ITER launch delayed by at least 6 years

Current state of reactor construction

Last May at Geektimes the news was published that the manufacture of parts for the ITER fusion reactor had finally begun. The official plan indicated the start-up of the reactor - 2019. The launch of ITER, unfortunately, is postponed for another 6 years , that is, somewhere in 2025.

Members of the team developing ITER are planning to clarify the date. For this, delegations from China, the EU, Russia, India, Japan, the USA, and South Korea need to come together. At the same time, the work plan for 2016-2017 is already ready. This plan will be approved (or will not be) in June 2016 - the general meeting was scheduled for this date.

The tokamak reactor was proposed by Soviet physicists back in 1985. It was decided to implement the project a little later, and an agreement on joint work on the "tokamak" was signed by Reagan and Gorbachev. And now, for decades, work has been going on to build a reactor. In 2001, the technical design was ready, and in 2005, the parties agreed on the location for the creation of a fusion reactor. This is the neighborhood of the city of Cadarache in the south of France.
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At the moment, ITER is considered the most complex technical structure in the history of mankind. The total number of reactor parts is about 10 million.



The reactor is able to hold about 840 cubic meters of super-hot plasma. The design capacity of the reactor is 500 MW of energy with a consumption of 50 MW. The total cost of the reactor was estimated at about 5 billion euros, and the launch date is planned for 2016. Then the budget has grown to 15 billion, and the launch date is shifted to 2019. But here too, as we see, significant changes are coming. Now the exact budget of the project is difficult for its participants to name, and the launch date is shifting all the time.

Despite the fact that the official launch date of the reactor has shifted, the ITER Council noted the progress in project implementation.



At the previous meeting, it was decided to hire 150 more specialists who will join the already existing team of 640 employees. The participating teams decided to outline the 17 main important stages of implementation.