The brief

Analyst view

• ITER's multinational consortium of 34 countries targets D-D operation in 2035, D-T fusion by 2039.
• Core assembly is halfway complete as of October 2026; all major components are on site.
• The project is the world's largest and most complex tokamak, built at Cadarache in southern France.

Technical approach

As reported

Tokamak

Plasma self-confinement

ITER uses a toroidal tokamak design where the plasma current creates a magnetic field that helps confine the plasma, combined with powerful external coils.

Magnets

Superconducting coil system

Toroidal and poloidal field coils cooled to 4 Kelvin generate fields to confine plasma over 100 million Kelvin.

Scale

10 times larger than previous tokamaks

At 23,000 tonnes with an 11.4-meter-tall vacuum vessel, ITER will demonstrate whether fusion at tokamak scale can approach net energy.