is currently being commissioned at Rokkasho-Mura in Japan. Despite providing more questions than answers this chapter shows that ITER’s members are at least preparing for the future of fusion energy in a very active way by adopting long-term strategies. You might say that this is the very minimum we should expect. In any case, we should acknowledge the constructive approach taken by all the countries involved in this scientific adventure. The challenges are huge and the distance to travel is far, but an impressive international research effort is supporting the technological developments needed to make fusion a reality.13

References 1. IAEA (2022) World survey of fusion devices 2022, p 180. https://www-pub.iaea. org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/CRCP-FUS-001webRev.pdf 2. Arnoux R (2016, Nov 8) The balance of power. In: Newsline. https://www.iter. org/newsline/-/2589 3. Krivit SB (2022, Dec 11,) Steven B. Krivit’s Fusion Reactor Power Value Research. New Energy Times. https://news.newenergytimes.net/iter-fusion-rea ctor-technical-references/

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Entered into force on June 1, 2007, for at least 10 years the Broader Approach Agreement, concluded between the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) and Japan, consists of activities that aim to complement the ITER project and to accelerate the realisation of fusion energy through research and development and advanced technologies for future demonstration fusion power reactors (DEMOs). Both parties contribute equally financially. The Broader Approach covers three main projects being built in Japan: an International Fusion Energy Research Centre (IFERC) equipped with a supercomputer in Rokkasho-Mura for modelling and simulation studies; a prototype for IFMIF, a future facility for neutron production also located in Rokkasho-Mura; and a “satellite” reactor to optimise plasma operation in ITER and to investigate advanced operating modes for DEMO to be tested at the ITER facility located in Naka. On March 2, 2020, the Broader Approach agreement has been extended for a further ten years. 13 Pacchioni [7].

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4. Krivit SB (2022 Dec 23) ITER organization confirms 440 MW electrical input requirement for reactor, new energy times. https://news.newenergytimes.net/ 2022/12/23/iter-organization-confirms-440-mw-electrical-input-requirementfor-reactor/ 5. EURO fusion (2018) European research roadmap to the realisation of fusion energy. https://www.euro-fusion.org/fileadmin/user_upload/EUROfusion/ Documents/2018_Research_roadmap_long_version_01.pdf 6. Janeschitz G (2019) An economical viable tokamak fusion reactor based on the ITER experience. Philos Trans R Soc A Math Phys Eng Sci A 377:20170433. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2017.0433 7. Pacchioni G (2019) The road to fusion. Nat Rev Phys. https://doi.org/10.1038/ s42254-019-0069-8

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Abstract The ITER Organization has currently about 1100 staff from 35 countries each bringing with them their own language, culture, traditions, working habits and for most of them their families! They are physicists, secretaries, engineers, accountants, administrators, IT specialists—all of whom are among the best professionals spanning a wide range of very different fields. For many of them, ITER is their first international experience. The huge variety of cultural, educational and professional backgrounds held by staff make ITER a truly multicultural project. Although only 15% or so of ITER’s staff speak English as their native language, it is ITER’s lingua franca. Simply speaking, use of the same language is insufficient for staff to completely understand one another—the wealth of different cultures within the organisation also creates difficulties in the day-to-day running of ITER. Agence ITER France is aware of these problems, shared by most expatriates, and so manages a team that facilitates the integration of foreigners into the region. Despite these difficulties (common to multinational organisations), ITER employees manage to communicate and work together. In actual fact, each member of staff is enriched by the differences they encounter. Working in an international environment is attractive, but is evidently a source of complexity. I discovered that cultural aspects can also influence technical decisions. ITER’s multiculturalism is both a great asset and a constraint. Gradually, a new culture is forming at ITER based on all cultures and fuelled by joint staff experiences. In the region, although some residents complain that expatriates are “quite distant,” there are clear signs of integration. The opening of Manosque’s International School was undoubtedly an important © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_13

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and positive influence. However, changing one’s job and integrating oneself and one’s family into a new life in France is not easy—some find that there is a cost to family life. The “Iterians,” as they are sometimes nicknamed, face the dichotomy of living in a beautiful region like Provence and addressing the many practical difficulties that face expatriates. There are also specific problems related to health, psychology and psychiatry. Keywords ITER · Expatriates · Culture · Multicultural · Cross-cultural · Health · Integration · Language In Cadarache, on the banks of the Durance river, a scientific village is growing. A small community is taking root there—about 1100 people from 35 countries each bringing with them their own language, culture, traditions, working habits and, for most of them, their family! They are physicists, secretaries, engineers, accountants, administrators, IT specialists—all among the best professionals in a wide range of different fields. Before joining the ITER Organization, most of them worked in research laboratories, in industry or in international organisations. Some have experience in research; others come from the private sector or the nuclear industry. For many of them, ITER is their first international experience. The huge variety of cultural, educational and professional backgrounds held by staff make ITER a truly multicultural project. With the exception of the United Nations (UN) and the European Union’s institutions (EU) such a diversity of languages, origin, religion and culture is not found anywhere else. In fact, the ITER Organization is often (and wrongly) misidentified as an offshoot of the UN (specifically, in terms of science). However, in the United Nations everyone works for their own country and its interests, while in ITER everyone works towards the same scientific objective. All of the men and women working in Cadarache indeed have one thing in common: they have been recruited to help construct ITER. Some senior staff have been working on the project for over 30 years and are starting to see the fruits of their decades of labour; the youngest were born after the project was officially proposed in 1985 making them younger than ITER itself. Although only 15% of ITER’s staff speak English as their native language, it is ITER’s lingua franca. Simply speaking, use of the same language is insufficient to completely understand one another—the wealth of different cultures within the organisation also creates difficulties in the day-to-day running of ITER.

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Agence ITER France is aware of these problems shared by most expatriates and so it manages a team that facilitates the integration of foreigners into the region. In general, the team’s priority is to find new staff suitable accommodation and then to improve their knowledge of the working environment and host region. The multicultural and language programme was managed until 2020 by Shawn Simpson, a dynamic American with excellent French language skills born in Vietnam and raised in among other places France, Nigeria and Australia. Shawn is fully engaged in developing and facilitating the benefits of ITER’s cultural dimension. Her team organised various activities to promote discussions and exchanges about the different cultures within ITER: themed lunches, basic language training, working seminars, activities for the partners of staff, etc. “To work at ITER is to be confronted daily with the ‘difference’ of the person across the hallway,” she explains.1 “And the pitfalls, both linguistic and cultural, are numerous.” “Yes,” “no,” “I want” and “I would like” can have different meanings and convey different expectations depending on whether they are said by someone from Japan, China, Russia, Korea, the United States, southern Europe or northern Europe. A friendly gesture from one person may be construed as overly familiar by another. Raising one’s voice—a common occurrence in the south of Europe—may be perceived by members of another culture as aggressive and intolerable. And as for emails (tens of thousands are exchanged each day within the ITER Organization) they can also reflect cultural values and traditions, and therefore lead to serious misunderstandings between staff. Take the formal, polite phrases that are de rigueur at the beginning and end of emails in some cultures. For some this is an indispensable sign of respect; for others such elaborate formulations are seen as superfluous and long-winded. Hierarchical relationships also vary from one culture to another—flexible and friendly for some, more rigid and formal for others. “But when the problems arise,” underlines Shawn Simpson, “it is always a question of ego—irrespective of nationality.” Don’t forget punctuality. French people and southern Europeans, who are used to arriving late at meetings, are quickly identified in the ITER Organization. Even for me, as a Belgian citizen, it took some time to get used to the French working culture. Despite these difficulties (common to multinational organisations), ITER employees manage to communicate and work together. Better still, each member of staff is enriched by the differences that they encounter. We are

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ITER Mag, February 2014, https://www.iter.org/mag/2/21.

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constantly learning from one another, and as a result, we are learning about ourselves. It’s an extraordinary thing to be part of such a rich environment. But communication issues do still occur; I can remember some high-level meetings where even senior managers failed in this respect. Working in an international environment is an attractive proposition but is also a source of complexity. Whenever I had to organise a videoconference with colleagues from the communication departments of the seven members (forget about asking them to travel to Cadarache every week or month), I had to achieve an organisational feat in finding a time slot that was good for everyone. The situation was almost always the same; Asian colleagues were asked to work late, and those in the United States were asked to wake up early. I was also unpopular with colleagues in France as the meeting most often took place at lunchtime. I also remember emails received from colleagues and even my Director General who remained despite my efforts more than mysterious. I was present in Osamu Motojima’s office when he gave a phone interview to Nature in July 2014. The following day the journalist gave me a call and asked me to reread her transcript of the interview—for the first time in her 10 years on the job—as she was not sure that she had quite understood everything that he had said!

Communication, Culture and Policy I also found that cultural aspects can also influence technical decisions. One example of this occurred when difficulties arose in the production of the niobium-tin superconducting cables for the toroidal magnets and the central solenoid. The situation was complicated because as many as 10 companies located in 6 member states provided the strands and cables for ITER. Japanese industry, which was still recovering from the 2011 tsunami, nevertheless wanted to take part in this enormous and unique task as they had previously worked on a prototype of the central solenoid. The challenge was immense; almost 200 km of superconducting cables had to be manufactured. In 2010, the two Japanese companies selected to produce conductors for the solenoid sent their first samples to a Swiss facility called SULTAN, part of the university Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Capable of producing a strong magnetic field (up to 11 T), high current (up to 100,000 A) and high mass flow rate of helium for cooling, SULTAN is the only facility in the world capable of testing samples of ITER’s magnets under operating conditions similar to those at ITER. These tests revealed that the quality of

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the Japanese conductors was particularly poor. While the solenoid has been designed to produce some 60,000 pulses of high magnetic field during the life span of the project, the Japanese conductors were anticipated to deteriorate after just 6000 cycles. The Japanese companies tried hard to improve the quality of the strands but without success. On the other side of the Pacific Ocean in Oak Ridge at the US ITER headquarters—the US Domestic Agency responsible for manufacturing the central solenoid—managers were becoming somewhat nervous. They were already behind the official schedule and could not afford to wait any longer. They decided to ask a US company, Oxford Superconducting Technology, which had already produced conductors for ITER, to provide them with samples. These passed the tests in Switzerland successfully. US ITER immediately suggested that their Japanese counterparts work with Oxford, but this was not compatible with Japanese culture. The last thing Japan could accept was to buy “their” cables in the United States! The Japanese businesses refused, arguing that they would make every effort to achieve the required quality. However, by the end of 2011 there were still no Japanese strands in Switzerland. Associated delays meant that the situation was critical. Fortunately, Japanese engineers sought assistance from their colleagues in other countries and after much trial and error found a solution involving wound strands made of a copper and niobium-tin alloy.2 Finally, after over two years of discussions between Japan and Switzerland as well as Japan and the United States, the conductors met the required quality standards. Everyone in Cadarache, Tokyo and Oak Ridge breathed a sigh of relief—the problem should never have grown to such a size, but the teamwork and international collaboration deployed to solve it were remarkable. However, the story did not end there. A few weeks later on February 27, 2012 the London-based journalist Daniel Clery published an article in Science in which he detailed the saga of the superconducting strands.3 Dan’s article was factual, technically correct and in my opinion completely neutral. However, perhaps Dan had neglected Japanese culture (or perhaps he was just doing his job). To my bosses at ITER the article implied that Japan 2

They used to assemble three strands to form a “triplet” each made up of two niobium-tin strands and one of copper, and 288 triplets bunched together to form a conductor. The copper strand offered protection against damage from “quenching” of the conductor (the sudden loss of superconducting ability). But two strands of niobium-tin in a triplet was not enough to carry the current under normal conditions. The Japanese companies then worked with strands made from a combination of copper and niobium-tin so that all three would share the load of electromagnetic forces. And it worked!. 3 Science, February 27, 2012 http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/02/iter-dodges-trouble-supercond ucting-cables.

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had not met the required standard—a statement they could not accept. They perceived the journalistic work as an attack questioning their competence and criticising their country—Japan was publicly and openly mentioned. Although he had not worked for an international organisation for two years, Osamu Motojima followed his natural and cultural reflexes. The next day he asked me to send a rebuttal letter to the editor of Science. I tried to explain that this official reaction from ITER would only risk increasing the negative publicity attached to the article, but I failed to change his mind. So, the letter was sent out, and the next day Osamu Motojima asked me to publish it in full on the homepage of the ITER Organization’s website. I understood that he needed to offer reassurance to the relevant authorities in Tokyo as well as Japanese industry—the incident had now taken on a political dimension. In daily life at ITER, few colleagues perceived these cultural issues and power games. ITER’s multiculturalism is both a great asset and a constraint. Gradually, a brand-new culture is forming at ITER based on all cultures and fuelled by joint staff experiences. When I see Americans attending a traditional Japanese dance show or Korean colleagues drinking a glass of rosé wine at lunchtime, it’s fair to say that culture sharing is a reality at ITER! Will the ITER Organization with its employees “inventing” and refining daily be a model for the future? It is still too early to say. In any case most major projects planned for the future whether scientific or not are to be based on large international collaboration. There is already a lot of interest from other (inter)national structures in the unique and rich experience of ITER.

A Scientific Tower of Babel In 2007, with a little surprise and no less curiosity, the residents of the small town of Manosque saw the arrival of the first families to Provence from across the world. When picking up my young son at the international school, I was often amazed by the exotic nature of the scene that greeted me. It was almost surreal to see families from China, India, America, Korea and Japan in this town in the middle of the French countryside with a population of only 22,000 people. And almost every morning I thought of the famous French writer Jean Giono, who was born in Manosque and was opposed to nuclear activity in Cadarache,4 and felt he must be turning in his grave. 4 Not entirely seriously, Giono proposed installing the nuclear centre in Paris instead of Cadarache, “and more specifically in the useless gardens of the Élysée Palace. The close proximity of the Seine river would more reliably provide the water necessary for its functioning than the Durance.” https:// sniadecki.wordpress.com/tag/jean-giono/

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Although research has demonstrated that cultural diversity can promote creativity in companies, this sometimes comes at the expense of interpersonal harmony and team cohesion. There is also evidence that organisations that operate at international level are vulnerable to a negative atmosphere that can develop in teams whose members come from differing national, educational and professional backgrounds.5 In Manosque, there are clear signs of integration, although some residents complain that expatriates are “quite distant.” Most ITER employees quickly learn to speak French relatively well. In fact, some speak it very well indeed: I was always surprised to meet colleagues from outside Europe who spoke French almost perfectly within two years of moving to Provence. With genuine modesty they would point out that the local population speaks very little English. The mix of cultures is now very visible throughout the region. Some “ITER families” go to church on Sunday. Chinese and Japanese colleagues enjoy going to the market on Saturday, while Americans and Europeans taste the local rosé wine on the terraces of cafés. And, of course, Asian colleagues are never far away from a lavender field! This mixing is also taking place on a more sustained and profound level through the purchasing of property, the increase in number of Asian retailers in Manosque, the participation of expatriates in cultural and community life, the prevalence of foreign languages, etc. A Chinese couple once told me that they would like to stay forever in Provence. They explained how they enjoyed the overall quality of life (especially the education, the healthcare and the food, which are substantially better than in their country of origin). Unfortunately, the limited duration of the contracts offered by the ITER Organization (a maximum of five years, but renewable) does not allow long-term planning. Despite some small sticking points, like the quintessentially French work schedules at schools, this Chinese couple would have happily planted themselves in the South of France for the rest of their working lives.

The Provence Cliché The opening of Manosque’s International School was undoubtedly an important influence on integration. For international scientists, engineers and project administrators relocating to the area with their families France committed to providing bilingual education from nursery school through

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Chamorro-Premuzic [1].

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secondary school. The programme is open to ITER families as well as local children interested in an international curriculum. Opened in 2007 today the school teaches over 730 pupils from approximately 40 countries—60% of whom are “ITER children” and 40% “local children”—of European or non-European nationality. The school is part of the official French education system and is unique in France and possibly the world; from nursery all the way up to baccalaureat level (age 18), pupils are split into six language sections (German, English, Chinese, Spanish, Italian and Japanese), where lessons are given according to the principle of parity: 50% in French and 50% in the language associated with each particular section. Language lessons are also provided in Russian, Hindi and Korean. The school teaches almost all ITER children and is supported by the seven ITER members who regularly make contributions (delegations from the seven members regularly visit the school and bring dozens of books). Most of the ITER families are satisfied with the level of education offered at the International School with the exception of some Chinese and Japanese families who complain that the curriculum is “too light” (in their countries children usually have activities for well over 40 h per week). In the Human Resources Department of the ITER Organization, staff are well aware that the reality of working at ITER is not what it appears to be at first glance, nor is it described by the clichés associated with the region. Changing one’s job and integrating in France are not always easy, and sometimes come at the expense of family life. The “Iterians,” as they are sometimes nicknamed, face the dichotomy of living in a beautiful region like Provence and addressing the many practical difficulties that face expatriates. Most of the non-European families arrive at ITER without knowing a single word of French. They need to adapt to a new way of life and a new culture, to understand how the administration works, and quickly learn the basics of the language of Molière. Furthermore, the ITER Organization demands a lot of time and energy from its employees. It is an established fact that there are difficulties for the partners of people recruited to work at ITER—they often discover it is almost impossible to find a job in the region. Another challenge for ITER’s Human Resources is to ensure that all nationalities are offered the same chance of being recruited. It is a particularly well-known problem that the salaries offered by ITER are not sufficiently attractive to Americans, for example. The difficulties are such that some foreign colleagues cannot actually manage to integrate—perhaps for personal or family reasons, or both. I remember one American colleague who left ITER after just three years

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without even having visited Paris. However, those who do integrate in the ITER Organization will discover a region that offers much more than just nice landscapes; Provence is home to many technological projects, high-level scientific and medical research teams in Marseille and Aix-en-Provence and a dynamic fabric of small and medium-sized enterprises. Frank Scola, a doctor at the University of Aix-Marseille who specialises in cross-cultural psychiatry, confirms that ITER is from a medical point of view far from an ideal place of work. As a family doctor to more than 200 ITER staff he faces many problems related to health, psychology and psychiatry. “I am desperate to see that there is no expertise in cross-cultural contexts in Cadarache, neither in the ITER Organization nor in the Welcome Office of Agence ITER France,” he told me in an interview on May 2, 2019. “Nobody really cares about the specific problems of expatriates, although they represent two thirds of the 1000-staff. There is abundant scientific literature showing that people migrating and working in cross-cultural environments are more vulnerable, in that they face specific problems and often having difficulty accessing health care, to which they react differently.6 This impacts families and couples, as well as social, professional and school life. However, the ITER Organization and Agence ITER France refuse to consider these issues. They simply provide new comers with a list of local doctors who can speak English. This opens the door to charlatans and encourages self-medication, or even worse. For example, some bilingual children may exhibit in some circumstances ‘selective mutism.’ This is well known. However, I have seen teachers diagnosing autism in these cases! Dealing with expatriates requires specific knowledge on the part of managers, teachers and healthcare professionals to avoid certain mistakes being frequently made. These problems are very real. Fortunately, I managed to adapt the training of the nurses and doctors in the region to better cope with the specific problems of expatriates often oversimplified by the expression that they are suffering ‘culture shock’.” If your French is not too rusty, I recommend that you watch the programmes produced by the local television channel Télé Locale Provence on “ITER people.”7 You will discover, for example, how Shoko Kizawa, a Japanese secretary in the Division for Technical Integration, learned to use the French subjunctive just using a pocket dictionary! In Manosque, some Chinese families developed a real taste for olives and cheese. In short, an international community is growing in Provence, with all the difficulties and little discoveries that you can imagine. The local economy is also becoming 6

Papadopoulos [2]. See for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h13Y6j7D_ok&index=6&list=PLB653831473 BE7F67. 7

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more international. It is not rare to meet salesmen in the local stores who are keen to show that they are learning English…

References 1. Chamorro-Premuzic T (2017) Does diversity actually increase creativity? Harvard Bus Rev. https://hbr.org/2017/06/does-diversity-actually-increase-creativity 2. Papadopoulos I (2006) Transcultural health and social care. Churchill Livingstone Elsevier, London

14 How to Communicate with the Public About a High-Tech Project?

Abstract A major scientific and technological undertaking such as ITER cannot attract the support of politicians and wider society without communicating with the public and raising awareness. Today, it is widely accepted that the general public is an active player in research and innovation. Hence, it is indisputable that informing the public about ITER and fusion is essential. But how should it be done it in practice? How important is it, and what should the key messages be? ITER is actually a great vantage point from which to observe the relation between science and general society. The public is definitely interested in what is going on in Cadarache, and most visitors ask why information about the project is not more widely and visibly disseminated. The answer is that on top of being a major technological challenge ITER is also a communication challenge! The difficulties in communication relate essentially to the main characteristics of the project: ITER is an experimental endeavour; it was conceived by politicians; it is a long-term project with no immediate results or outcomes; and it is somewhat controversial. You have also to take into account the fundamentals of science and technology communication today (in particular, how the media work and the fact that many people react to the word “nuclear” in an emotional, often passionate way). The 2006 French law on nuclear transparency and safety also contributes to informing the public. For example, the authorities are required to organise a public inquiry for any new nuclear installation. In accordance with the law, a Local Information Committee (“Commission Locale d’Information,” CLI) for ITER was set up in 2009 to fulfil the right of access of citizens to nuclear information. Against this background science and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_14

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technology should be the priority! They are highly valued by society. Visits to the site are also an essential activity. Precision, rigour, honesty, quality of information and the absence of any propaganda are the key principles here. It is only under such conditions that complex scientific projects can develop in a sustainable and credible way. The chapter ends up with concrete recommendations regarding communicating ITER. Keywords ITER · Communication · Public · Debate · Visits · PCST · Science society Informing the public about ITER and fusion is, of course, essential, but how should it be done in practice? How important is it, and what should the key messages be? In my opinion, communication should be a priority for the project. A major scientific and technological undertaking such as ITER cannot attract the support of politicians and wider society without communicating to the public and raising awareness. During my 3 h interview with the then Managing Director of the ITER Organization, Osamu Motojima, on October 20, 2010, I argued that ITER’s communication activities should make transparency the highest priority. Transparency starts with grassroots objectives such as being visible online and on local road networks (to facilitate access to the site and promote “scientific tourism”). This also implies opening up the project in many ways, by making high-quality information publicly available and organising site visits for the public including schools and the press. However, this is easier said than done; managing public groups on a 42 ha nuclear worksite is a big challenge. ITER is actually a great vantage point from which to observe the relation between science and general society. The public is definitely interested in what is going on in Cadarache, and most visitors ask why information about the project is not more widely and visibly disseminated. The answer is that on top of being a major technological challenge ITER is also a communication challenge! The difficulties in communication relate essentially to four characteristics of the project: ITER is an experimental endeavour; it was conceived by politicians; it is a long-term project with no immediate results or outcomes; and it is somewhat controversial being criticised by part of the scientific community (see Chap. 7). In Cadarache, my main goal was to develop a strategy based on the following principle: people can understand science and technology much better than we think. Don’t underestimate the public’s capacity to dig into the technical details! Don’t try to hide any negative points since the public will find them! I also advocated being as open as possible about the benefits and

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risks (real and perceived) of the technology. I asked the Director General to allocate a substantial budget to informing the public about fusion energy, not only through disseminating leaflets and factsheets, but also through engaging in and organising public debates of potential risks and drawbacks, organising site visits, and other public communication initiatives. On this point I was unsuccessful; in the early 2010s the clear priority was to secure the budget and stabilise the schedule. The strategy was based on the fact that today the general public is an active player in research and innovation.1 Evidence of this phenomenon is supported by an increasing number of scientists. The usual claim that science and society are two distinct worlds no longer makes sense; each citizen contributes to decisions about science and technology (particularly regarding public funding). Furthermore, solutions to the great challenges of our time are not only technological but involve sociopolitico-economic choices and even the decisions we make in our daily life. Today, no one can object to the idea that research priorities as well as their applications and the questions they raise should be discussed with the public.

A Credible Mediascientific Dialogue Against this background science should be the priority! The European Commission’s Eurobarometer surveys show that science and technology are highly valued by Europeans.2 ITER should therefore continue to provide very high-quality information about the project and about fusion in general (ITER’s communication team works closely with researchers). Since the beginning of the project, the ITER Organization has produced Newsline, an excellent weekly newsletter in English.3 I am happy to see that visits to the site are now an essential activity of ITER’s communication team. Almost 15,000 people visit every year (except in 2020–2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic), which averages out at 2–3 full 50-seater coaches per working day. Two “Open Doors” days are also organised every year in May and October attracting about 1000 visitors each

1 In the last 20 years many initiatives have persuaded a great many people to engage in scientific research. This is what is called “citizen science” (i.e. nonscientists participating in the processes of scientific research, with the intended goal of advancing and using scientific knowledge). See the report of the American National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [1]. 2 https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/2237. 3 http://www.iter.org/news/whatsnew

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time. We also launched a high-quality magazine about the project, free of charge, in English and French.4 A normal visit to ITER takes approximately two hours. It is compulsory to register preferably 2–3 months before.5 The meeting point is usually the car park at the entrance of the site. Before visits start individuals must pass through security checks; since the site has been a basic nuclear installation since 2012 it is impossible to enter without an ID card or passport. Once through security checks visitors are given a presentation—the presenter is selected based on the composition and origin of the group of visitors. What follows next is a guided tour of the worksite in the coach. Agence ITER France also organises visits for local schools. ITER visitors come from all walks of life and from all over the world: the general public, civil associations, scientists, government representatives, ministers, industrialists, journalists, etc. The vast majority enjoy their visit. Obviously, the site is impressive in terms of its sheer size and scope. Based on the number of questions received it is clear that the public’s level of interest is generally very high. From 10-year-old children learning about the basic principles of fusion to experts in the field who come to ITER to see the outcome of their research every visit is unique. I believe that the discourse surrounding media science 6 must be based on fact. This is the price that we have to pay to build complex scientific projects. I advise colleagues to be open and honest whenever they speak to the public. For example, I do not recommend saying that fusion offers an “unlimited” energy source as you can read in some reports.7 More surprisingly, until September 2022 you could even read this on the ITER Organization’s homepage,8 even if the word “virtually” was added in the subtitle: “[fusion] is a potential source of safe, noncarbon emitting and virtually limitless energy.” I understand the meaning, but it does not work in favour of the project or fusion. Precision, rigour, honesty, quality of information and the absence of propaganda are the key principles here. It is only under such conditions that complex scientific projects can develop in a sustainable and credible way. This 4 Even though ITER’s official language is English, the Director General supported my proposal to produce a magazine in French to inform the population of the host country about the project (subscription is free), http://www.iter.org/fr/news/mag. 5 See the page https://www.iter.org/visiting. 6 By mediascience I mean science as it appears in mainstream media or in documents intended for the media that usually present science in a very specific way. By extension, media science is also found in works about science that aim to reach out the public. See Claessens [2]. 7 Ketchum [3]. 8 www.iter.org.

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is all but new; organisations like CERN and ESA have successfully put these principles into practice many years ago. This is also the case with ITER where good public communication has led to a rise in the number of media reports and, more importantly, to an improvement in the quality of articles published in the press. I am happy to see that these are also the principles the new Director General of ITER, Pietro Barabaschi, wants his staff to implement in their communication.

Public Debates Most visits and public presentations on ITER take place in a very positive and constructive atmosphere. However, I do occasionally have difficulties with my communication about ITER. In a few public debates, participants have described me as an “incompetent and even dangerous” person. For me these statements act like a warning light signalling a move from a scientific debate into an ideological one. From that moment forward the discussion is no longer rational or objective—with my arguments not being listened to or even heard. I used to advise my colleagues that should they face such a situation they should remain calm and polite in spite of personal attacks. But when things go really bad only one thing matters: preserve your personal integrity and protect yourself. France has set up an interesting institutional framework that contributes to better informing the public about major technological initiatives. In 1995, the government established a unique institution, the National Commission for Public Debate (“Commission nationale du débat public,” CNDP), which organises public debates on major projects likely to have significant socioeconomic or environmental consequences. In ITER’s case, the Commission organised around 20 public meetings and discussions from January 16, 2006 to May 6, 2006. While these events helped inform the public, they also revealed tensions and disagreements—violent clashes occurred between opponents and proponents of the project leading the police to intervene. Hence, the Prefect (head of the prefecture) of the PACA region at that time, Christian Frémont, concluded on French television on May 5, 2006: “If the public debates had happened before Cadarache was selected to host ITER, the international partners would have chosen another country, less complicated than ours, which would have clearly said yes or no.” The 2006 French law on nuclear transparency and safety also contributes to informing the public. For example, the authorities are required to organise a public inquiry for any new nuclear installation (as discussed in a previous

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chapter). In accordance with the law, a Local Information Committee (“Commission Locale d’Information,” CLI) for ITER was set up in 2009 to fulfil the right of access of citizens to nuclear information.9 Composed of about 20 representatives of civil and economic associations, the “ITER CLI” is an independent body that acts as an interface between the ITER Organization and the local population facilitating questions about nuclear safety, radioprotection and the installation’s impact on personnel and the environment. The ITER Organization and ASN provide the ITER CLI with any information necessary to carry out its mission. The ITER CLI produces and distributes a free newsletter and organises a public meeting every year that brings together all the actors involved in the programme. My experience is that the ITER CLI does a very good job and, paradoxically, is not particularly visible to the general public. In 2014, the ITER CLI was merged with the CLI responsible for CEA installations in Cadarache by decision of the President of the Bouches-du-Rhône Departmental Council.

Why is ITER Invisible? ITER is also not particularly well known to the general public. Many people attending my lectures and presentations ask why the media is so discreet about the project. Why is ITER so “confidential”? Is the problem due to the information available from ITER itself? In my answer, I tend to draw their attention to a few points. Based on my experience, this is how I communicate about a high-tech project like ITER. First, you have to take into account the working methods of the media. Although it is relatively easy today to reach out to journalists, the press is a highly competitive business operating in a difficult economic environment. In very broad terms, there are only three ways to make headlines: either you have achieved a huge milestone or breakthrough, have been involved in a scandal or had an accident or have made a funny or frivolous product. For example, in general the media are not interested in reporting that ITER’s construction is progressing smoothly. However, journalists reacted massively when the ITER Organization announced in December 2017 that it had achieved 50% of the “total construction work scope through First Plasma.” The same principles apply to social media, even if there exists also very good and informative accounts, threats, videos, etc. However, as always, it is better to know where to find them…

9

http://cli-cadarache.org/iter.html.

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Second, in Europe, many people react to the word “nuclear” in an emotional, often passionate way. So, the decision was taken to no longer present ITER as a “thermonuclear” project. Fusion is of course “nuclear,” but different from fission. Unfortunately, the adjective “nuclear” evokes negative connotations that don’t apply to ITER. I can live with that. The proponents and opponents of nuclear issues are sometimes much closer than they believe. Most antinuclear associations have nuclear scientists and researchers in their members. The language used on each side is essentially the same and often at a quite high level of expertise. It is difficult for a nonexpert to find the flaws in a text or speech whatever the position.10 Supporters and opponents of any given technology are the two ideological and inseparable sides of one and the same reality. Thirdly, some people are scared by the physical characteristics of the machine—plasma confinement, high temperatures, etc. This is why we stopped saying that ITER “will bring a Sun to Earth.” As explained earlier, some people imagine ITER as a “magic” technology. We should respect all these factors and be careful when we talk about cutting-edge technologies like nuclear fusion. Constructive dialogue and trust is required between the organisation and the public. Achieving openness is possible, but requires a clear commitment from senior management. We should note here that total transparency is impossible if there are industrial applications to the technology, intellectual property issues, or if the facility is a nuclear one. Unfortunately, these three conditions all apply to ITER. Last but not least, ITER members and the ITER Organization failed to set up a unique and ambitious communication strategy together. If you look at the websites of the ITER Domestic Agencies, you will hardly be able to tell that they belong to the same project. Thus, my general recommendations regarding communication for ITER would be as follows: • Be clear about the time horizon since fusion will only be able to deliver a substantial contribution to the energy system post-2050. • Position fusion as a complementary energy source, not a competitor, to renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power.11

10

Let’s remember the case of Alan Sokal who showed that high-level experts can be bluffed by an article that looks scientific, but is actually fake. Sokal’s article “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” was published in the academic journal Social Text in May 1996. The American physicist argues in this paper that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. On the day of its publication Sokal revealed that the article was a hoax. 11 “Only fusion can meet the energy challenge mankind is facing”: this is I think a good example of a wrong title for a public communication about ITER (article published by Bernard Bigot [4]).

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• Be as open as possible about the benefits and the real and perceived risks of the technology, including its economic viability. • Dedicate a substantial budget to informing the public about ITER and fusion, as well as to creating and organising public debate that discusses potential risks and drawbacks.

References 1. American National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2018) Learning through citizen science: enhancing opportunities by design. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC. https://www.nap.edu/catalog/ 25183/learning-through-citizen-science-enhancing-opportunities-by-design? utm_source=NASEM+News+and+Publications&utm_campaign=1ea596a1e6NAP_mail_new_2018-11-06&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_96101de 015-1ea596a1e6-106665893&goal=0_96101de015-1ea596a1e6-106665893& mc_cid=1ea596a1e6&mc_eid=65599402aa 2. Claessens M (2011) Allo la science? Hermann, Paris 3. Ketchum D (2017) Nuclear fusion energy news: infinite power by 2030 with nuclear fusion reactor? Inquisitr. http://www.inquisitr.com/3944770/nuclearfu sion-energy-news-infinite-power-by-2030-with-nuclear-fusion-reactor 4. Bigot B (2019) Only fusion can meet the energy challenge mankind is facing. Actualité Chimique, n 442. https://new.societechimiquedefrance.fr/numero/ seule-la-fusion-peut-repondre-au-defi-energetique-que-lhumanite-affronte-p11n442/

15 Quest for Holy Grail of Fusion

Abstract While ITER holds the spotlight in the field of controlled fusion, this success should not hide the fact that several different kinds of technology are being explored in the quest to achieve nuclear fusion on Earth. In this chapter, we are going to look at “alternative” projects, such as the National Ignition Facility in the United States and the Laser Mégajoule in France, investigating inertial confinement fusion (ICF). In addition, some 30 fusionrelated start-ups supported by private money have recently emerged and are moving fast in this competitive field. Fusion has indeed attracted high-profile investors over the last few years. Several small companies have entered the still embryonic market of fusion reactors, such as TAE Technologies in California, Helion Energy in Seattle, LPPFusion in New York, General Fusion in Canada, Tokamak Energy, First Light Fusion and Applied Fusion Systems in the United Kingdom, and a company set up by MIT in Boston called Commonwealth Fusion Systems. They are all exploring new concepts. The total investment made in these entrepreneurial fusion projects is estimated to be over USD4.7 billion. In any case, these stories seem to support Bill Gates’ view declaring in February 2016: “We need a massive amount of research into thousands of new ideas—even ones that might sound a little crazy—if we want to get to zero emissions by the end of this century. What we need to get that probability [of a breakthrough] up to be very high is to take 12 or so paths to get there… Like carbon capture and sequestration is a path. Nuclear fission is a path. Nuclear fusion is a path. Solar fuels are a path. For every one of those paths, you need about five very diverse groups of scientists who think the other four groups are wrong and crazy.” The proliferation © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_15

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of these public and private initiatives can only be welcomed. The dynamism and opportunities in a scientific field are measured by the research effort that accompanies them and by related indicators such as the number of publications and patents. From this point of view, fusion is a powerful driver of scientific research and technological development. Keywords ITER · Inertial confinement · NIF · Laser Mégajoule · Start-ups · Investors · Fusion technology ITER holds the spotlight in the field of controlled fusion, but this success should not hide the fact that several different kinds of technology are being explored in the quest to achieve nuclear fusion on Earth. In this chapter, we are going to look at these “alternative” projects, such as the National Ignition Facility in the United States and the Laser Mégajoule in France. In addition, some 30 fusion-related start-ups supported by private money have recently emerged and are moving fast in this competitive field. Within magnetic confinement, specifically, the proven technology of tokamaks is by far the most advanced in terms of the potential production of fusion energy. Pragmatism therefore dictated that it was the right choice for ITER; however, stellarators remain in the running too. Even though they are intrinsically more complex than tokamaks (optimising the design was impossible before the advent of supercomputers), stellarators have the advantage of being more reliable and stable in operation. The Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Germany that achieved First Plasma at the end of 2015 is expected to gradually approach ignition conditions and perform at a level close to that achieved by tokamaks of a similar size. These results might influence the design of DEMO, the successor to ITER, even though tokamak technology has been the preferred option so far. Magnetic confinement fusion is defined by the presence of magnetic fields that confine the plasma. However, another possible technology being developed by several research centres is inertial confinement fusion (ICF). This concept is very different in nature—its purpose is to heat and compress a fuel target (typically a microsphere that contains a mixture of deuterium and tritium) by means of powerful radiation to achieve a temperature of several tens or hundreds of millions of degrees, thereby triggering fusion reactions.

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Lasers for Fusion Inertial confinement was first developed for military purposes making possible the simulation of thermonuclear explosions in a laboratory. The technology is therefore a substitute for atmospheric or underground tests allowing scientists to test new weapons and study the behaviour of materials under explosive conditions. In the 1970s research suggested that very powerful lasers could be used to create high-temperature hydrogen plasmas and even produce fusion energy. However, scientists were divided about the amount of energy that could be obtained through this technology. Some felt there would be insufficient energy to achieve ignition; others considered inertial confinement might lead to the industrial exploitation of fusion energy. In any case the United States decided to test this concept in 1978. As this research is classified, there is little public information available, but it seems that underground experiments were carried out between 1984 and 1988 in the Nevada desert to measure the amount of energy produced by fusion reactions. In a top-secret operation codenamed “Halite-Centurion” scientists were apparently authorised by military authorities to use radiation generated by underground explosions to convert hydrogen contained in small spheres into plasma. According to a report published in the New York Times in 1988,1 researchers were even able to achieve ignition in a plasma in 1985–1986. They claimed that spheres filled with D-T gas had been ignited using an intense beam of X-rays that output 20 million J of energy. But according to other unofficial information sources, the tests were less conclusive. It is worth noting that the article in the New York Times coincided with the official launch announcement of the ITER project in the Official Journal of the European Union. Was this a manoeuvre directed by inertial confinement experts to secure their political support and funding from the authorities in Washington? Or was it aimed at creating an additional line in the DoE’s budget and publicising civil applications of military research? It is plausible. However, we should keep in mind that the primary purpose of this military research was not the production of fusion energy. In any case, the “Halite-Centurion” experiments apparently provided enough scientific basis for the United States to envision the creation of a facility dedicated to inertial confinement at the end of the last century.2 At the same time as—or perhaps because of—the US withdrawal from ITER the construction of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) located within the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California was approved in 1 2

Broad [1]. Lindl [2].

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1997. Today, NIF is one of the two most important facilities for inertial confinement in the world. Operational since 2010, NIF uses 192 powerful laser beams that are each about 1500 m long. Their target is the centre of a spherical chamber 10 m in diameter where a tiny beryllium capsule, only a few millimetres in diameter containing a few milligrams of deuterium and tritium as fuel for the fusion reaction, is positioned. The laser beams rapidly heat the surface of the target forming an envelope of plasma around it. The heated outer layer explodes outward producing a reaction force against the heart of the target, thereby compressing it. During the final part of the capsule’s implosion, the fuel core reaches 20 times the density of lead and is heated up to about 100 million °C. The system develops a single 500 TW peak flash (roughly 1000 times the power produced at any one time by the United States) for a period of only a few picoseconds (trillionths of a second). NIF has stated that the total cost of the facility was USD3.5 billion.3 Twelve years after its launch, on December 5, 2022, NIF succeeded to create a self-sustained nuclear fusion reaction and achieved ignition—a world first for a fusion facility. During the experiment, 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of laser energy were used to produce 3.15 MJ of fusion energy, reaching a gain value of 1.5, thus achieving breakeven. Albeit remarkable, this historic milestone should not hide the fact that this technology is still very far away from commercial exploitation. Indeed, this approach can be a power source only if the energy released exceeds that employed to generate the laser beams, rather than merely exceeding that incident upon the target. Unfortunately, the huge inefficiencies involved in creating those beams mean that only a tiny fraction of that generative energy (each laser shot requires about 300 MJ of energy from the grid) does arrive at the pellet. The overall yield of the experiment was therefore a mere 1%. As commented by Steven Krivit: “The NIF experiment lasted for 0.00000000009 of a second. The device produced no net energy. The device lost 99.2% of the energy it consumed. Suggesting to journalists who cannot be expected to be experts in nuclear fusion that this result “proves fusion could provide energy to a power plant” is beyond irresponsible. It is reprehensible.4 ” However, one week after NIF’s historic experiment, the Financial Times announced that “US government scientists have made a breakthrough in the pursuit of limitless, zero-carbon power by achieving a net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time”5 ! Tom Wilson, the author of the 3

https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/faqs#nif_cost. Krivit [3]. 5 Wilson [4]. 4

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article, forgot to say that what is called here “net energy gain” compares the output energy with the energy used to heat the plasma—not the total energy consumed by the facility. In a public communication, speaking of “net energy,” without giving a clear definition of what it means, can be very misleading. Furthermore, we should not forget the defence-related purpose of NIF, which is according to the Department of Energy “to investigate hydrodynamic and mix phenomena relevant to modern nuclear weapons.6 ” Civil applications are only a secondary objective. Inaugurated in the late 2014 close to Bordeaux in southwest France, the CEA’s Laser Mégajoule (LMJ) exploits the same technology as its American counterpart. Its objectives are also the same. LMJ uses 176 laser beams that converge on a target to produce fusion reactions from D-T mixtures contained in a microbed less than 1 mm in diameter. To achieve this, the mixture has to be very quickly compressed to a density on the order of several hundred grams per cubic centimetre and heated to 100 million degrees— similar to NIF. LMJ intends to achieve a fusion gain factor Q of approximately 10 between the thermal energy produced by the thermonuclear reactions and the laser energy supplied to the target. Producing fusion energy is not the primary purpose of either NIF or LMJ; it is therefore not surprising that inertial confinement fusion has not yet shown that it could offer a quicker or more efficient solution than magnetic confinement. In Europe, the EURATOM programmes do not fund research on inertial confinement fusion. However, the European Commission is closely following the development of this technology.

Fusion Billionaires In recent years, several private businesses have invested in the field of nuclear fusion, mainly in North America and the United Kingdom. However, this is not a new phenomenon; in the 1960s, US company Lockheed Martin built the “Z machine” at its Sandia National Laboratories, which they claimed was the “world’s most powerful and efficient laboratory radiation source.” It used magnetic constriction to produce high temperatures, high pressures and powerful X-rays for research in high-energy density science. Sandia thought that Z could also accelerate the development of fusion energy. However, despite encouraging initial experiments the machine’s performance did not allow Sandia to envisage any commercial application. Nowadays, the

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company supports a new project that it is very secretive about but is nevertheless regularly featured in the press. They aim to develop a compact fusion reactor (CFR) that would be small enough to be mounted on a truck. Publicly available information is very scarce, apart from the fact that Lockheed Martin recently patented it. Fusion has also attracted high-profile investors over the last few years. Over 30 small companies and start-ups have entered the still embryonic market of fusion reactors such as TAE Technologies in California, Helion Energy in Seattle, LPPFusion in New York, General Fusion in Canada, Tokamak Energy, First Light Fusion, Crossfield Fusion and Applied Fusion Systems in the United Kingdom, and the company set up by MIT in Boston, Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Last but not least, Renaissance Fusion, a start-up established a couple of years ago in Europe, claims to be “the first stellarator company in the world,” and Gauss Fusion, a German start-up, aims to develop “a European magnetic fusion power plant—and not just a pilot or demonstration plant—by 2045.” They are rejoining five other start-ups established in Europe: Marvel Fusion, Focused Energy and Proxima Fusion (all in Germany), Novatron Fusion (Sweden), and Deutelio (Italy). TAE Technologies benefited from funding from the late Paul Allen,7 cofounder of the Microsoft Corporation with Bill Gates; Helion Energy from Peter Thiel, a close relative of US former President Donald Trump; General Fusion from Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, who invested nearly USD20 million in 2011 and Applied Fusion Systems from Britain’s Richard Dinan, made famous by reality television and now an entrepreneur targeting commercial fusion power. There is no doubt that potential (and substantial) financial benefits are at stake. As Dinan put it in his recent book: “You cannot expect people to invest in something they do not understand. But bearing in mind that the energy markets generate an annual turnover of USD7 trillion and that nuclear fusion will be one day’s dominant energy source, fusion deserves attention”.8 In Canada, General Fusion has commissioned in early 2021, a prototype that combines magnetic and inertial confinement (Fig. 15.1). Their engineers developed the concept of “magnetised target fusion,” which exploits advances in electronics, materials and plasma physics. It uses a patented technology called reverse field configuration to create an overheated environment suitable for plasmas. The system consists of a sphere approximately 3 m in diameter 7 Paul Allen visited the ITER site at the end of June 2018 a few weeks before he passed away: “I was at the Cannes Film Festival, supporting the new Star Wars film. A visit to ITER was my chance to see preparations for the birth of a star on Earth,” https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3048. 8 Dinan [5].

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Fig. 15.1 Machine built by General Fusion (Canada) is rather original—it has no vacuum vessel, rather a spherical tank filled with a liquid lead–lithium mixture and no superconducting magnets, using instead an array of pistons to compress the plasma. From General Fusion

that contains molten lead and lithium. As the metal mixture is rotated, a vortex is created at the centre of the sphere. D-T gas is then injected into the sphere and heated to fusion conditions. Gas-driven pistons located outside the sphere then push the liquid metal inwards and collapse the vortex, thus compressing the plasma. The compression increases the temperature of the plasma to the point where deuterium and tritium nuclei fuse releasing energy in the form of fast neutrons. Convinced by the potential of this technology, Jeff Bezos and companies like Microsoft and Cenovus Energy have sunk more than USD127 million into the company. It is little wonder then that in 2018 the Canadian government also made an investment of CAD49 million in General Fusion. On January 12, 2023 General Fusion and the UK Atomic

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Energy Authority (UKAEA) announced their decision to build together a demonstration plant at the Culham Campus with construction beginning in the summer 2023, commissioning planned for 2026 and full operations by early 2027. TAE Technologies is working on a laboratory machine in which the fusion of hydrogen and boron produces helium and energy. The advantage is that this reaction is “aneutronic”: it does not produce any neutrons that, as we have seen, degrade the materials from the reactor’s internal walls and make certain components radioactive. The big challenge is that the plasma has to be heated to 1 million °C! However, the Californian company recently announced that it was getting close to “sufficiently hot and sufficiently long” confinement conditions for fusion, without going into much detail.9 The company is also actively promoting spinoffs of fusion-related technologies. For example, TAE Technologies created a subsidiary to commercialise a neutron beam machine to irradiate tumours in the head and neck. Executives hope to market the technology in China, where these types of cancer are apparently more common than elsewhere. The company has also recently acquired two UK-based companies, one focused on electric transport and the other on battery energy storage system (BESS) technology. Tokamak Energy is a spin-off of JET and the Culham Laboratory close to Oxford in the United Kingdom. Established in 2009 at a premises in Milton Park close to JET, the company has already built two small spherical tokamaks, the latest model of which, named the ST 40, was commissioned in May 2017 reaching a temperature of 15 million °C. It is expected to reach about 100 million °C and therefore be used to explore D-T fusion reactions in compact spherical tokamaks. And that’s not all; Tokamak Energy is also working on a project to build a reactor that will produce electricity. At a meeting on January 23, 2017, in Paris the company’s CEO, David Kingham, announced that they will be ready to inject fusion power into the national electricity grid by 2030. This was confirmed by his successor Jonathan Carling, a former Rolls-Royce engineer, who has led the company since the end of 2017.10 Will Tokamak Energy win the fusion race and overtake ITER and DEMO? Let’s wait and see! Here, we have several competing projects that all need to reassure shareholders and attract additional funding. Therefore, the effects brought about by such announcements are important. For Kingham there is little doubt these private ventures will soon reach their

9

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/tae-technologies-pushes-plasma-machine-new-high-fusion-frontier/. https://www.theengineer.co.uk/jonathan-carling-tokamak-energy/.

10

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objectives: “Fusion projects in government laboratories have become increasingly expensive and slow. For example, ITER is now planning to start full power operations in 2035.”11 He was quite right. Helion Energy based outside Seattle in the United States is also working on a fusion machine that combines the principles of magnetic and inertial confinement. The objective is to magnetically accelerate plasmas and then compress them very quickly. The fuel will be helium-3, which the company hopes to generate in the reactor. The advantage to this reaction is that it is cleaner that the D-T reaction since it does not produce any neutrons. Helion hopes to produce 50 MW of power in modules the size of shipping containers. First Light Fusion was founded in 2011 by Nick Hawker, at the time a doctoral student at Oxford University, and Yiannis Ventikos, his thesis adviser. They claim to be “the world’s leading inertial fusion start-up.” Their experimental “Machine 3” aims to accelerate disc-shaped bullets towards a target of deuterium-tritium pellets, hoping that the collision will generate enough heat to start fusion reactions. This release of energy, scaled-up and repeated, would eventually power electricity-generating plants, according to Hawker, who has raised USD50 million from investors.12 On April 6, 2022, the spin-off of the University of Oxford’s succeeded to generate D-D fusion reactions in their novel machine using their projectile approach. Despite modest yields, this achievement is an encouraging result. Finally, a US start-up located near New York called LPPFusion (for Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Fusion) also carries out hydrogen-boron fusion in a reactor that its managers like to call “Focus Fusion” because they use high-density compressed plasmas. In the Focus Fusion reactor, the product of the reaction is a carbon nucleus that is instantly transformed into three helium nuclei. The energy from the reaction is taken directly from the helium cores. However, this reaction requires temperatures that are 10 times higher than those reached by ITER. LPPFusion aims to manufacture units that will be cheaper and smaller than tokamaks that could sit in a garage and supply power for several thousand homes. Recently, the company announced that they had reached a temperature of almost 2 billion °C! LLPFusion’s founder and CEO is Eric Lerner, a plasma physicist and successful author of the controversial book The Big Bang never happened .13

11

World Nuclear News, 30 January 2017, http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Spherical-tok amak-to-put-fusion-power-in-grid-by-2030-30011702.html. 12 Reed [6]. 13 Lerner [7].

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Quite recently the prestigious Boston-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology set up a company called Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) to build and develop tokamak technology. The company is funded by Breakthrough Energy Ventures (a fund led by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Jack Ma and other billionaires), the Italian company Eni and others. The team is using new high-temperature superconductors to build a high-field tokamak called “Sparc” (Soonest/Smallest Possible Affordable Robust Compact reactor), which will be a scaled-down (3.3 m in diameter) easy to commercialise version of the most recent tokamaks. Their plan is to achieve a fusion gain greater than 3 (“the world’s first net energy (Q > 1) compact fusion system”) and produce 100 MW of thermal power by 2025,14 thus a “similar performance as ITER, but built more than 10 times smaller,” according to the CFS website. This is a promising technology and the project has been very influential in a recent US National Academies of Sciences report (outlined in the next chapter). Fusion is now attracting scientifically minded entrepreneurs and investors willing to make a long bet. According to the Fusion Industry Association, a trade group of over 50 private companies working on the commercialisation of fusion, total investment in these entrepreneurial fusion projects stands at an estimated USD4.7 billion. However, most of the fusion experts I have talked to agree that these young companies are still far from mastering fusion energy. They aim to develop new technologies and hopefully find spin-off applications in other sectors as TAE Technologies successfully did. Fusion is more of an alibi… In any event these stories seem to support Bill Gates, who declared in February 2016: “We need a massive amount of research into thousands of new ideas—even ones that might sound a little crazy—if we want to get to zero emissions by the end of this century. What we need to get that probability [of a breakthrough] up to be very high is to take 12 or so paths to get there,…. Like carbon capture and sequestration is a path. Nuclear fission is a path. Nuclear fusion is a path. Solar fuels are a path. For every one of those paths, you need about five very diverse groups of scientists who think the other four groups are wrong and crazy.”15 Proliferation of such public and private initiatives can only be welcomed. The dynamism and opportunities in a scientific field are measured by the research effort that accompanies them and by their related indicators such as

14 15

Chandler [8]. Murray [9].

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the number of publications and patents.16 From this point of view, fusion is a powerful driver of scientific research and technological development. An irreversible dynamic has been initiated in the wake of the ITER programme. In any case new developments are being taken seriously in the fusion world. This new kind of global research effort even led to US authorities considering privatising magnetic confinement research, which would allow the Department of Energy to allocate public funding to other research areas.

References 1. Broad WJ (1988, Mar 21) Secret advance in nuclear fusion spurs a dispute among scientists. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/21/us/ secret-advance-in-nuclear-fusion-spurs-a-dispute-among-scientists.html?pagewa nted=all 2. Lindl J (1995) Development of the indirect-drive confinement fusion and the target physics basis for ignition and gain. In: Physics of plasmas, vol 2, no 11, pp 3933–4024. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.871025 3. Krivit SB (2022, Dec 15) What I got wrong about the national ignition facility fusion story, New Energy Times. https://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/12/15/ what-i-got-wrong-about-the-national-ignition-facility-fusion-story/ 4. Wilson T (2022, Dec 11) Fusion energy breakthrough by US scientists boosts clean power hopes,. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/4b6f0fab66ef-4e33-adec-cfc345589dc7 5. Dinan R (2017) The fusion age. Applied Fusion Systems Ltd., Culham 6. Reed S (2019, May 13) The fusion reactor next door. New York Times. https:// www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/business/fusion-energy-climate-change.html 7. Lerner E (1992) The big bang never happened: a startling refutation of the dominant theory of the origin of the Universe. Vintage, New York 8. Chandler D (2018, Mar 9) MIT and newly formed company launch novel approach to fusion power. MIT News. http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-newlyformed-company-launch-novel-approach-fusion-power-0309?utm_source=& utm_medium=&utm_campaign= 9. Murray J (2016, Feb 24) Bill Gates: world will deliver “clean energy breakthrough” within 15 years. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/env ironment/2016/feb/24/bill-gates-world-will-deliver-clean-energy-breakthroughwithin-15-years

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10. Tirone J (2018, Oct 30) Billionaires Chase “SpaceX Moment” for the holy grail of energy. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-1030/nuclear-fusion-financed-by-billionaires-bill-gates-jeff-bezos?srnd=premiumeurope

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Abstract The story of ITER could have been a “chronicle of a death foretold.” All the conditions were set from the beginning to prevent it going ahead. Despite many years of difficulties, changes, delays and cost increases the world’s largest nuclear fusion experiment is now more than 75% complete. However, what the Royal Society wrote in 1999 still seems valid: “Will fusion energy work? There is now no serious doubt that a machine could be built which would provide net energy. The issue that is still highly controversial is whether the technological difficulties, including some very severe materials problems, can be overcome so that a machine producing energy at an economic rate could be anticipated.” (Royal society and royal academy of engineering (1999) Nuclear energy— the future climate, London. https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_ Content/policy/publications/1999/10087.pdf. ITER is a good example of “technology diplomacy.” Starting in 1985 magnetic confinement fusion was chosen to promote international relations and help overcome political tensions during the Cold War. ITER also demonstrated that diplomacy can be a catalyst for technological development: technology through diplomacy. None of the ITER members will contest the fact that the project has promoted its engineers and companies abroad and facilitated cooperation with other countries while developing commercial performance. Another interesting feature of this diplomatic technology is that ITER has facilitated the creation of a high-level pool of international technological expertise that the members now have at their disposal to consult as they see fit. This expertise is essential for diplomats and policy-makers in addressing many areas © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4_16

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outside fusion such as climate and energy issues. ITER is not the end of the fusion energy story it is just the beginning. The economic feasibility of tokamaks has yet to be demonstrated. More than 30 projects in the world aim to achieve the same objectives using different technologies. The challenges are huge, and there is still a long way to go, but an impressive international research effort is supporting the technological developments needed. After all it is entirely possible that ITER and fusion energy will change the course of civilisation. Keywords ITER · Science diplomacy · Economic · Big science · International cooperation · Innovation The story of ITER could have been a “chronicle of a death foretold.” All the conditions were set from the beginning to prevent it going ahead. To start with, the historic meeting of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 was very unlikely. Then, it took 20 years of hard work to design the reactor during which the project nearly died due to deep disagreements between members who envisaged a very ambitious machine and other members that had more modest ideas. In addition, once the programme was on track budgetary increases and slipping schedules put the project at risk—and still continue to do so. The possibility of the United States withdrawing from the project still haunts the corridors of the ITER Organization in Cadarache. And there are more political and fundamental criticisms. ITER, which is presented as a scientific project, will paradoxically produce little new research and few innovations. Why then is the European Commission financing ITER even though it prevents itself from providing direct funding to scientific infrastructures? Is D-T fusion the best path to fusion energy? Finally, where does ITER find this inexhaustible energy to drive the project forward? ITER is certainly a part of the modern phenomenon of technological evolution ending in huge scientific installations. It falls under the umbrella of Big Science that has in recent decades led to the construction of scientific equipment with exceptional dimensions and breathtaking performance.1 It seems that scientific research cannot be conceived today without these gigantic instruments (e.g. giant accelerators, huge space stations, supercomputers and information highways) that can only be financed through international agreements. Ever-faster, bigger, more powerful—summarising recent technological evolution. Ever-more complex too. Today’s machines are 1

This evolution is not restricted to technoscience. Investments in megaprojects have increased in recent years and represent 8% of the world’s wealth: Flyvbjerg [2].

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of considerable sophistication consisting of an impressive number of components and interdependent subsystems. In addition, technology is evolving more and more rapidly, techniques are increasingly interconnected, and a complex social organisation is required to make them fully operational. Such evolution is both the result and the origin of considerable progress (particularly, in medicine; technology has advanced to the extent that some robotic scalpels are able to work at the cellular or even molecular level). It also pushes the frontiers of human knowledge. Humanity has never stopped building increasingly sophisticated instruments to try to understand and master the universe. Apart from the money that these large endeavours require from public budgets, what other reason could there be to disagree with their development? They lead to substantial scientific progress, generate industrial benefits and increase a country’s prestige on the international scene. Perhaps their biggest critics would be researchers themselves since larger machines have bigger budgets making them harder to access to carry out experiments. But such evolution also has more subtle consequences; it even goes as far as changing the nature of science and technology, now more inseparable or indistinguishable. So-called technoscience doesn’t only affect the world around us it also influences itself. Common practice in scientific research and even its objectives have been changed by the emergence of numerical simulation tools; everything is moving towards being more technical. The idea is gradually emerging that recent technological developments (particularly, the way research is carried out and structured) are impacting the fundamental principles of the scientific method and hence the very definition of what science is. ITER is therefore both a brilliant incarnation of Big Science and a genuine product of the scientific and technological evolution that marked the twentieth century—illustrated by the successes of giant particle accelerators, advances in space exploration and the breakthroughs in astronomy made possible by large telescopes. But is fusion energy only accessible through building a gigantic machine like ITER? Does bigger necessarily mean better, or is there another way?

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“We Would Be Crazy not to Build ITER” As we have seen, the ITER programme displays some interesting similarities to the Second World War’s Manhattan Project.2 In both cases, the aim was to develop a specific new technology through research (the atomic bomb in the case of Manhattan, fusion energy in the case of ITER) by mobilising considerable resources and extensive international cooperation. But there are also important differences between the two. ITER’s goal is peaceful, while the Manhattan Project was clearly intended to ensure the United States was the first country to possess the atomic bomb and in doing so to winning the race against the Third Reich. The Manhattan Project was developed in secret, whereas the ITER programme is a public initiative. Manhattan was a project carried out mainly by the United States, whereas ITER is supported by seven international members. The decision to build ITER can also be seen as the result of the lessons the Western world learned from the Manhattan Project. It profoundly influenced scientific policy in developed countries and led to the paradigm of scientific research being the engine driving the development of our economies and societies. In particular, Manhattan inspired President Franklin Roosevelt’s Scientific Advisor, Vannevar Bush. He designed a “linear” model that assumed a direct link between scientific knowledge and socio-economic development through successive stages of research, invention and innovation. This model, which is also based on the idea that fundamental research must be stimulated through the availability of resources, still influences the scientific policy of industrialised countries. It also inspired the founding fathers of the ITER project. “We would be crazy not to build ITER,” declared then French Minister of Research and National Education Geneviève Fioraso at the inauguration of the headquarters of the ITER Organization on January 17, 2013. Bolstered by the indisputable successes of CERN, Hubble and Big Science, in general, there was a lot of confidence in ITER even though there appeared to be many real difficulties to overcome. This also explains why political and international support for the project has (almost) never been called into question. This sustained support is also due to the fact that large projects like ITER have a tendency to generate spin-offs in other fields of science. Even for projects driven by strategic or political motivation, as was the case with the Apollo 2 Manhattan was the codename given to the research project led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada that produced the first atomic bomb during the Second World War. Launched in 1939 the project mobilised up to 100,000 people and cost about USD2 billion, or around USD30 billion dollars in today’s money.

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lunar programme, technological spin-offs significantly outweigh direct scientific contributions. The thousands of patents filed during the development of the Apollo missions, notably in materials science and the miniaturisation of electronic devices, enabled the United States to make technological breakthroughs from which we all benefit today. Almost 50 years later the speed and size of advances made in, for example, microchips seem almost impossible to replicate today. At present, tokamaks still appears to be the most promising way of achieving ignition and producing fusion energy. A fundamental scaling law applies to tokamaks: energy is generated according to the volume of plasma, while losses are proportional to its surface area. Through the experience of building first- and second-generation machines scientists soon realised that the plasma would ignite only in machines that had been substantially scaledup, with a radius at least 10 times bigger and a volume at least 1000 times bigger. This “iron law” of magnetic confinement fusion necessitated increasingly larger machines up to the size of ITER. Experience so far seems to confirm the theory since the biggest machines hold world records for power produced and confinement time. In nuclear fusion, big is (still) beautiful. Against this technoscientific background some people point out that the decision to build ITER followed the first oil crisis of 1973—the public still have a clear memory of the meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev in Geneva. When I contemplate the question of why ITER exists I tend to agree with Jacques Ellul who you will remember argued that in our society technology always has the last word. Contrary to Plato’s and Aristotle’s theories that technology is subordinate to politics technological advances affect the scope of policy decisions. Politics, the “art of the possible,” is necessarily defined by what is in fact possible; in short, by the advancement of technology. The recent emergence of new frontiers, such as genetically modified organisms, cloning and intelligent robots, confirms our inability to stop or even slow down the development of technology. This law (essentially, that “everything that is possible will necessarily be realised”) summarises in one sentence this key and somewhat tragic dimension of modern technology. In the case of fusion this law is clear: ITER exists because ITER was achievable. ITER was therefore inevitable—a conclusion that is not as pessimistic or as cynical as might be thought, but one that takes into account the very nature of technology.3 If the decision were to be taken today I am not sure that ITER

3

Séris [3].

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would be built, at least not in the form of a large-scale international collaboration. China, as we have seen, will probably decide to build alone a reactor of equivalent size to ITER, and several private projects aim to operate compact fusion reactors.

ITER Is Already a Historic Step It is impossible to say definitively that big tokamaks will ultimately be the most efficient way to exploit fusion energy in future (although the Financial Times included ITER in the technologies that will change the way we live4 ). As explored in the previous chapter, several companies are currently developing and even building small fusion reactors. Even though based on the information available it cannot be certified that these projects will lead to industrial applications, we must at a minimum take them into account and pay close attention to them. Let us continue comparisons with other areas of Big Science: at the same time as launching rockets and carrying out extremely expensive space missions we have also seen a democratisation of space exploration with the arrival of new actors in the market (in particular, from the private sector), the development of “stratospheric tourism,” a sharp increase in the number of launchers, and so on. The same trend can be seen in the field of computing where both supercomputers and microcomputers seem to have a bright future. Will we see a similar phenomenon in controlled fusion? That remains to be seen. As far as the commercial exploitation of fusion energy is concerned Russian physicist Lev Artsimovitch once said that “fusion will be ready when society needs it.”5 Will ITER lead to the industrial development of fusion? It is still too early to give a definitive answer to this question. But what the Royal Society wrote in 1999 still seems valid6 : “Will fusion energy work? There is now no serious doubt that a machine could be built which would provide net energy. The issue that is still highly controversial is whether the technological difficulties, including some very severe materials problems, can be overcome so that a machine producing energy at an economic rate could be anticipated. Since world research in this area is proceeding at a spend rate of about $1B per annum, there is reason to be confident that an answer to this question 4

Murgia [4]. Children’s Encyclopaedia (1973) Vol 3, page 381, Moscow, Pedagogica http://elementy.ru/lib/ 430807. 6 The Royal Society and The Royal Academy of Engineering [1]. 5

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will emerge in the next decade or two. However, it seems very unlikely that fusion power could make a significant contribution to the energy needs of the world before, at the earliest, the second half of next century.” The message is clear: fusion is no longer “30 years away.” Commercial fusion will be achieved when the maturation of fusion science is combined with the emergence of twenty-first century enabling technologies. ITER will definitely contribute to scientific knowledge about burning (nuclear) plasmas. It is still the only credible fusion machine that will make it possible to study the impact of the alpha particles (helium nuclei) produced by nuclear reactions on the behaviour of the plasma (i.e. whether they create major instabilities and disruptions or not). However, it is not a given that ITER will open the way to the industrial production of fusion energy. In my opinion, ITER’s most important innovation is not technological. There are over 100 tokamaks around the world of which ITER is just one more—albeit the biggest to date. ITER would never have been possible without long-term international collaboration; what makes it unique is the very fact that 35 (currently 33) countries are working together to build a complicated and sophisticated project. If ITER had been just a construction programme, it would certainly have been organised differently. International collaboration is an essential and original feature of the programme. It is perhaps the only big decision that its founders took. Of course, working with seven members and 35 or 33 countries, all of which have different experiences and levels of achievement in the field of fusion, has proven difficult to implement. There can be no doubt, however, that this collaboration is extremely fruitful. By pooling their resources and demonstrating that they are able to overcome the major obstacles on the way to fusion ITER members broadcast a highly peaceful and globally positive message. The collaboration and coordination between different entities of the programme are constantly improving. Research on fusion is remarkable in the sense that it has resulted from an international collaborative approach ongoing for a very long time. Advances and discoveries made in any one particular country are immediately shared with other research programmes. This is a daily reality in the ITER programme (and even in the field of fusion), which benefits from the diversity of its members’ experience, including ongoing research on operational tokamaks in many countries around the world. As a political project, ITER has a strong image that enables it to leverage public (and now private) finance to ensure a continuous flow of improvements and innovations.

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Of course, the task has proven longer and more difficult than Kurchatov imagined at the time. But the “fusion community” made up now of thousands of researchers worldwide has never given up. More than 60 years later fusion scientists can reap the fruits of their tenacity with ITER. The “Atoms for Peace” have indeed fused. As Richard Dinan wrote: “The great thing about ITER is that when it does turn on, it will finally bring nuclear fusion out of the land of the mythical and into the forefront of humanity’s interest, where it should be. The world is covered in scars from the petty scratchings of man, but ITER is something we should be truly proud of.”

Technological Integrator I agree with the American physicist Raymond Orbach who describes ITER as a model of “scientific diplomacy.” Its members will be its greatest beneficiaries. But, in return, ITER also has a wealth of lessons to offer to politicians increasingly confronted with major global challenges. Based on his experience as Undersecretary of State for Science in the Department of Energy from 2006 to 2009 Orbach argues that the ITER project constitutes a fascinating paradigm at the intersection of science and diplomacy that could act to inspire promoters of other large-scale international projects.7 ITER’s main roles include being a catalyst for a leap forward in knowledge and being a project driven by both the political and scientific communities. Although ITER’s spin-offs could be seen as relatively limited when considering its budget, if it succeeds (and there is little doubt that it will), participation in ITER will open the door to the next step (i.e. DEMO). China is considering skipping this step and could soon begin to build a reactor that will produce electricity. Other projects may be successful even earlier. But ITER is a political project for better and for worse. Members have the opportunity to demonstrate that they care about our future both in terms of energy and of international relations. It is specifically for this reason in particular that no country wants to take on the risk of or be responsible for leading the project to failure. Like it or not ITER is seen as a model and a driving force behind future international initiatives; therefore, a country’s conduct in such a project matters. Orbach’s analysis is very pertinent, but we should correct somewhat the terminology he uses to describe ITER as more of an integrative force than a scientific one. To be more precise I would say that ITER is an emblematic 7

Harding TK, Khanna MJ and Orbach RL (2012) Science and Diplomacy, vol 1, March 2012, http://www.sciencediplomacy.org/article/2012/international-fusion-energy-cooperation.

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example of technology diplomacy, as well as proving to be a diplomatic technology. This is what ITER tells us: a specific technology (namely magnetic confinement fusion) can be used to promote international relations, has helped to overcome political tensions during the Cold War and has restored the links between Eastern Bloc and Western countries in terms of more than just technology. From this point of view ITER really is a valuable case study. It allowed Russia and the United States to sit down at the same table and work together (and still today) on a peaceful project. In addition, the programme embodies two other features of this diplomatic technology. The first is that ITER has created and nurtured a community of diplomats and engineers from across a wide variety of countries that cooperate despite the many geopolitical tensions that exist on the international scene. Beyond that ITER has also demonstrated that diplomacy can be a catalyst for technological development: technology through diplomacy. None of the ITER members will contest the fact that the project has promoted its engineers and companies abroad and facilitated cooperation with other countries while developing commercial performance. A second feature of this diplomatic technology is that ITER has facilitated the creation of a high-level pool of international technological expertise that its members now have at their disposal to consult as they see fit. This expertise is essential for diplomats and policy-makers in addressing areas outside fusion such as climate, food security and energy issues. In addition, ITER has certainly strengthened the fusion community, which was already very strong and very internationally oriented. Whatever happens ITER will have a place in the annals of fusion history due to its key role in the current landscape. This role is both direct and indirect; it has also stimulated genuine competition in this field with several rival projects now being promoted by administrative officials and ministerial offices. Despite ITER’s influence so far, determination and political will are still required. As we have seen, it is still a long way to go to First Plasma and even farther to the beginning of full operation. It is in fact already granted that ITER’s members will have to digest further delays and budget increases. Furthermore, the situation in the United States is still unclear. Since the very beginning, this major player in fusion has oscillated between continuing to support and removing to support, between staying and leaving—in 1996 they left the programme, coming back in 2002. In 2013, they tried to leave again. They suspended their cash contribution to the ITER Organization since 2016. The US Senate did not accept that the estimated cost of the project had increased five-fold since 2003, while the estimated cost to the United States has risen from USD1.1 billion to between USD4 billion

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and USD6.5 billion. The US annual contribution to ITER is only half of the $250 million contribution that would be optimal for the project. However, the latest signs from the US administration show positive developments. In a report published on December 13, 2018, experts of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) argue that the United States should remain within ITER.8 The report recognises that “ITER is the “only existing project expected to create and study a burning plasma [being] the next critical step in the development of fusion energy.” However, the report also indicates that the United States needs its own complementary fusion programme; otherwise, “the US risks being overtaken by other countries that are ramping up their science and technology.” Experts have taken note of the recent Sparc project launched at MIT and advise that the United States build a “compact” pilot fusion plant that would produce electricity at the lowest possible capital cost. They also point out that the latest developments in plasma science have attracted interest from the private sector and generated investments that should be further exploited. “The biggest obstacle to the world’s fusion energy future is funding,” Ned Sauthoff, then head of the US ITER agency, said in 2017 to Bloomberg News.9 The fact is that the Trump administration had substantially decreased the budget allocated to ITER. The United States has spent over a billion dollars since 2006, but they still need to commit another billion before the end of construction, and around one and half billion for the start of the D-T experiments in 2035.10 However, this problem is quite specific to the United States, and to a lesser extent India. The other ITER members (particularly, the European Union) continue to provide the required funding. In any event humankind has entered the fusion era. It is likely that, sooner or later, this new energy will be exploited on Earth—although some people fear it is already too late. I remember when Lockheed Martin launched its project to build fusion reactors of modest size in 201411 and international media quickly seized on this spectacular announcement. At ITER, my phone wouldn’t stop ringing. I invited ITER’s scientific managers to my office and asked them: What is our position on this? Their answer was almost unanimous. In essence, they expressed a strong interest in the project but remained cautious given the very little information available. All expressed the hope

8

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [5]. Cao J (2017, June 29) Carbon-Free Nuclear Fusion Is Coming, if It Survives Trump’s Budget Cuts. Bloomberg Businessweek, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-29/carbon-free-nuclearfusion-is-coming-if-it-survives-trump-s-budget-cuts. 10 Kramer [6]. 11 Shalal [7]. 9

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that any fusion technology would emerge quickly to meet the pressing needs of humankind and reduce the threats of irreversible climate change. In a way it was like the euphoria that followed the announcements of “cold fusion” in 1989. For a moment concerns about technical details and the politics of technology faded away yielding to excitement and hope for a new initiative. I felt the same enthusiasm on December 5, 2022, when NIF achieved plasma ignition for the first time. “When future generations look back on the evolution of fusion energy research, I believe this will be recognised as a historic milestone,” said ITER Director General Pietro Barabaschi.12 It is now urgent to move forward and go beyond technology competition and national interests. After all, it is entirely possible ITER and fusion energy will change the course of civilisation.

References 1. Royal society and royal academy of engineering (1999) Nuclear energy— the future climate, London. https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_C ontent/policy/publications/1999/10087.pdf 2. Flyvbjerg B (2014) What you should know about megaprojects and why: an overview. Project Manage J 45(2):6–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/pmj.21409 3. Séris JP (1994) La Technique. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 4. Murgia M (2017, Feb 16) Five technologies that will change how we live. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/1bf4cdc8-f251-11e6-95ee-f14e55 513608 5. National academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine (2018) Final report of the committee on a strategic plan for U.S. burning plasma research. National Academies Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.17226/25331 6. Kramer D (2018, Jan 5) Scientific panel urges US to stay in ITER. Phys Today. http://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.20180105a/full/ 7. Shalal A (2014, Oct 15) We made a huge breakthrough in nuclear fusion. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/andrea-shalal-lockheed-nuclear-fus ion-breakthrough-2014-10 8. ITER Organization (2022, Dec 12) ITER applauds NIF fusion breakthrough. Newsline,. https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3828

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Abstract In this chapter, I review the recent progress made in the construction and assembly of the reactor. Much has been achieved (as of March 2020 ITER was near 75% complete towards First Plasma) and, until 2022, the ITER Organization was still claiming that the first experiments (“First Plasma”) were scheduled for 2025, and the “nuclear phase” (D-T experiments) for 2035. However, as the reactor assembly was progressing, new problems were discovered. In particular, in 2022, defects were identified on two major components, the thermal shields and the vacuum vessel sectors. The need to repair such huge components has dashed hopes that the machine’s commissioning would happen as planned. Furthermore, the ITER Organization was informed by ASN (the French nuclear regulator) in January 2022 that the release of the machine assembly’s hold point—expected in February 2022—would be delayed pending replies to ASN requests for further information in four main areas: radiological maps, vacuum vessel sector welding, source term assessment and overall facility mass calculations. ASN also asked the ITER Organization to provide an “in-depth review of the reactor’s design.” Managers of the ITER Organization quickly reacted by announcing additional delays of “up to several years.” Keywords Assembly · Tokamak · Vacuum vessel · Thermal shields · ASN Up until the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, construction was progressing at a good pace on the ITER site. However, during the period 2020–2022, the

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ITER management repeatedly announced project delays due to lockdowns happening in the ITER member states, without giving a precise estimate of the length of such delays. I could not shake the impression that the coronavirus was being used as an alibi to cover up genuine delays from other sources (such as manufacturing and late deliveries of some components). Let us briefly review here the recent developments. Despite the pandemic, the worksite was never actually closed. In January 2020, ten cooling towers (arrived from India) were installed by ITER Organization’s contractors. This was the final step before the commissioning of this huge structure. Inside the building prepared by Europe, cooling water will flow from the tokamak machine to the heat rejection zone (through approximately 5 km of piping and 17 heat exchangers) at rates of up to 14 m3 /s. In February 2020, the two huge lower and upper cryostat cylinders (375 and 430 tonnes, respectively, 29.4 m in diameter) were fully assembled. They were then “cocooned” and moved to storage outside the cryostat workshop building. At the beginning of March, the ITER Organization claimed that 75% of the civil work required by First Plasma had been completed (construction works are under the responsibility of Fusion for Energy, in conjunction with its architect engineer Engage). Poloidal field coil nr 5 (PF5)—the first coil produced by Europe in its onsite winding facility—was completed in April. On 17 April, a little before 2:00 a.m., the first ITER magnet arrived on-site: it was toroidal field coil nr 9, a 360 tonne component and one of ten toroidal field magnets to be delivered by Europe. The first episode of machine assembly happened on May 26, 2020: a major component of the reactor—the cryostat base—was lifted by overhead cranes and lowered into the tokamak assembly pit. This was a big “moving challenge:” lifting and transporting a 1250 tonne component while the distance from the cryostat base to the surrounding wall was only 5 cm in the bottom of the pit (Fig. 17.1). The cryostat base now rests on 18 spherical bearings that bear the full weight of the machine and will enable the smooth transfer of horizontal and rotational forces during operations. Two months later, on July 28, 2020, a ceremony was organised in the assembly hall to officially mark the start of the reactor’s assembly. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the ceremony was an event both virtual and physical. It was hosted (remotely) by President Emmanuel Macron of France. After invitees present in Cadarache went for a guided tour of the ITER worksite, President Macron and Director General Bigot made introductory speeches. President Macron said in particular: “ITER is clearly an act of confidence in future. At its core is the conviction that science can truly make tomorrow better than today.”

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Fig. 17.1 On May 26, 2020, the first major machine component, the cryostat base, was lowered into the tokamak assembly pit. From ITER Organization

However, the political show did not give a flavour of the complexity of the task ahead: integrating ten million parts into the tokamak—a huge challenge that explains why several contracts have been signed to assist the ITER Organization in managing the reactor’s assembly. Under the direct supervision of the ITER Organization assisted by its construction management-as-agent (the Momentum consortium), about 50 contractors are carrying out what is probably the most difficult sequences of assembly and installation works ever attempted across the world. Let me just list here the byzantine acronyms of the main assembly contracts: TAC1 and TAC2 (Tokamak Assembly Contracts), TCC1 and TCC2 (Tokamak Complex Contracts) and BOP (six Balance of Plant contracts).1 On June 26, 2020, the ring-shaped magnet coil PF6 arrived on-site after a 10,000 km trip from its manufacturing site in Hefei, China. Procured by Europe and manufactured in China, this massive component (400 tonnes) 1

TAC1 was awarded to the CNPE Consortium (China Nuclear Power Engineering; China Nuclear Industry 23 Construction Company Ltd.; Southwestern Institute of Physics; Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences ASIPP; and Framatome); TAC2 to the DYNAMIC SNC consortium (Ansaldo Nucleare; Endel Engie; Orys Group ORTEC; SIMIC; Ansaldo Energia; and Leading Metal Mechanic Solutions SL); TCC1 to the Fincantieri consortium (Fincantieri S.p.A., Fincantieri SI S.p.A., Delta-ti Impianti S.p.A., Comes S.p.A.); TCC2 to the META SNC (Ponticelli Freres SAS, Cobra Instalaciones y Servicios SA, and Empresarios Agrupados Internacional SA and BPC.

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has been the first one to be integrated into the ITER machine. A couple of weeks later on August 7, the first vacuum vessel sector (nr 6) arrived from Korea. It has been the first sector mounted on the giant sector sub-assembly tool in the assembly hall for pairing with thermal shield panels and a pair of toroidal field coils (TF12 and TF13). And on August 31, the cryostat lower cylinder was lowered into the pit. The component spent more than four hours suspended from the overhead cranes as it was lifted, transferred across the assembly hall, and then installed in its final position. The Indian Domestic Agency and its contractor MAN Energy Solutions began welding the cryostat lower cylinder to the cryostat base one week later. At the same time, in parallel, busbars (steel-jacketed aluminium bars actively cooled which aim to provide electrical power to the superconducting magnets) and magnet feeders were being installed. On September 30, the French operator RTE announced that ITER was fully connected to the electrical grid and operational, with all seven ITER connections at the 400 kV high-voltage “Boutre-Tavel” power line in operation. In September 2020, the ITER’s cryogenic system was almost completed. The so-called cryoplant has been designed to operate over a wide range of plasma scenarios, from short plasma pulses of 400 s to long plasma pulses of 3000 s (see also Chap. 5). This soccer-field-size installation, the largest singleunit cryogenic installation in the world, will provide liquid helium at -269 °C at a maximum cumulated liquefaction rate of 12,300 L per hour to the 10,000 tonnes of superconducting magnets and 8 massive cryopumps, and also liquid nitrogen for refrigerating thousands of square metres of thermal shielding. On February 12, 2021, PF5 completed all tests and became the second ring-shaped coil out of six to check all the boxes. During the final-phase thermal tests, the coil was inserted into a dedicated cryogenic chamber and cooled down to approximately 80 K (-193 °C), then cycled between cooldown and warmup. On March 26, the 440-tonne sector nr 6 of the vacuum vessel was mounted onto the specialized assembly tool in the assembly hall (Fig. 17.2). Then, in spring 2021, the assembly of the tokamak was moving forward at pace. On April 21, ring magnet PF6 was moved, lowered and installed in the tokamak pit, within 4 mm of tolerance. In total, 8 h were required for the installation operation and for final metrology. On September 15, poloidal field coil nr 5 was also lowered into the tokamak pit. In October, installation work in the cryogenic plant reached completion, with approximately 6000 tonnes of equipment having been supplied by India and installed

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Fig. 17.2 On March 26, 2021, the first sector (nr 6) of the vacuum vessel (manufactured in South Korea) was mounted onto the specialized tooling in the assembly hall. It allowed visitors to truly measure the huge volume of the ITER plasma chamber

by the ITER Organization contractors; commissioning activities began one month later. On November 15, the 40º vacuum vessel sector nr 6 was paired with toroidal field coils TF11 and TF12 and pre-assembled with panels of thermal shielding. This formed the first “sub-assembly component” ready for installation in the machine pit.

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Fig. 17.3 On May 11, 2022, the ITER organization team achieved a major assembly milestone: lifting the first of the nine sub-sections (weighing 1380 tonnes, the equivalent of 3 fully loaded Airbus A380s) of the ITER plasma chamber out of tooling and lowering it into the machine well. From ITER Organization

On March 20, 2022, the cryostat top lid was completed, approximately one year after work started. The 665 tonne component had been assembled from 12 elements which were welded on-site; this is the most structurally complex of the four sections that make up the ITER cryostat as it is curved in three directions like a skull cap. Because the top lid seals the cryostat, this circular structure will be the last component to be lowered into the assembly pit. The culmination of the assembly activities carried out thus happened on May 11–12, 2022, when the specialized teams managed one of the most spectacular and complex operations in the machine assembly sequence: the installation of the first of the nine required vacuum vessel modules inside the tokamak pit (Fig. 17.3). Positioning this mammoth component, as tall as a five-storey building and as heavy as 3 fully loaded Airbus A380s, was an extraordinary challenge of handling and coordination. Unfortunately, ever since January 2022, the tokamak assembly has stalled, as I explain in the next section. On February 21, 2023, Japan’s National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology (QST) and supplier Toshiba Energy Systems

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and Solutions celebrated the completion of the last toroidal field coil under Japanese procurement responsibility.

The Assembly on Hold The successful sequence of events described in the previous section gives the impression that, at the end of 2022, the tokamak assembly was progressing smoothly. It is indeed well documented on the ITER website, with technical information and pictures. However, we now know that, behind the scenes, a huge crisis was unfolding, involving the top management, and fuelled by dramatic staff problems (including two suicides) and serious technical issues. The first warning signs appeared in July 2021, when ITER teams confirmed that they were facing major problems with the vacuum sectors provided by South Korea and delivered to the ITER site. These components were indeed showing dimensional “nonconformities” (distortions). As a result, the subassembly of these sectors could not be performed as planned in the spacious assembly hall. Instead, the ITER Organization was planning on repairing the damaged sectors and performing their subassembly in the tokamak pit where the final assembly of the reactor core was taking place. However, it turned out that the sectors could not be welded by the robots programmed for this task inside the confined space of the pit. Of course, the ITER Organization wanted to ensure a proper conjoining of the 9 sectors, otherwise the reactor could cause excessive radiation during operation—which would mean that gamma-ray radiation and neutrons released during ITER’s operation would put the reactor workers in danger. At the end of 2021, ASN inspectors examined the deviations observed on the sectors which were apparently caused by elements falling during their handling on manufacturing sites in South Korea and Italy. The forgery of certificates of welder qualifications, following an alert from ASN, was also the subject of checks. On January 25, 2022, Bernard Doroszczuk, the chairman of the board of directors of ASN, sent a letter to Bernard Bigot in which he stated that ASN could not release the ITER tokamak assembly hold point as planned on February 1, 2022, and requested further clarifications (as explained below, hold points are a customary part of ensuring the as-built safety of any nuclear facility in France). As a consequence, Doroszczuk gave the instruction not to lower the two sectors into the reactor chamber unless the ITER organization could guarantee that the installed sectors could later be separated and removed (or that they could be repaired in the pit—but this option appeared

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to be very challenging): “For the time being, I urge you not to take any action […] concerning the sectors of the vacuum chamber affected by dimensional nonconformities. […] An in-depth design review seems to have to be carried out before you request again the authorization to assembly tokamak’s components inside the cryostat,” Doroszczuk wrote. In the same letter, ASN also explained that the information provided by the ITER Organization was not sufficient to demonstrate and guarantee compliance with the radioprotection requirements: “The elements transmitted do not make it possible to demonstrate control of the limitation of exposure to ionizing radiation, a major issue for a nuclear fusion installation and […] for the workers around the nuclear buildings.” There were two more technical requests, specifically concerning radiological protection material and impact on the total weight of the tokamak. ASN was concerned with the fact that the additional systems that would need to be installed (i.e. to improve the biological protection) would exceed the maximum mass the B2 slab (the 120 long, 80 wide and 1.5 m thick mass of reinforced concrete that supports the tokamak complex buildings) could support (400,000 tonnes). In order to go forward, ASN asked the ITER Organization to provide a consolidated design, carefully reviewed in order to check compliance with all safety and radiological protection criteria and ensure that the limit of 400,000 tonnes for the B2 slab would not been exceeded. This is actually quite a long story that has its origins in 2012. You will remember that in 2012 ASN validated the proposed ITER design and the French government signed the official decree authorising the creation of ITER as a nuclear installation. This step authorised the ITER Organization and the Domestic Agencies to proceed with the construction, manufacturing and installation of the ITER facility. However, as with any other nuclear installation in France, ITER is required at each stage to demonstrate that its safety-relevant buildings, civil structures, systems and components conform to the approved design and meet the safety case in the as-built or as-installed condition. To oversee these aspects of safety, ASN has put in place several “hold points” as part of the normal regulatory process. For each such hold point to be lifted, ITER must demonstrate the associated safety elements and receive ASN’s approval. The specific assembly hold point now under review was established by ASN in November 2013. Under this hold point ITER cannot begin to weld the first two sections of the vacuum vessel together in the tokamak pit—an assembly step considered irreversible—until certain safety aspects related to the B2 slab have been validated. First, ITER must demonstrate the as-built safety performance of this B2 slab. Second, ITER’s

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radiological maps that calculate the shielding effects of concrete and steel barriers that contain the radiation from the machine must demonstrate that radiation levels will be safe wherever humans are present without requiring extra shielding material. Some internal sources said that the information requested by ASN is very complex, and the reply is not expected before the end of 2023. However, as we have seen, in May 2022, the ITER Organization decided to transfer the first full sector subassembly—consisting of the double-walled vacuum vessel sector, a tightly fitted thermal shield, and two toroidal field coils—into the tokamak pit in the coming weeks. In private, people said the Director General Bernard Bigot wanted to meet the schedule and achieve a critical milestone (which was due for December 2021). ASN accepted the installation of the first subassembly since this was a reversible operation. Unfortunately, another technical problem was discovered in the course of 2022 in the form of defects in the thermal shields of the vacuum vessels sectors.

“a Delay of Several Years” At the end of October 2022, the ITER Organization published for the first time a very informative and transparent account of the difficulties they are facing with the thermal shields and the vacuum vessel sectors of the giant fusion reactor.2 A must-read! Indeed, the article describes in detail the defects that have been identified in these two key tokamak components—which need extensive repair. Thermal shields are actively cooled silver-plated elements that contribute to thermally insulating the superconducting magnet system which will operate at -269 °C. A few months earlier, tests detected leaks on an element of the vacuum vessel thermal shield. Experts were able to identify the cause of the leak—“stress corrosion cracking.” In the course of the manufacturing process, chlorine residues were trapped in tiny pockets near the welds, causing cracks up to 2.2 mm deep. The problem was identified on three, yet-uninstalled vacuum vessel thermal shield panels. The issues with the vacuum vessel sectors stem from a more common manufacturing problem. Deviations caused by the welding of the component’s segments led to dimensional nonconformities which prevented the use of automated welding tools. As the ITER Organization was finalising the repair strategies for both components, the experts were evaluating the

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consequences in terms of schedule and cost which, according to the new ITER Director General Pietro Barabaschi, “[would] not be insignificant.” At a public meeting held in Manosque on November 24, 2022, Gilles Perrier, ITER Organization’s head of safety and quality, said that the project would be delayed by “several years.” After several months of discussion, tests and analysis, the ITER Organization took the decision in January 2022 to repair the shields, which meant that the vacuum vessel sector that has been already assembled and lifted into the tokamak pit would have to be removed and disassembled. In January 2023, the ITER Organization decided to remove and replace all cooling pipes (23 km in total) from the thermal shield panels and to choose a solution that would exclude the risk of stress corrosion cracking. “There is no scandal here,” said Pietro Barabaschi. “Such things happen. I’ve seen many issues of the kind, and much worse…” However, this decision raised the question of whether removal of the pipes would alter the panels’ dimensions, rigidity or their capacity to accommodate a new set of piping. This is still being investigated. Activity on the ITER site in January 2023 was a bit paradoxical since in the assembly hall 2 vacuum vessel modules were being disassembled… Assembly workers became disassembly workers and were preparing for repairs on both the thermal shield segments and vacuum vessel field joints. The vacuum vessel sector already installed in the pit has been lifted out in June 2023, and then disassembled from its toroidal field coils and thermal shield panels, so that the vacuum vessel sector is ready for repair in late 2023. The delays and the significant decrease in activity is evident from the ITER website: in 2020 and 2021, respectively, 416 and 378 photos were posted to document the progress of construction and assembly—but only 185 (almost half ) in 2022. There is clearly a slowing down of the assembly activity on the site. Another technical problem arose in 2022 with the high strength bolts of the gravity supports of the toroidal field coils. These supports will sustain 11,000 tonnes of dead weight while having sufficient flexibility to adapt to the movement of the coils during cooldown. In 2022, it was discovered that one of the bolts was completely broken, only about 40 days after its installation and preloading, and prior to the application of any operating stress.3 The investigation showed that rupture was due to the presence of cavities which were not closed by the forging operations.

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Sgobba et al. [2].

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References 1. ITER Organization (2022, Nov 21) Key components to be repaired. ITER Newsline. https://lnkd.in/dbhfw7hx 2. Sgobba S et al (2023) Failure analysis of a heavy gauge fastener of the ITER toroidal field gravity support system, Fusion Engineering and Design, vol 186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fusengdes.2022.113353

18 The Dark Side of Political Technology

Abstract Working for ITER is a fascinating job, but it is also a daunting experience–as most staff will tell you. Many talk about huge pressures, heavy workload and even “management by fear.” Would this be the norm in a “firstof-a-kind project”? Would signing a contract with the ITER Organization or its contractors and working for this unique project mean that you have to devote all your time and energy to the project and give your personal and family life a lower priority? In this chapter, I come back to my personal experience at ITER. Of course, it was a fantastic period, but I also came up against terrible difficulties. I then discovered that many other members of staff had even worse experiences (in 2021, there was one suicide in Barcelona, one in Cadarache and one suicide attempt also in Cadarache). From the information I received from several ITER staff (who urged me to protect their anonymity) and double-checking it with other sources, I decided in November 2021 to become a whistle-blower and to warn the EU institutions and the ITER Council about unacceptable practices implemented by ITER management. Keywords Integrity · Mismanagement · Political technology · Science communication · Whistle-blower More generally, this chapter shows the institutional difficulties science mediators may encounter in their professional activities and how political decisions, public affairs, management pressures and scientific misconduct may undermine science communication and even the course of public research projects

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[21]. Although some of these issues stem from the fact that ITER supports a “political technology,” they broadly reflect, perhaps in a caricatural mode, pathologies which most research organisations and public science projects may suffer from. Clearly, these problems have implications that go well beyond science communication. Today, research organisations have policyrelated, strategic and even political objectives. This situation may encourage managers to act in a way that is far removed from the level of integrity we have come to expect in the scientific world. Therefore, vigilance is key. Better oversight by the public and the press is needed. Furthermore, professional integrity—not just scientific integrity—must be explicitly covered by the code of conduct of scientific organisations and public research projects in order to better protect the rights of staff and the integrity of science as a whole. In Chap. 9, I provided some facts and case studies showing that ITER is not only a mind-blowing technology project but also a huge management challenge. Here, I would like to report about my personal experience within this project and share with readers, scientists and science communicators, particularly young people, the lessons I have learned from the fascinating years I spent at the heart of ITER. I arrived in Cadarache in April 2011. A scientist and journalist by background, I was like a “fish in the sea” at ITER. As an experienced science communicator, I was at the service of the project. However, the arrival of a new Director General in March 2015 had a dramatic impact on my career (and on my personal life as well), and also, as I will discover some years later, on other colleagues and even on the project as a whole. On February 28, 2022, I was invited by the European Parliament to an exceptional hearing on ITER. The event had been organised by the Committee on Budgetary Control of the European Parliament to discuss serious issues raised by the project evolution such as project delays, budget increases, radioprotection and, last but not least, staff management issues which resulted, tragically, in a suicide and a suicide attempt in 2021 on the ITER site in Cadarache, as well as a suicide in Fusion for Energy in Barcelona. Every year, the European Parliament has to approve the budget of Fusion for Energy and grant the discharge (or not) of the management. However, for the first time since the project began, the European Parliament decided to have a special public hearing where the top managers of both Fusion for Energy and the ITER Organization were invited to contribute and answer questions from members of the European Parliament. So, what has happened in recent years that would explain why the European Union, which had supported the ITER project from the beginning and has so far provided funding of up to EUR18 billion representing 46% of the construction cost, is now having serious concerns about the evolution of this

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breathtaking endeavour? In any case, substantial changes in the management of ITER happened after the European Parliament’s hearing: a new Director General has been recruited for the ITER Organization (following the death of Bernard Bigot on May 14, 2022) and the director of Fusion for Energy, Johannes Schwemmer, was removed by the agency’s governing board on June 13, 2022.

A Ridiculously Small Budget Early 2010, I was working in Brussels when I received a phone call from Neil Calder, who was at that time the head of communications of ITER (I had known Neil for many years when he was still working at CERN; we had frequent exchanges about our respective jobs and we met at several international conferences). Neil told me: “Michel, I am going to resign here. I have come to the point where I completely disagree with the ITER management who is keen to present ITER as a nuclear energy project. But you, Michel, you are used to working in complex political environments and you have an in-depth knowledge of science [I have spent most of my career in various fields of science and technology, mostly in international organisations]; the job is for you.” The discussion with Neil left me quite excited (of course I had some prior knowledge of ITER). So, I sent my application in the summer of 2010 and I had two subsequent interviews (one by videoconference and one in person in Cadarache). In January 2011, I got a phone call from Director General Osamu Motojima who informed me that I had successfully passed the recruitment competition. I immediately accepted the offer of appointment as head of communications and external relations. My new assignment started on April 1, 2011. I was delighted to work for this flagship project and possibly contribute in a tangible way to the fight against climate change as fusion is often presented as a zero-carbon source of energy. I arrived at ITER with the conviction that the project would need a substantial communication effort. The scarce data available indeed showed that the project was mostly invisible to the wider public. According to a Eurobarometer survey conducted in 2006, only 9% of European citizens claimed to be aware of the ITER project.1 The first visitors I welcomed at ITER were telling me at the end of the scientific guided tour (which blew most of them away): “Why are you not talking more about this breath-taking project?,” they asked. I eventually published two books on ITER.

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Most people would assume that a cutting-edge project like ITER should support a large variety of high-level quality communication activities and employ professional communicators. Indeed, most scientists and citizens I happened to meet at the ITER site or at international events expected this cutting-edge international project to devote significant resources to public communication in order to raise public awareness about the fusion’s fundamentals and potential applications. The ITER Agreement, the project’s legal basis, states (article 3.1c) that “The ITER Organization shall […] promote public understanding and acceptance of fusion energy.” However, the communication budget I had to manage in the ITER Organization was not commensurate with these goals as it was only EUR100,000 on an annual basis (excluding staff wages). Therefore, the ITER Organization was only able to inform the public mainly through its website and a few publications including videos, all available online (according to unofficial information, the communication budget has been significantly increased in the past few years). Thus, at least until 2015, ITER was a kind of exception in the research world, where the public communication of science and technology has become a key activity and an institutional priority. There is abundant scientific literature demonstrating the remarkable development of science communication over recent years. Today, a wealth of information and communication products are available, such as books, magazines, websites, blogs, videos, games, exhibitions, training, which address all possible scientific topics for diverse audiences. However, this is not the end of the story as far as science and technology are concerned. It would be a mistake to infer that, thanks to this substantial increase in products, we have entered a “golden age” for science communication, which would in turn see public science literacy increasing across the world and lead people to address scientific and technological issues in a more informed and rational way. Science communication is a much more complex activity than what the Bodmer report2 suggested a few decades ago, i.e. that scientists have a duty to go out and communicate the benefits of science to a wider public, and that a more “scientifically literate” public would be more supportive of scientific research programmes, and more enthusiastic about technological innovations—which would, of course, be a happy outcome for the scientific research community. Over the last decades, science communication has explored different models and moved consecutively from deficit to dialogue, then to public engagement and, very recently, to participatory communication, following recent emphases on public participation

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in science.3 Consequently, research organisations revised their own communication policies. For example, in 2007, the European Commission allowed coordinators of EU funded projects to devote part of the research budget to public communication activities. According to many scientists, these activities contributed to improving the visibility and reliability of European research. European Commission’s Eurobarometer surveys confirm that science and technology are highly valued by Europeans.4 In early 2015, while I was approaching the end of my contract at ITER, I was quite satisfied with the communication achievements of my team: we welcomed around 15,000 visitors on-site per year, redesigned the ITER website (which is still online5 ), produced hundreds of photos and videos and published Newsline and ITER Mag together with one-off publications and reports. I was confident that my contract would be renewed. However, this is not what happened.

A Political Technology On March 28, 2015, the freshly appointed Director General of the ITER Organization, the French Bernard Bigot (who died on May 14, 2022), abruptly terminated my employment in the absence of any cause specified in my contract. “We don’t know each other but we are not going to work together,” he told me on March 28, 2015, only 23 days after his appointment. “However, this has nothing to do with your competences,” Bigot added. I anticipated the possibility of this kind of decision. When an organisation recruits a new top manager, he or she may want to bring in his or her own staff and change the management style or priorities. I remember I told my colleagues, as early as January 2015, that the new Director General (who was still unknown at that time) may decide to replace me. However, this type of abrupt decision is not always linked to a management reshuffling. It may be triggered by a conflict of style, for example, if the new director and the head of communications disagree on the strategy to be implemented and the way the project should be presented to the public and the media. It may happen if public affairs and lobbying become more important than science communication. It can also be linked to personal issues or disagreements between some people. Last but not least, this decision may be

3

Leitch [3]. European Commission [4]. 5 Www.iter.org. 4

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motivated by political reasons, like the need to recruit people with a given nationality. The key here is that ITER can be considered as a “political technology” (i.e. a technology developed and showcased for political reasons) as we have seen in Chap. 9. Unsurprisingly, some decisions are of a political nature. In particular, the appointment of senior managers has to comply with a delicate balance of nationalities in order to be validated by the ITER Council. Although the ITER Organization is leading the development of nuclear fusion’s science and technology, its role is not only, as far as communication is concerned, to disseminate scientific results and technological advances (which are nonexistent since the machine is still in construction). The management is also actively engaged in promoting the Organization, its activities, future perspectives and policy objectives (e.g. tokamak technology) and even political orientations (e.g. nuclear power as part of the mix for energy supply). This intermingling of science, communication and politics is not new and the COVID-19 pandemic has once more shown that science and politics cannot be separated.6 Today, many academic and scientific institutions operate in similarly complex situations, with many grey areas and moving boundaries. Several reviews of the activities of research organisations have shown that science communication often mixes with institutional pressures and public affairs activities to control an institution’s corporate image.7 It is also important to take into account the growing competition among publicly funded scientific institutes and universities to attract staff, students, funding and research partners. As a result, there has been increased emphasis on—and development of—science communication in research institutes over the past decades although a significant share of these activities do not primarily aim to disseminate scientific knowledge. Actually, science communication activities are most often a form of public relations. Even public organisations care about their corporate image. I even argued that the scientific community is still lacking a culture of genuine communication8 . This failure to properly communicate means that the public at large neither anticipate technological crises nor easily accept future scientific developments as we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic with the new mRNA vaccines. Furthermore, following demands (or pressures) from governments and funding agencies, universities and research organisations have increasingly felt the need to justify their “legitimacy” and their connection with current societal issues. Although it has been shown that science communication may benefit 6

Claessens [5]. Weingart et al. [6]. 8 Claessens [7]. 7

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from PR research, the ITER case provides yet another example of what may happen when science communication is dominated or even replaced by corporate or project PR. This issue has also been highlighted by the so-called Heidelberg scandal9 . Triggered by disclosure on February 21, 2019, of nonpeer-reviewed results about a new breast cancer blood test and alleged scientific misconduct, the scandal caused reputational damage to the medical hub in Heidelberg before publication of the results of an external panel investigating the case. As a result, the Dean of the medical faculty of the university and both the hospital’s chairperson and its financial officer resigned from their positions in July 2019. There is a high price to pay for the deterioration of an organisation’s corporate image. So, it comes as no surprise that the ITER management is paying close attention to the legitimacy of both the management and the project. One of the reasons is that there is a substantial number of people across all continents who are strongly opposed to nuclear energy in all its aspects (both nuclear fission and fusion). Beyond the official discourse, the scientific community and even the lay public know there is still a long way to go before fusion energy becomes an operational energy source. The huge delays and budget increases of ITER have indeed supported the claim, widely echoed by the media and even the scientific community, that fusion energy will always remain a mythical chimera. A view that seems to be confirmed every day by the cumulative delays of ITER. After my contract at ITER, I was reassigned to Brussels in 2016. There, I experienced a number of clashes with the (previous) ITER management. I challenged in particular the claims made by the ITER Organization that fusion could become a new source of energy on Earth—“safe, clean and using abundant fuel”—and that “ITER scientists predict that fusion plants could start to come on line as soon as 2040.” Many plasma physicists challenge these claims, arguing that we are still very far from producing this kind of power. “The assertions of sizable net power production in the near term made by start-up fusion enterprises that can barely produce fusion neutrons as well as by established laboratories that are afraid to use tritium have zero basis in reality. That these claims are widely believed is due solely to the effective propaganda of promoters and laboratory spokespersons,” wrote Daniel Jassby10 . According to LJ Reinders, who had a career in high-energy physics, “nuclear fusion [is] a fantasy pursued by single-minded individuals

9

Feldwish-Drentrup [8]. Jassby [9].

10

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that [are] apparently unable to see reason and the fundamental failings of their efforts.”11 A second example of these false claims, albeit crucial for the future of tokamaks, concerns the energy balance of ITER, as we have seen in Chap. 12. And a third issue concerned the delays and budget increases of ITER. Indeed, the previous ITER management was claiming that ITER will cost EUR22 billion (which is actually the cost of the First Plasma machine in 2008 euros). Despite this, the ITER official discourse until 2022 aimed to minimise or even hide the problems. In a recent press release the ITER Organization stated that the main delays were related to the COVID-19 pandemic12 . The previous ITER management was certainly interested in promoting public acceptance of the ITER project (which is directly tied to acceptance of its public funding), but its actions demonstrated that it was less interested in promoting accurate public understanding of the project.

The Responsibility of Science Communicators Of course, I have been complicit and I even contributed to these public deceptions, at least up to a point (most science communicators are employed by organisations and, as such, must fulfil their contractual obligations). A turning point occurred in 2015 when I was drafting my first book on ITER. I addressed several issues such as the fuel supply, the economic feasibility and the absence of materials withstanding the plasma extreme conditions in terms of neutron and heat loads which put at risk the industrial development of fusion energy. Clearly, I was no longer “his master’s voice,” talking about ITER in an open, constructive —but somewhat critical—way. In contrast, the previous ITER management was very active in insisting on official language and fusion propaganda, hence confirming that ITER is driven by politics rather than science. As a result, the ITER Organization has silenced or fired several employees who were speaking openly and honestly of problems with the reactor and who veered from the official discourse. For example, a senior manager and renowned nuclear expert (who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals) discovered that she had been fired only by reading the monthly list of departing colleagues and seeing her name there. The contract termination occurred a few days after publication of a French news story for

11 12

Reinders [10]. ITER Organization[11].

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which she had been assigned to answer questions. The journalist unexpectedly learned that this nuclear expert had been misinformed about the planned ITER power values and this was revealed in the news report. The expert also spoke honestly about safety concerns regarding some of the materials. An ITER staff member who wants to stay anonymous told me that two of his colleagues have been fired because they refused to install components without testing them although they present a life-threatening risk for the maintenance workers. Until 2022, the ITER Organization’s staff members were instructed not to mention any of my books and articles. This was confirmed to a French journalist during her visit to the site. Such an attitude is probably counterproductive, even on sensitive topics. For example, a recent analysis of the way US hospitals and healthcare companies managed communication about personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages shows that restrictions on employees using speech and gag orders imposed by the institutions represent an unhealthy concentration of power on the employer side which reduces individual effectiveness, negatively impacts corporate functioning and damages institution’s reputation13 . But this was only the tip of the iceberg, the most visible part of an organisation’s management. Communication tells you a lot of things and, as such, is a good health-check of a research project. The events reported here show how management, personal attacks, public affairs and politics may interplay and undermine science communication. Obviously, this narrative goes well beyond science communication and exemplifies how a public research project is communicating and is being managed. ITER’s Newsline and website provide very good information on nuclear fusion and tokamaks, but the most contentious issues relate to the project management and the way they present the project’s raison d’être and life cycle. In 2021, internal documents and personal information were shared with me providing evidence of dozens of unlawful contract terminations, some of which have already been appealed and penalised by the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva, as well as illegally modified contracts (job description, grade etc.), staff resignations, mis- and disinformation (e.g. on power values), data manipulations (for example to reduce delays) and a workload unequally spread over the onethousand staff (of which two died from a heart attack at the end of 2021). In 2015, an American director and the head of personnel were both fired without any notice, much like we see in some Hollywood films, and were

13

Adkins [12].

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accompanied by security guards to their car without being given the time to properly handover their open files. The latter won her case in 2018 before the Administrative Tribunal of the ILO. In many encrypted messages, staff confided to me that they felt insecure and talked about “management by fear.” In addition, one suicide and one suicide attempt happened in 2021–2022 in Cadarache and one suicide in 2021 in Barcelona which have already been mentioned. There was also evidence that the ITER Organization had taken decisions which impinged on radioprotection and had hidden information from ASN that is monitoring the construction of the nuclear buildings and the manufacturing of the reactor to ensure that ITER complies with the French rules of nuclear safety and radioprotection14 . For example, the ITER Organization decided to cancel the installation of all fire protection systems in the nuclear buildings (except in a few rooms) to push the schedule without informing ASN. All these irregularities and issues led me to become a whistle-blower and to submit, on November 2, 2021, a confidential report to the President of the European Commission, the European Parliament and the ITER Council15 . The document reports on management issues and decisions which may endanger in particular the protection of the environment, the obligations required by article 14 of the ITER Agreement, and even the future of the project. Scientific integrity is explicitly mentioned: “[all these] examples show how the ITER top management behaves outside the norms of science ethics.” Fortunately, the EU directive on whistle-blowers that had been recently implemented16 provides better protection for people who “report breaches of Union law that are harmful to the public interest […] and thereby play a key role in exposing and preventing such breaches and in safeguarding the welfare of society.” All the practices detailed in my report were unacceptable in a project funded by public money. The only explanation I found for these management decisions is that ITER is based on a political assumption—that fusion will soon become a commercial, safe and clean source of unlimited energy. In France (as well as in other countries), where nuclear energy is a highly sensitive issue, ITER is part of the national strategy and political leaders hope that fusion will reconcile their populations’ hesitancy about nuclear energy. The 14

Article 14 of the ITER Agreement states that “The ITER Organization shall observe applicable national laws and regulations of the Host State in the fields of public and occupational health and safety, nuclear safety, radiation protection, licensing, nuclear substances, environmental protection and protection from acts of malevolence.” (IAEA, 2007). 15 An updated version of the report is available online in Krivit [13]. 16 European Commission [14].

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public may indeed be more supportive of fusion systems because they will not produce the high-level nuclear waste that fission-powered reactors do. A second reason fusion may have greater public acceptance than fission is that the public may understand that cataclysmic accidents are impossible. Therefore, the end justifies the means and some people consider that opposing or even criticising a project like ITER is uncivil or unpatriotic. Indeed, dissent is nearly nonexistent. For their roles in the project, the ITER Council members are reluctant to send negative messages to their respective governments. The ITER staff and contractors fear that they may lose their jobs (the ITER Organization’s employees are not eligible for French unemployment benefits). It would be much more transparent for society and also helpful to scientists working for ITER if the political nature of the project would be highlighted and communicated. As Broks argues, “the public engagement with science shares not only knowledge but the power that goes with it. This is not just acknowledging that power comes as a consequence of sharing knowledge. It is saying that power should be shared as part of the process of science; that power should be shared before the knowledge is created.”17 This is a reality science communicators have to accept and may be confronted with. It may lead to the conclusion that, at least in some areas, projects or organisations, science communication is a myth. It is our responsibility, as science communicators, to disclose and denounce mismanagement and misconduct, especially in public funded research projects.

Professional Integrity The fact that the end justifies the means may lead some people to carry out or cover data manipulations and scientific fraud. But before making such an accusation, I first had to consider the possibility that my vision of ITER might be too influenced by my own values, education and professional career (ITER was my first experience in the nuclear sector). Martin gives a brilliant demonstration that scientific fraud is neither clear-cut nor rare18 . The definition of scientific fraud, he argues, is discipline-dependent as “it is convenient to most of the powerful groups associated with it, including government, corporate sponsors and the scientific community itself, especially its scientific elites.” As a result, “a narrow definition of scientific fraud is convenient to the groups in society.” Therefore, many types of bias and misrepresentation are often tolerated. The standards of scientific behaviour 17 18

Broks [15]. Martin [16].

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are not written in textbooks, they are all adapted to particular scientific, social and political contexts. “Within the overall power system in a given area, the standards of scientific behaviour are continually negotiated. The flip side of near-fraudulent behaviours built into the structure of science is suppression of dissent. The few scientists who speak out against dominant interests—such as against pesticides, nuclear power or automobile design— often come under severe attack. They may have their reputations smeared, be demoted, be transferred, have their publications blocked, be dismissed or be blacklisted.” In parallel, most researchers and managers concerned with the subject will adhere to a “scientific omerta” and keep their head in the sand. This behaviour was rampant in the ITER project. How the scientific community (and hence science) maintains its integrity is a major issue for big budget projects like ITER which develop within complex political and institutional contexts. Furthermore, in these projects, integrity is an issue not only for scientists but also for engineers, lawyers, managers, etc. These difficulties and issues are all but marginal because most science mediators are employees and may experience pressures from their management and/or the scientific community. Furthermore, science and technology are highly competitive fields and close to business and politics. Politics increasingly dominates debates over climate change, the use of vaccines and nuclear power. We can even say that science is “politicised.” In crises such as the COVID-19 pandemics, we have seen scientific committees refraining from pointing out the mistakes made by governments. Politicians are exploiting science, but scientists are also exploiting politics to promote their own research and ideology, and engage in a kind of “consumer marketing.” Actually, science has always been inseparable from politics19 . The problem is that today, on some scientific topics and associated technologies, the line between science and politics is blurring as we see some concepts, although supported by a bulk of scientific evidence, challenged by well-established parties and associations and becoming increasingly politicised because the debates have moved from science to ideology and emotions. According to the Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø, “facts no longer carry the weight they once did [because we live] in an era in which the truth has been devalued by fake news, in which leaders are elected on a wave of emotion rather than their merits or political viewpoints.”20 This seems to concern also the ITER management, including some scientists, as several renowned

19 20

Sabbagh [17]. Nesbø [18].

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experts notoriously failed to influence key decisions21 . Hence, promoting science is not necessarily the prime objective of Big Science projects, a situation which may encourage managers to act in a way that lacks the integrity we expect in the scientific world. Therefore, vigilance is key. Better oversight by the public and the press is needed. But this is not enough. We should ensure institutional integrity across the project as a whole and management accountability to avoid science getting caught up in political and managerial issues and having its own integrity undermined. While ITER’s code of conduct explicitly addresses professional integrity, it can be concluded that it was not properly enforced22 . This is also illustrated by the fact that the ITER Organization was overselling fusion and implementing a sort of marketing campaign. Exaggeration of the quality, progress and social importance of scientific works is another common (and often intentional) misrepresentation of research, which could therefore be considered dubious. For example, scientists should be concerned about saying that fusion offers an “unlimited” energy source as you could read on the ITER Organization’s homepage up until September 2022 (it has been replaced since by a more neutral statement: “Fusion Energy”). This type of claim does not work in the favour of the project or of fusion itself. However, many research organisations and public science projects suffer the same pathologies developed by ITER. Despite repeated requests since 2017 to communicate more accurately and transparently about the project, and even though the ITER management had demonstrated some compliance with those requests (mainly through Newsline, the newsletter which is a masterpiece of fusion science and technology popularisation), the organisation published a press release on July 28, 2020, with an unequivocally false and exaggerated claim. It claimed that “The plant at ITER will produce about 500 megawatts of thermal power. If operated continuously and connected to the electric grid that would translate to

21

For example, the superconducting magnets of ITER (toroidal and poloidal field coils) will not be power tested before their installation in the machine although the scientific community knows pretty well the nasty surprises CERN specialists had when they tested their magnets (cold and power tests). At ITER, the decision not to test the magnets was proposed in 2013 and endorsed by Director General Osamu Motojima. There are of course some justifications for this endorsement. ITER coils are designed with significant margin with respect to the superconductor critical current limits and, thanks to the cable-in-conduit conductor concept (where the conductor is inside a stainless-steel conduit through which a forced flow of supercritical helium circulates), can be operated even if there is some superconductor degradation. However, many experts opposed such a decision, as a defaulted magnet would probably need to be replaced which may require very complex logistics and may even turn out to be impossible. 22 “As staff members, we are expected to act with the utmost integrity in the performance of our work, to exercise good judgement and common sense in line with ethical principles and standards required by the ITER Organization.” (Article 1.1., ITER Organization Code of Conduct, https://www.iter. org/media/www/sites/jobs/hiring/docs/ITER_Organization_Code_of_Conduct_4FDYTY_v1_1.pdf.

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about 200 MW of electric power, enough for about 200,000 homes.” This claim was false because it omitted the 440 MW of electric power needed to operate ITER and produce the 500 MW (see Chap. 12). The organisation has since quietly removed the press release from its website (the original is still available on the Max Planck Institute’s website23 ). It is only in 2021 that the ITER Organization admitted for the first time in an article of Le Canard enchaîné that “Obviously, all the systems of the ITER plant will consume more energy than what the plasma is going to produce.”24 However, at a hearing in the French Parliament (Senate) which by coincidence took place on the very same day as the publication of Le Canard enchaîné, the ITER Organization’s previous Director General surprisingly said that “If God allows me to be alive, in 2035, I will see effectively 10 times more energy produced that ITER will effectively have consumed”25 . A few minutes later, the Director General replied to a question by stating that “at the end of the day, the efficiency will be between three and five, 3 and 5.” However, as we have seen the projected gain for the overall reactor will not be 10, 5 or 3, but less than 1. Interestingly, the journalist of Le Canard Enchaîné told me that thanks to my peculiar position—having one foot in the project and one foot outside plus the fact that I assume freedom of speech—I had the unique opportunity to contribute and establish the truth about the project. Complex scientific and technological organisations such as ITER remain genuine “black boxes” for the public and the media, which prevent them from accessing detailed real information. The fact that the ITER Organization was actively overselling fusion derived from the political dimension of the technology and the project. In this respect, the ITER consortium was acting as a lobbying organisation for nuclear fusion. This is a real issue for the scientific community: how does science maintain its integrity within the political and institutional complexities of a big-money project like ITER—although scientific integrity is only a minor part of the problems. Yet because the majority of the ITER staff have a scientific or engineering background, the research community may be seen as being an accomplice to fusion propaganda and public deceptions.

23

https://www.ipp.mpg.de/4891427/ITER-PR-July-22-2020.pdf. Le Canard enchaîné [19]. 25 https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1mnGedMaoqYKX. 24

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An Unexpected Happy-Ending On September 15, 2021, Pietro Barabaschi became the new Director General of the ITER Organization, following the appointment decision taken by the ITER Council. On the very same day, Barabaschi invited me in a message on WhatsApp to help him improve the pubic communication of ITER in making it more robust from a scientific point of view. A few days after his appointment, he put emphasis on scientific integrity in one of his first interviews: “We need to stop hiding problems from our stakeholders and ourselves. The more you ‘decorate’ the truth, the harder it will eventually hit you back.”26 To summarise and conclude, I would like to leave readers, particularly young people, with the three following thoughts. • First, because science communicators are often employees of an organisation and, as such, have to comply with their staff regulations and communication policy, they have to adhere, at least implicitly, to the objectives of their organisation. However, in scientific organisations and public research projects, science communication is never far from public relations, marketing, lobbying and even politics. Therefore, some managers use science communication tools to pass on political messages and justify management decisions. Communicating scientific results may lead to requests for editorial adaptations and even to censorship. Beyond ITER, the case provides insights on the role and status of science communication in research organisations and public science projects as some of them may suffer from the pathologies described here. There is a need to enforce professional—not just scientific—integrity in employee contracts, staff regulations and codes of conduct. • Second, if you are confronted by unethical decisions, a head-in-the-sand strategy is never a good idea. You would do much better taking legal action against your organisation rather than hoping for a fair solution to somehow develop. Therefore, people with professional credit should not keep quiet. Thomas Jefferson said that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” It is my hope that wisdom in accordance with the higher values of the ITER members and the European Union will prevail. It is my hope that society at large appreciates that ITER is now managed in a manner which better dignifies the support and funding given to it by the public and the participating governments.

26

ITER Organization [20].

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• Third, I am not sure whether ITER will contribute to fighting climate change, but I am still convinced that it is a worthwhile project. Despite obvious management issues, 33 or 35 countries working collaboratively and building an experimental fusion reactor sends a strong message of hope and optimism to the world. It is a unique experiment that, if successful, might change the course of civilisation. Can we accomplish this feat without compromising our humanity and dignity?

References 1. European Commission (2007) Energy technologies: knowledge, perception, measures. http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/archives/ ebs/ebs_262_en.pdf 2. Bodmer W (1985) The public understanding of science, royal society p 44. https://royalsociety.org/~/media/royal_society_content/policy/publications/ 1985/10700.pdf 3. Leitch A (2022) Participatory science communication needs to consider power, place, pain and ‘poisson’: a practitioner insight, JCOM 21(02), n 01. https:// doi.org/10.22323/2.21020801 4. European Commission (2021) European citizens’ knowledge and attitudes towards science and technology. https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/det ail/2237 5. Claessens M (2021) The science and politics of covid-19—how scientists should tackle global crises, Springer, p 216. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-778 64-4 6. Weingart P, Joubert J, Connoway K (2021) Public engagement with science— Origins, motives and impact in academic literature and science policy. PLoS ONE 16(7):e0254201. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254201 7. Claessens M (2014) Research institutions: neither doing science communication nor promoting ‘public’ relations, JCOM 13(03), C01, https://doi.org/10. 22323/2.13030303 8. Feldwish-Drentrup F (2019) German university finds ‘severe’ misconduct by researcher who promoted questionable cancer blood test, Science. https://www. science.org/content/article/german-university-finds-severe-misconduct-resear cher-who-promoted-questionable-cancer 9. Jassby DL (2021) Fusion frenzy—a recurring pandemic, physics & society, vol 50, no 4, pp 5–9 https://higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/APS/a05 ec1cf-2e34-4fb3-816e-ea1497930d75/UploadedImages/P_S_OCT21.pdf 10. Reinders LJ (2021) The fairy tale of nuclear fusion, Springer, p 650. https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64344-7#about

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11. ITER Organization (2022) 30th ITER Council: continuing progress during a time of challenge and transition. https://www.iter.org/doc/www/content/com/ Lists/list_items/Attachments/1026/2022_06_IC-30.pdf 12. Adkins K (2020) Exit only: harms from silencing employee voice, JCOM 19(05):A03. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.19050203 13. Krivit SB (2022, Jun 13) European ITER domestic agency removes director, new energy times. https://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/06/13/european-iterdomestic-agency-removes-director/ 14. European Commission (2019) Directive (EU) 2019/1937 of the european parliament and of the council of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law, Official Journal L305, pp 17–56, 26. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:320 19L1937&from=EN 15. Broks P (2017) Science communication: process, power and politics, JCOM 16(04), C02, https://doi.org/10.22323/2.16040302 16. Martin B (1992) Scientific fraud and the power structure of science, Prometheus, vol 10, no 1, pp 83–98. https://documents.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/ pubs/92prom.html 17. Sabbagh U (2017, Apr 25) Science has always been inseparable from politics, Sci Am. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/science-has-alw ays-been-inseparable-from-politics/ 18. Nesbø J (2022, Mar 17) Vladimir Putin knows the power of stories. With a better one, we can beat him, The guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/com mentisfree/2022/mar/17/vladimir-putin-power-stories-occupied-jo-nesbo 19. Le Canard enchaîné (2021, Oct 27) Iter, un réacteur expérimental à la com 20. ITER Organization (2022, Oct 10) An emphasis on collaboration and integrity. Newsline. https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3792 21. Claessens M (2023, Sep 22) Political technology mystifies science communication for general public. Research Outreach. https://doi.org/10.32907/RO-1374989867834

19 Fusion, Science and PR

Abstract Although there is no convincing result yet to support its feasibility as a new energy source, fusion has recently gained a lot of public and media attention. Over recent months, successes in large public projects and announcements made by private ventures generated headlines across the world. There are today more than 30 start-ups worldwide aimed at developing commercial fusion. However, there are many unrealistic claims as the prospect of commercial fusion energy is still uncertain and a long way away.? Therefore, honesty and modesty are today more than necessary. Fusion energy is still a dream and it cannot contribute in the near-future to fighting climate change. This is important as false or exaggerated claims may ruin public trust at a moment when the financial investment in fusion is increasing, unwrapping a global trust in the technology and the potential market at stake. So far, the energy of the Sun remains the domain of Gods. Keywords Start-ups · Commercial · Fusion energy · Media · Public relations (PR) Although there is no convincing result yet to support its feasibility as a new energy source, fusion has recently gained a lot of public and media attention. Over recent months, successes in large public projects and announcements made by private ventures generated headlines across the world. The fact is that the landscape of fusion is no longer dominated by the world’s largest tokamaks such as JET and ITER. There are today more than 30 start-ups

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worldwide aimed at developing commercial fusion in which private investment reached a record USD4.7 billion in 2022, plus the two major inertial fusion facilities, the National Ignition Facility in the United States and Laser Mégajoule in France. Unsurprisingly, several significant advances have been made in the last months. First, in the very last days of the year 2021, the European JET, still the largest of all operating tokamaks, achieved a first-ever sustained, highconfinement plasma and practically doubled its 1997 energy production record. Then, at the end of 2022, NIF was the first fusion facility ever to reach the breakeven point. More is in the pipeline. The Chinese CFETR should start construction in the next few years. DEMO should become a reality in the 2050s. Yet, there are many unrealistic claims. Several start-ups announced connection to the grid in the 2030s. Despite the recent success achieved by NIF, it seems unlikely that the future of civil fusion power (if it has one) lies with inertial confinement by laser. The technology is fiddly. And even with lasers more powerful than that used by NIF, the process of “pumping” the device to create the beam is inherently inefficient. The science behind this new technology contradicts claims that the recent breakthrough may provide a pathway to pilot commercial fusion plants in the coming decades. None of the increasingly numerous attempts to commercialise fusion energy employs inertial confinement by laser. However, in the many interviews and press conferences I have seen after the recent NIF’s announcement, many scientists congratulated the NIF’s team for having demonstrated for the first time ever a “net energy gain.” I am pretty sure that lay people watching this concluded that fusion will soon become commercial. “Practically speaking,” Steven Krivit explained, “the result is irrelevant. The NIF device did not achieve net energy. The scientists who are promoting this result to the news media are playing word games.” I agree with Krivit: the problem lies more in the scientific community than in the media. Many fusion scientists still tend to “oversell” this potential source of energy. Over the last decade or so, there have been many similar announcements featuring breathless language about breakthroughs, milestones and advances. The United States in particular, after many years of hesitation, are now actively supporting the development of fusion. On September 22, 2022, the DoE announced up to USD50 million to launch a new fusion development programme as authorised in the Energy Act of 2020. This programme will support the cooperation between companies, national laboratories universities and others to successfully design a fusion pilot plant that will demonstrate both technical and commercial viability. The

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Biden administration confirmed that it aims to commercialise fusion energy by 2032, hoping that the still-speculative technology could help the United States wean itself off fossil fuels and reach net zero emissions by 2050. At a press conference held at the DoE headquarters on December 13, 2022, US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said that “Fusion energy can be used to produce clean electricity for transportation of fuels to power heavy industry and much more in a clean energy economy.” Therefore, we cannot accuse journalists here of publishing erroneous and overstated reports: the problem lies in the scientific source. The ITER Organization has of course been very active in promoting the idea that fusion energy will become a new source of energy on Earth, announcing in particular that “ITER scientists predict that fusion plants could start to come on line as soon as 2040.”1 This has also been affirmed by several fusion start-ups, mainly located in the United States and the United Kingdom, claiming that they will feed the grid with fusion electrical power by 2030 or so. Actually, for more than sixty years, the fusion scientific community has been successful in maintaining a vivid and permanent political support and hence huge financial resources. Fusion research has been, since the beginning, supported by the highest political authorities, who sought to keep control of nuclear technology and at the same time not miss its potentially considerable benefits. So, could it be that fusion energy and ITER in particular are merely ambitious research projects and partly PR initiatives driven by some politically connected scientists? However, in very recent months we have seen some projects adopting a more modest—and more scientific—approach. ITER replaced its eyecatching slogan “Unlimitless energy” from its website’s home page by a sober “Fusion energy.” I asked for such a change many years ago but it only happened at the end of 2022, a few weeks after the appointment of the new ITER Director General Pietro Barabaschi. Most fusion organisations are now publishing more realistic claims about fusion energy. Honesty and modesty are today more than necessary. Fusion energy is still a dream and it cannot contribute in the near-future to fighting climate change. This is important as false or exaggerated claims may ruin public trust at a moment when the financial investment in fusion is increasing, unwrapping a global trust in the technology and the potential market at stake. As Dr. Scott C. Hsu, lead fusion coordinator at the Office of the Undersecretary for Science and Innovation at the DoE, explained on CBS News: “The race to fusion is also a race for future global leadership. While fusion has long

1

ITER Organization [1].

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M. Claessens

enjoyed international collaboration and should continue to do so, make no mistake, fusion is now also an international competition. Failure to act now may relegate the US to being importers rather than exporters of fusion technology.2 ” Fusion is developing because, in the new competition era we have entered, leading economies want to be sure not to miss out on any promising opportunity. In spite of this, it is correct to say that nuclear fusion cannot contribute in the near term to tackling global warming. Furthermore, the prospect of commercial fusion energy is still uncertain and a long way away. In the recent NIF experiment, the amount of energy generated was very tiny, about 0.9 kWh from around 0.6 kWh input. In comparison, an average European or American household uses about 1,000 kWh per month. The obvious next task is to increase both the absolute output and the ratio of output to input energy. Maybe ITER will succeed in producing a power of 500 MW, from 50 MW of electrical power to kick-start the process. But still, ITER is just a proof-of-concept: it will only produce heat, not usable electricity delivered to the grid. Based on ITER’s expected insights, a series of DEMO reactors should be built and use fusion to produce electricity, but these reactors are not scheduled for operation before 2050. Solutionism lets us believe that sooner or later there will be a technological solution in the field of fusion energy—without any doubt. The Economist was right to point out in a recent article that 36 companies are now pushing the edges of fusion technology and that it would be enough that only one of these come good for the field to be transformed from chimera to reality.3 But still, technology in itself is not the end goal. If a project succeeds, we will then need to prove economic feasibility, ensure abundance of the fuel, remove public nuclear mistrust and get rid of the waste. Critics point out that we have a functioning—and underutilised—fusion reactor already: the Sun, which delivers enough energy to Earth to satisfy all our energy needs. There is no doubt that the fortunes invested in fusion development could have been deployed at least in part to improve and subsidise solar panels and to mitigate climate change much earlier. However, I think the dream of fusion energy has been created not just by the concerns about energy supply and climate change, but also by the fact that humankind enjoys exploring the universes (both microscopic and astronomic) and developing innovative technologies, replicating and improving upon nature’s ingenuity. But so far, the energy of the Sun remains the domain of Gods. 2 3

CBS News [2]. The Economist [3].

19 Fusion, Science and PR

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References 1. ITER Organization (2017) World’s most complex machine is 50% completed. https://www.iter.org/doc/www/content/com/Lists/list_items/Attachments/759/ 2017_12_Fifty_Percent.pdf 2. CBS News (2022, Dec 12) U.S. expected to announce major breakthrough in quest for zero-carbon nuclear fusion energy. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nuc lear-fusion-energy-breakthrough-us-expected-announcement-zero-carbon-power/ 3. The Economist (2023, Mar 22) Fusion power is coming back into fashion. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/03/22/fusion-poweris-coming-back-into-fashion

Bibliography

1. Arnoux R, Jacquinot J (2006) ITER, le chemin des étoiles? Edisud, Saint-Remyde-Provence 2. Becoulet A (2019) L’Energie de fusion. Odile Jacob, Paris 3. Bell R (1998) Les Péchés capitaux de la haute technologie. Seuil, Paris 4. Carnot A (2016) Chéri(e), on s’expatrie !: Guide de survie à l’usage des couples aventuriers. Eyrolles, Paris 5. Claessens M (1998) La Technique contre la démocratie. Seuil, Paris 6. Claessens M (2011) Allo la science? Hermann, Paris 7. Claessens M (2018) ITER, Etoile de la science. Editions du Menhir, Plouharnel 8. Clery D (2013) A piece of the Sun—the quest for fusion energy. Overlook Duckworth, New York 9. Dinan R (2017) The fusion age. Applied fusion systems Ltd, Abingdon 10. Ellul J (1980) The Technological system. Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene 11. Feyerabend P (1975) Against method: outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge. Verso Books, New York 12. Holgate SA (2022) Nuclear fusion: the race to build a mini-sun on earth. Icon Books, London 13. Katchadourian R (2014, Mar 3) A Star in a bottle, The New Yorker 14. Krivit S (2016) Fusion fiasco: explorations in nuclear research, vol 2. Pacific Oaks Press 15. Laval G (2007) L’Energie bleue: une histoire de la fusion nucléaire. Odile Jacob, Paris 16. Mercier V, Brunengo-Basso S (eds) (2016) Compensation écologique—De l’expérience d’ITER à la recherche d’un modèle. Presses Universitaires d’AixMarseille, Aix-en-Provence 17. Mose E (2018) Nuclear fusion. Springer, Berlin

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18. Rebut PH (2018) L’Energie des étoiles, la fusion nucléaire controlée. Odile Jacob, Paris 19. Reinders LJ (2021) The fairy tale of nuclear fusion. Springer, Berlin 20. Rifkin J (2013) The third industrial revolution: how lateral power is transforming energy, the economy, and the world. Palgrave Macmillan, London 21. Séris JP (1994) La Technique. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 22. Turmes C (2017) Transition énergétique—une chance pour l’Europe. Les Petits Matins, Paris 23. Wendell Horton C, Benkadda S (2015) ITER physics. World Sci, Singapore

Index

A

Agence ITER France 78, 97, 99, 155, 158, 160, 163, 164, 181, 183, 189, 194 Applied Fusion Systems 199, 204 Artsimovitch, Lev 29, 216 ASN, Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire 88, 105, 115, 116, 143–147, 150, 151, 154, 196, 223, 229–231, 244 Assembly 20, 59, 63, 82, 85, 89–94, 119, 124, 158, 162, 164, 223–230, 232 Atoms for Peace 20 Aymar, Robert 24, 25, 33, 34, 41, 43, 45, 119, 120

B

Barabaschi, Pietro 132, 133, 221, 232, 249, 255 Baseline 121, 123, 125, 126, 135, 139 Basemat 115, 116, 152, 153 Beryllium 67, 148, 178, 202

Bigot, Bernard 45–47, 50, 53, 92, 132, 135, 224, 229, 231, 237, 239 Blanket 65, 67, 68, 75, 87, 178 Boron 206, 207 Broader approach 53, 121, 129, 133, 179 Busquin, Philippe 23, 42–46, 48, 49, 51, 52

C

Cable-in-conduit 69–71, 247 CEA 23–25, 38–41, 45, 46, 55, 74, 78, 79, 81, 94, 102, 105, 110, 141, 157, 158, 173, 196, 203 CERN 24, 42, 51, 52, 64, 70, 72, 121, 155, 160–163, 167, 195, 214, 237, 247 CFETR 176, 178, 254 Charpak, Georges 1, 9, 101, 105–107 China 9, 37, 50, 51, 54, 67, 71, 87, 89, 93, 95, 176, 178, 183, 186, 206, 216, 218, 225

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Claessens, ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor, Copernicus Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37762-4

261

262

Index

Chirac, Jacques 20, 45–47, 50, 55, 56, 156 Coil, see magnet Cold fusion 17, 18, 221 Commonwealth Fusion Systems 199, 204, 208 Communication 3, 18, 33, 44, 77, 109, 123, 125, 135, 144, 154, 184, 191–193, 195, 197, 203, 235–241, 243, 245, 249 Contractor 78, 88, 93, 104, 136, 162–166, 224–227, 235, 245 Cooling 16, 75, 79, 80, 87, 90, 116–118, 147, 149, 153, 154, 184, 224, 232 Crossfield Fusion 204 Cryogenic 226 Cryostat 59, 63, 72, 74–76, 92, 95, 224–226, 228, 230 Culture (cultural) 27, 40, 89, 94, 127, 130, 131, 133, 134, 155, 160, 181–189, 240

Domestic Agency 49, 56, 72, 76, 85–88, 91, 93, 98, 99, 118, 119, 125, 127, 128, 130, 135, 139, 163, 185, 197, 226, 230

E

Earthquake, see seism EAST 176 EFDA, see EUROfusion Eisenhower, Dwight D. 20, 138 Ellul, Jacques 128, 136, 137, 215 EURATOM 22, 23, 25, 31, 38, 40, 42, 44, 79, 129, 179, 203 EUROfusion 23, 27, 177 European Union 5–7, 19, 22, 23, 37, 43, 44, 46–49, 52, 54, 78, 89, 106, 121, 122, 124, 125, 129, 160, 166, 176, 182, 201, 220, 236, 249

F D

Debate (public) 42, 101, 103, 107, 157, 193, 195, 198 De Gennes, Pierre-Gilles 101, 104, 105, 138 Delays 32, 34, 65, 87, 90, 99–102, 113–125, 129, 130, 133, 135, 140, 185, 211, 219, 223, 224, 231, 232, 236, 241–243 DEMO 169, 175–178, 200, 206, 218, 254, 256 Deutelio 204 Deuterium 11, 13, 14, 17, 25, 27, 61, 67, 108, 118, 129, 143, 144, 171, 173, 200, 202, 205, 207 Diagnostics 75–77 Disruption 107, 108, 217 Divertor 25, 39, 59, 61, 63, 65, 73–75, 87

Feyerabend, Paul 142 First Light Fusion 204 First plasma 26, 66, 67, 76, 81, 113, 114, 121–123, 125, 129, 196, 200, 219, 223, 224, 242 Fleischmann, Martin 18 Focused Energy 204 Fusion for Energy 49, 66, 76–78, 80, 81, 98, 99, 104, 116–118, 126, 133, 155, 160, 162–164, 166, 177, 224, 236, 237

G

Gain factor 169–174, 203 Galbraith, John Kenneth 128, 136 Gates, Bill 6, 8, 199, 204, 208 Gauss Fusion 204 General Fusion 199, 204, 205 Gorbachev, Mikhail 19, 28–31, 135, 137, 157, 212, 215

Index H

Haigneré, Claudie 45–48, 50–52 Hawking, Stephen 104 Helion Energy 199, 204, 207 Helium 13, 17, 61, 64, 69, 73, 74, 147, 178, 184, 206, 207, 217, 226, 247

263

JET 15, 22, 25–29, 33, 40, 42, 61, 62, 65, 110, 150, 155, 160, 162, 169, 170, 172, 174–176, 206, 253, 254 Jobs 4, 5, 52, 55, 65, 66, 103, 131, 135, 155–157, 159, 160, 162–164, 182, 184, 185, 188, 196, 235, 237, 243, 245 JT-60 25, 28, 61, 169, 175

I

Ikeda, Kaname 129 India 38, 54, 67, 76, 79, 87, 89, 95, 118, 176, 186, 220, 224, 226 Inertial (inertial confinement) 199–204, 207 Integrity 107, 133, 195, 236, 244–249 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 20, 24, 29–31, 46, 52, 62, 170 ITER Agreement 19, 55, 56, 78, 87, 114, 120, 140, 145, 165, 174, 238, 244 ITER Council 32–34, 44, 74, 87, 108, 113, 114, 119, 121, 123, 127–130, 132, 136, 138–140, 146, 156, 235, 240, 244, 245, 249 ITER itinerary 86, 93, 94, 97, 100, 103 ITER Unit Account (IUA) 122

J

Jacquinot, Jean 40–42, 45–47, 50, 53, 54 Japan 9, 19, 25, 28, 31, 32, 34, 37, 38, 45, 49, 51, 52, 54, 55, 61, 71, 87, 89, 93, 95, 109, 115, 119, 129, 135, 139, 151, 152, 169, 175, 176, 179, 183, 185, 186, 228 Jassby, Daniel 109, 110, 241

K

Khrushchev, Nikita 21, 138 Korea 37, 50–52, 54, 65–67, 85, 87, 89, 91, 95, 140, 176, 183, 186, 226, 227, 229 Krivit, Steven B. 110, 173, 174, 202, 244, 254 Kurchatov 15, 21, 29, 178, 218 L

Laser 34, 81, 170, 199–203, 254 Lithium 11, 14, 67, 68, 178, 205 LPPFusion 199, 204, 207 M

Macron, Emmanuel 224 Magnet 14, 15, 26, 38, 39, 59–61, 63–66, 68–73, 75, 87, 90, 92, 93, 116, 117, 119, 124, 141, 174, 177, 184, 205, 224–226, 231 Manosque 47, 82, 152, 157–159, 162, 181, 186, 187, 189, 232 Marvel Fusion 204 MégaJoule (Laser Mégajoule) 199, 203, 254 Motojima, Osamu 56, 73, 98, 129, 130, 132, 134, 161, 184, 186, 192, 237, 247 Multicultural 81, 181–183

264

Index

N

National Ignition Facility (NIF) 34, 170, 199–203, 221, 254, 256 Niobium-tin 69 Niobium-titanium 68, 70 Novatron Fusion 204

P

PACA 53, 54, 104, 156, 157, 163, 195 Poloidal 116, 141, 224 Pons, Stanley 18 Project management 125, 127, 128, 130, 131, 133, 243 Provence 39, 42, 46, 54, 77–80, 94, 98, 102, 103, 151, 152, 157, 160, 162, 173, 181, 182, 186–189 Proxima Fusion 204 Public inquiry 146, 150, 191, 195

R

Radioactivity 109, 147 Reagan, Ronald 19, 28, 29–31, 135, 137, 157, 212, 215 Rebut, Paul-Henri 25, 26, 32, 33 Renaissance Fusion 204 Risks 135 Rokkasho-Mura 45, 47, 49–52, 93, 179 Russia 32, 34, 37, 38, 49, 51, 54, 71, 87, 89, 95, 116, 140, 141, 176, 178, 183, 219

S

Safety 145, 146, 150 Sakharov, Andrei 15 Security 93, 96, 97, 103, 124, 163, 165, 166, 194, 219, 244 Seism (seismic) 50, 115, 151–153

Solenoid 64, 68–71, 76, 87, 184, 185 Spitzer, Lyman 15, 29 Stellarator 15–17, 62, 130, 200, 204 Subcontractor 85, 88, 91, 104, 116, 132, 164–166 Superconducting (superconductor, superconductivity) 38, 39, 61, 64, 68–72, 75, 87, 90, 105, 119, 122, 130, 164, 174, 176, 177, 184, 185, 205, 208, 226, 231, 247

T

TAE technologies 199, 204, 206, 208 Tamm, Igor 15 TBM 67, 68 TFR 25 TFTR 25–28, 33, 49, 61, 150, 169, 173, 175 Tokamak 8, 12, 15–17, 19, 22, 24–28, 33, 35, 38, 39, 44, 47, 50, 53, 59–67, 69, 71, 74–77, 79–82, 85–87, 91, 92, 95, 99, 106–108, 110, 113–124, 129, 135, 138, 146–149, 151–153, 169–172, 174, 176–178, 199, 200, 204, 206–208, 212, 215–217, 224–232, 240, 242, 243, 253, 254 Thermal shields 231 Tokamak complex 77, 80, 115, 116, 152, 153, 225, 230 Tokamak energy 8, 199, 204, 206 Tore Supra 33, 38, 39, 50, 74, 79 Toroidal 15, 16, 59, 60, 68–72, 75, 90, 92, 95, 184, 224, 226, 227, 229, 231, 232, 247 Transport 37, 38, 41, 48, 61, 79, 85, 86, 93–99, 158, 206 Tritium 11, 13, 14, 17, 25–28, 61, 67, 68, 74, 77, 79, 80, 109,

Index

110, 118, 129, 143, 145, 148, 150, 151, 154, 171, 173, 175, 176, 178, 200, 202, 205, 207, 241 Trump, Donald 204, 220 Tungsten 39, 74

U

United Nations (UN) 5, 43, 51, 52, 136, 182 United States (U.S.) 4, 6, 9, 15, 19, 25, 28, 29, 31–34, 37, 39, 47–51, 53, 54, 69, 71, 87, 89, 107, 119, 122, 124, 132, 140, 142, 150, 163, 169, 173, 175, 176, 183–185, 199–202, 207, 212, 214, 215, 219, 220, 254, 255

265

V

Vacuum vessel 228 Vacuum vessel, chamber 15, 26, 34, 59–61, 63, 65–68, 75, 87, 92, 149, 150, 153, 154, 230 Vandellòs 38, 45, 46, 48, 139 Velikhov, Evgeny 29, 30, 51, 52 Visits (visitors) 12, 21, 26, 41, 47, 55, 56, 59, 60, 66, 77, 88, 103, 116, 120, 148, 149, 174, 175, 188, 191–195, 204, 227, 237, 239, 243

W

Wagner, Fritz 61, 62 Waste 47, 101, 104, 105, 110, 143–145, 147, 148, 150, 178, 245, 256 WEST 38 Whistleblower 235, 244