Saint-Paul-les-Durance (HRNW) – An international project in nuclear fusion may face “years” of delays, its boss has told , weeks after scientists in the United States announced a breakthrough in their own quest for the coveted goal.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project seeks to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy.
Installed at a site in southern France, the decades-old initiative has a long history of technical challenges and cost overruns.
Fusion entails forcing together the nuclei of light atomic elements in a super-heated plasma, held by powerful magnetic forces in a doughnut-shaped chamber called a tokamak.
The idea is that fusing the particles together from isotopes of hydrogen — which can be extracted from seawater — will create a safer and almost inexhaustible form of energy compared with splitting atoms from uranium or plutonium.
ITER S previously-stated goal was to create the plasma by 2025.
But that deadline will have to be postponed, Pietro Barabaschi — who in September became the project s director-general — told during a visit to the facility.