US company will be responsible for completing the reactor’s most critical component
US-based Westinghouse Electric Company has signed a $180m (€153m) contract for the assembly of the vacuum vessel for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter) nuclear fusion project under construction at Cadarache in the south of France.
Westinghouse said the contract is a key milestone in the construction of the €20bn Iter reactor, leading the way toward the use of fusion as a practical future source of reliable carbon-free energy.
Westinghouse will be responsible for completing the vacuum vessel, which is Iter’s most critical component: a hermetically sealed, double-walled steel container that will house the fusion plasma.
When all the vacuum vessel sectors are in place, Westinghouse will start the most intensive stage of Iter assembly: simultaneously welding the nine sectors to form a single, circular ring-shaped chamber, also known as a torus.
Westinghouse has collaborated with Iter for over a decade and has played a key role in the manufacturing of key parts for Iter vacuum vessel, including the manufacturing of five vacuum vessel sectors in cooperation with its partners, Italy-based Ansaldo Nucleare and Walter Tosto.
Last year Iter director-general Pietro Barabaschi announced a new schedule that aims for initial operation in 2035.
The new schedule plans for deuterium-deuterium fusion operation in 2035, a level of operation that is designed for testing, but releases limited energy.
The Iter Organisation had been working on what Barabaschi described as a realistic project timeline since he took up the role three years ago.
The previous baseline, established in 2016, was for initial operation in 2025, but Barabaschi said in 2023 that that deadline would have to be postponed.
In July 2020, the Iter project – the biggest of its kind in the world – began its assembly phase, which was scheduled to last five years.
In November 2022 delays to the Iter project were announced when defects were identified in two key first-of-a-kind tokamak components for the plant.
Europe is contributing almost half of the cost of Iter’s construction. The other members of the venture – China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US – are contributing the rest equally.
Nuclear fusion is the process by which two light atomic nuclei combine to form a single heavier one while releasing massive amounts of energy. It is the same process that powers the sun and the stars and could potentially provide limitless amounts of energy.
The Iter site at Cadarache in the south of France. Courtesy Iter.
