What is ITER?

• ITER (“The Way” in Latin), (originally the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), is one of the most ambitious energy projects in the world today.
• ITER is an experimental tokamak fusion reactor facility under construction in Cadarache, France to prove the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a future source of energy. 

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• It is an international joint experiment in fusion, first launched in 1985.
• The ITER Members—mainly  China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States—35 nations in total are now engaged in a 35-year collaboration to build and operate the ITER experimental device.

What is Fusion reaction?

• Fusion is the energy source of the Sun and stars.
• In the tremendous heat and gravity at the core of these stellar bodies, hydrogen nuclei collide, fuse into heavier helium atoms and release tremendous amounts of energy in the process.
• Efficient fusion reaction is identified to be between two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium (D) and tritium (T).
• The DT fusion reaction produces the highest energy gain at the “lowest” temperatures.
• Three conditions must be fulfilled to achieve fusion in a laboratory: very high temperature (on the order of 150,000,000° Celsius); sufficient plasma particle density (to increase the likelihood that collisions do occur); and sufficient confinement time (to hold the plasma, which has a propensity to expand, within a defined volume).
• At extreme temperatures, electrons are separated from nuclei and a gas becomes a plasma—often referred to as the fourth state of matter. 
• Fusion plasmas provide the environment in which light elements can fuse and yield energy.
• In a tokamak device, powerful magnetic fields are used to confine and control the plasma.

What is a Tokamak?

• The tokamak is an experimental machine designed to harness the energy of fusion.
• Inside a tokamak, the energy produced through the fusion of atoms is absorbed as heat in the walls of the vessel.
• Just like a conventional power plant, a fusion power plant will use this heat to produce steam and then electricity by way of turbines and generators.

Significance

• It is a carbon-free source of energy based on the same principle that powers our Sun and stars.
• ITER’s First Plasma is scheduled for December 2025. That will be the first time the machine is powered on.
• ITER will be the first fusion device to produce net energy (total power produced during a fusion surpasses the thermal power injected to heat the plasma).
• ITER will be the first fusion device to maintain fusion for long periods of time.
• And ITER will be the first fusion device to test the integrated technologies, materials, and physics regimes necessary for the commercial production of fusion-based electricity.

India and ITER

• India formally joined the ITER Project in 2005 and the ITER Agreement between the partners was signed in 2006.
• ITER Organization (IO) is the central team responsible for construction at site and operation, while the ITER partners created their own domestic agencies to deliver their commitments to ITER.
• ITER-India, a wing of Department of Atomic Energy, is the Indian domestic agency.

Why in News?

• The L&T Ltd despatched a giant Cryostat lid, the most complex and final assembly of Cryostat, the largest stainless-steel, high-vacuum pressure chamber in the world, to ITER site in France.
• The Cryostat’s function is to provide cooling to the fusion reactor and to keep very high temperatures at its core under control.

https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines#1

https://www.iter-india.org/overview

https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/lt-despatches-cryostat-lid-for-20-billion-global-fusion-projectarticle31957496.ece#:~:text=The%20heavy%20engineering%20division%20of,France%20from%20its%20Hazira%20unit