The ITER project has plenty of manpower to build its reactor, but needs to maintain the brainpower to run it

In the southern countryside of France, just 30km north of Marseille in a town called Saint Paul les Durance, scientists are charting new territory in the field of nuclear fusion. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is a multinational collaboration that is creating the world’s largest fusion reactor, called a tokamak. However, with a lengthy construction timeframe, and vast experience needed to join such an advanced project, ITER is striving to prepare its next generation of scientists.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, fusion is a method of nuclear power generation that has none of the dangerous fallout potential as fission. Instead of using chain reactions to split atoms, fusion relies on fickle plasma to heat hydrogen atoms so much that they can be forced together. Small changes to conditions inside the reactor can cause the plasma to simply stop burning, ending all reactions. 

"In theory, tokamaks could produce gigawatts of energy using just four grams of fuel," said Sabina Griffith, communications officer at ITER.

For reference, a power plant that produces one gigawatt can power hundreds of thousands of homes every year. Successes from public and private organizations have proven fusion is possible by multiple methods, but none have scaled energy production to a commercial level. Nevertheless, it has convinced large companies like Microsoft and Google to invest in the growing fusion industry. 

Where ITER is Now

Recent interest and investment supports the long-term development of fusion, but does little for a more immediate problem ITER is facing. The project started officially in 2007, and doesn’t expect to have an operational tokamak until 2034. What happens when long-term members retire and new ones aren’t ready to replace them? 

“We expect them to come [to ITER] already understanding plasma physics and tokamak machines,” said Peter de Vries, Coordinator for Plasma Operation and Control. “Younger scientists could be 35, maybe 40 years old when they start their career here.”

While it may cause more stress to have such lofty expectations, there is a reason for setting the bar high. 

“We are still very construction-focused,” de Vries said. “Other fusion projects are more education-focused, but a lot of resources are going towards finishing the tokamak.” 

Without proper preparation and training, new hires could damage systems and create very expensive and time-consuming setbacks. With the scale of the forces in the tokamak, the machine could break under substantially improper conditions.

“It’s like flying a plane,” explained de Vries. “You can get started and go up very fast, but you have to be careful coming down so you don’t crash.”

Why Fusion

If fusion is a field that requires so much time and knowledge to have success in, what keeps young people motivated on their path to join the ITER project? For some, it’s the chance to contribute to something that would benefit the world as a whole. For others, it’s the challenges behind creating and improving technology.

Eleonora Agus is a PhD student working as an intern for ITER through a partnership with the University of Turin. Her focus is interpreting data from infrared cameras that survey the inside of the tokamak. 

“I reconstruct temperature distributions and monitor the heat flux against the first wall to see how far we can go during experiments, and alert control when we need to intervene.”

In layman’s terms, Agus monitors hot spots within the tokamak and notifies central control if the machine starts to overheat. Although the materials in the experimental reactor are designed for extreme temperatures, it is important not to exceed them. Simply operational (not experimental) plasma temperatures are set to be 150 million degrees Celsius. 

Agus stumbled across fusion in her pursuit of literature and classical studies, and has never looked back since. Actively working on a PhD in nuclear energy engineering, she considers herself lucky to have come across an internship that is both of interest to her and helpful for the ITER project. 

Agus contextualizes her contributions against an international backdrop, saying, “It’s really impressive and important that so many countries have been able to put aside their differences to work on this project. To work together on solving a problem for humanity,”

This unity and combined effort inspires Agus in her research.

“Even if the models are all wrong, and fusion doesn’t work how we project it should, the research can never be a failure,” she said. “The point of research is to increase your understanding.”

Sven Korving is a numerical physicist at ITER who writes, develops, and implements software to use for various ITER simulations. 

“I do write my own software, but there are many programs that have been made open source among fusion projects that I can make changes to,” explained Korving. “The goal is to simplify the process for the computers.” 

Like Agus, Korving also had experience working at ITER through his own PhD program with the Eindhoven University of Technology. His road to ITER included working with multiple fusion organizations in the UK and Germany, as well as contributing to KSTAR in South Korea through General Atomics. 

Korving ran across fusion through studies on industrial plasma physics. Through several interdisciplinary courses, he has become invested in how fusion can keep moving forward.

“It feels like we’re walking on the frontier of what we know. It’s not fully theoretical, we are building ways to achieve one goal after another,” he explained. “We kind of know how things work already, but surprises will come up. When they do, we will definitely know how that thing works, and can start engineering our way out of it.”

What ITER is Already Doing

Many people have come across fusion like Agus and Korving. It was almost like a surprise that became their passion. However, ITER strives to make the field of fusion something more widely recognized instead of something students stumble upon in university.

Within the ITER Organization, there are many programs to get people involved in fusion. Their International School is a five-day research program designed to provide a window into what it would be like to work in fusion research. A different topic is discussed every year, and participants can have their work published via poster presentations. Additionally, there are summer schools available in many locations across ITER member countries. Each summer school covers a different topic relating to fusion.

Finally, internships and fellowships are available to university students and recent graduates. Partnerships like the one between ITER and the University of Turin are what makes this possible for students like Agus who want a career in fusion. 

ITER also has partnerships with FuseNet, an organization that seeks to extend fusion education throughout Europe. FuseNet can also be where people like Korving are able to begin working with various fusion organizations.

“I guess it’s kind of like the Erasmus program,” Korving explained. “They’re very good at communicating and coordinating people. They can help you reach out to companies, find professionals. In my case, they also helped fund travel expenses for my internship.”

FuseNet’s impact among the new hires has not gone unnoticed. The organization’s partnership with ITER means their programs can be offered to a broader audience. So much so, in fact, that any summer school or international school attendance for ITER researchers is almost a pre-requisite.

“We have a very centralized coordination of fusion study in Europe; FuseNet and EUROfusion have helped a lot with that,” de Vries said. “If people are interested in summer schools, we expect them to have attended before as part of their study.”

What More ITER Can Do

Despite everything available through ITER and partner organizations like FuseNet, many people like Agus and Korving still find themselves in the fusion industry by their own means. ITER is seeking to further extend the reach of fusion education beyond universities and scientific communities.

One way is to expand outreach to more local fusion think tanks. For example, the Committee of Nuclear and Reason is starting conversations to improve understanding of nuclear power in Italy after severe misinformation surrounding the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. Misinformation that caused the government to cancel all nuclear projects, and is now forcing them to scramble for energy due to the current war in Iran.

“I think the most important thing to do is to get these conversations started,” said Agus, who works with the committee. “Simplifying very technical concepts is something we should do more often to help people understand the risks and benefits. It’s the only way to be transparent.”

One very notable point is that none of the programs from FuseNet and very few from ITER help potential researchers learn how to use ITER’s tokamak. Most of that education is done during training.

“We need to teach [new researchers] how to use ITER’s systems specifically,” explained de Vries. “Imagine they know how to fly a biplane. Here, we need to teach them how to fly an airbus. It’s a very different experience than what they’re used to.”

The solution to this problem has mainly been computer simulations and visits to other tokamaks since ITER’s is still being built. Many researchers, including Agus, simply work to make sure they are ready when the machine becomes operational. 

“A lot of it is simulation-based,” said Agus. “We do as many simulations as we can so we can be prepared for many situations. Of course we try to make it as realistic as possible, but we can’t account for everything.”

The challenge with simulations lies both in real-world experience and computer processing power. In addition to the five main systems, ITER’s tokamak has 12 groups of subsystems. The supercomputers Agus uses need time to complete each simulation, but to increase speed, ITER must trade the ability to include every variable every time.

However, a new system is on the way that will give trainees much more hands-on experience later this year. It will be akin to a flight simulator, meant to recreate the experience of physically sitting in front of and manipulating the tokamak controls. According to de Vries, this is key for passing on knowledge to many future generations. 

“Systems exist now, and are ready to use now,” explained de Vries. “But we can’t properly use them until the tokamak is finished. So what do we do when, in ten years’ time, the people who currently know how to operate these systems have left? We need to be able to pass on this knowledge so that ten years from now, if they are not operating the machine, the next generation can pass the knowledge to the people after them.”