Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 29, 2020 congratulated the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ITER organization for their hard work and success so far.
Basic Facts
The ITER Organization is celebrating the Start of Assembly of the ITER Tokamak with a ceremony at Saint-Paul-Lez-Durance, France. The Celebration has been hosted virtually by French President Emmanuel Macron.
After assembling is finished, the facility will be able to start generating the super-hot “plasma” required for fusion power.
The $23.5bn ITER facility has been under construction in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, southern France.
World’s largest Tokamak: ITER is the world’s largest tokamak, a magnetic fusion device that has been designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy based on the same principle that powers our Sun and stars.
Fission and Fusion: Current nuclear energy relies on fission, where a heavy chemical element is split to produce lighter ones. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, works by combining two light elements to make a heavier one. Fusion could be a source of clean, unlimited power that would help tackle the climate crisis.
India is included: ITER is a collaboration between 35 nationals including India, China, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US. All members share in the cost of construction.
500 MW: The world record for fusion power is held by the European tokamak JET. In 1997, JET produced 16 MW of fusion power from a total input heating power of 24 MW (Q=0.67). ITER is designed to produce a ten-fold return on energy (Q=10), or 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of input heating power.
Many firsts: ITER will be the first fusion device to produce net energy. ITER will be the first fusion device to maintain fusion for long periods of time. And ITER will be the first fusion device to test the integrated technologies, materials, and physics regimes necessary for the commercial production of fusion-based electricity.
(Source: AIR, ITER, BBC)
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