ITER gets off the ground
The 20,500-square-metre ITER Headquarters building was inaugurated on 17 January 2013. The ITER site is located in Cadarache, France, that already hosts France’s nuclear research centre [CEA].
Guenther H. Oettinger, EU Commissioner for Energy, and Geneviève Fioraso, French Minister of Higher Education and Research, together with ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima unveiled the commemorative plaque at the entrance of the building. They also visited the ITER construction site where the Tokamak Complex construction will begin in the coming months. The construction work on ITER began in 2010 and is expected to come to an end in 2019.
ITER is a large-scale scientific experiment that aims to demonstrate that it is possible to produce commercial energy from fusion. The ITER project aims to deliver ten times the power that the facility consumes.
“At this time when the urgency to transform our energy system has been overshadowed by the financial crisis, it is important that we keep steadfast in funding projects like ITER, which is at the forefront of energy technology research in the world giving a long-term view towards the decarbonization of our energy supply,” said G.H. Oettinger.
ITER Director-General Motojima highlighted the work of physicists, engineers, technicians and administrators to make ITER a success. It is a first-of-a-kind global collaboration between European Union, China, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the USA.
Read more about ITER in the project website.
