Basics
- What is it?: International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is the most advanced and the world’s largest Tokamak facilitating magnetic fusion reactions on a large scale to harness carbon-free and sustainable fusion energy.
- Location: ITER under construction in France.
- Members: ITER, the collaboration of 35 nations such are United States, China, India, Japan, Korea, the Russian Federation, and the European Union.
- Objective
- To investigate and demonstrate burning Plasma (Self-heating plasma)
- To attain fusion gain of more than 10 for a longer duration of 400 to 600 seconds
- The validity of tritium breeding module concepts that would lead in a future reactor to tritium self-sufficiency by producing tritium from lithium
- Demonstrate the safety characteristics of a fusion device
- Contribute to the demonstration of the integrated operation of technologies for a fusion power plant
India’s Contributions
- India became a full partner of the ITER Project in 2005. It is intended to advance India’s own nuclear fusion programmes and research.
- The Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), a dedicated research institute under the Department of Atomic Energy, supervises the ITER-India as well as India’s two tokamaks, ADITYA-U and SST-1.
- ITER-India
- It is responsible for the delivery of key ITER packages including Cryostat, In-wall Shielding, Cooling Water System, Cryogenic System, Ion-Cyclotron RF Heating System, Electron Cyclotron RF Heating System, Diagnostic Neutral Beam System, Power Supplies, and some Diagnostics.
- As a regular member, India contributes 9% of the operating costs.