ITER

International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor

Thirty-five participating nations
Motto	The way to new energy
Formation	24 October 2007
Headquarters	Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, France
Director-General	Bernard Bigot
Website	www.iter.org

ITER

Type	Tokamak
Construction date	2013–2019
Major radius	6.2 m
Plasma volume	840 m3
Magnetic field	11.8 T (peak toroidal field on coil) 5.3 T (toroidal field on axis) 6 T (peak poloidal field on coil)
Heating	50 MW
Fusion power	500 MW
Continuous operation	up to 1000 s
Location	Saint-Paul- lès-Durance, France

Coordinates: 43°42′17.84″N 5°46′9.1″E / 43.7049556°N 5.769194°E / 43.7049556; 5.769194

ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, and is also Latin for "the way") is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject, which will be the world's largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment. It is an experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor that is being built next to the Cadarache facility in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, south of France.

The ITER project aims to make the long-awaited transition from experimental studies of plasma physics to full-scale electricity-producing fusion power stations. The ITER fusion reactor has been designed to produce 500 megawatts of output power for several seconds while needing 50 megawatts to operate. Thereby the machine aims to demonstrate the principle of producing more energy from the fusion process than is used to initiate it, something that has not yet been achieved in any fusion reactor.

The project is funded and run by seven member entities—the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. The EU, as host party for the ITER complex, is contributing about 45 percent of the cost, with the other six parties contributing approximately 9 percent each.