ITER

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ITER is a single very large tokamak under construction at Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, near Cadarache in southern France, built by a seven-member international collaboration. Its scientific goal is to produce a burning deuterium-tritium plasma at large scale, not to generate electricity: ITER has no turbine and no generator. Its schedule has slipped repeatedly. Under the updated baseline presented to the ITER Council in June 2024, the start of research operations is a stated target of 2034, full magnetic energy and plasma current in 2036, and the start of deuterium-tritium operation in 2039 — respectively three and four years later than the 2016 reference baseline, and much later than earlier plans. The updated baseline also changed the plasma-facing first wall material from beryllium to tungsten and brought forward installation of the divertor and blanket shield blocks so that the machine is more complete at first operation. All of these are programme targets and design decisions, not predictions of outcome.