A much-delayed nuclear fusion project involving more than 30 countries is ready to assemble the world’s most powerful magnet – a key part of efforts to generate clean energy by smashing atoms together at super-high temperatures.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, based in southern France and backed by the United States, China, Japan, Russia and the European Union, needs the magnetic system to create an “invisible cage” to confine super-hot plasma particles that combine and fuse to release energy.
ITER said late on Wednesday that the final component of the system – the central solenoid – had been completed and tested by the United States, and assembly was now underway.
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