News Publications (Chronological)
Jeremy Bernstein (Professor of physics at the Stevens Institute of Technology) / New York Times — Jan. 2, 1982
"The Joint European Torus at Culham,
England, to begin operations in 1983 - has been designed to produce more than 30 million
watts. In terms of the need for practical power generation, this is far from enough. (By
comparison, a typical modern nuclear fission plant produces something like a billion watts of
power, in other words, enough power to light, say, 10 million 100-watt lightbulbs while the plant
is running.)"
Bill Broad / New York Times — July 28, 1992
"Late last year, scientists at the Joint European Torus, an experimental fusion reactor in Oxfordshire, England, produced a significant amount of power from controlled fusion for the first time. The research team calculated that its reactor had yielded 1.5 million to 2 million watts in a pulse lasting two seconds. That success came after nearly half a century of worldwide effort and the expenditure of many billions of dollars. ITER would be the first machine in the world to go beyond short bursts of controlled fusion to operate continuously. Scientists hope that it would pave the way for practical reactors
producing a new kind of nuclear energy -- safe, cheap and nearly limitless."
Malcolm Brown /New York Times — Dec. 10, 1996
"If successful, the reactor would ignite a fusion reaction and produce up to 1.5 billion watts of power, demonstrating the feasibility of exploiting hydrogen fusion for large-scale power generation."
ITER was originally designed for a target of 1,500 MW gross thermal output.
Malcolm Brown / New York Times — May 20, 1997
"ITER, a $10 billion project intended to demonstrate by the year 2008 that hydrogen isotope fusion, a process somewhat similar to that which powers the sun, could be a commercially practical source of energy."
Charles Seife and Peter Hadfield /New Scientist — Oct. 17, 1998
Source: New Scientist, Oct. 17, 1998
Graph shows that output of JET was equivalent to the power required for a house; and output of ITER will be equivalent to the power required for a working fusion power plant.
Mark Anderson / Wired — Oct. 31, 2001
"ITER is planned to be the first ever to produce power at the level of a commercial power station."
Link to source
Eugenie Samuel / New Scientist — July 11, 2001
"The goal of fusion research is a reactor that produces much more energy than the large amounts needed to run it. The experimental tokamaks that exist around the world, such as the Joint European Torus (JET) reactor at Culham near Oxford, have to date not progressed far beyond the break-even point."
Robert Stern / New York Times — Jan. 31, 2003
"ITER would provide a record 500 megawatts of fusion power for at least 500 seconds, a little more than eight minutes, during each experiment. That would meet the power needs of about 140,000 homes."
Elizabeth Clements / Fermi News — May 9, 2003
"If successful, ITER would produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for 500 seconds or longer ... the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, one of ITER’s predecessors that shut down in 1997, produced a maximum of 11 megawatts for only one-third of a second ... ITER would be the first magnetic confinement fusion experiment to produce burning plasma. The reaction would produce ten times the amount of external power injected into it."
Daniel Clery / Science — Dec. 9, 2003
"The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) aims to produce 500 megawatts of power."
Declan Butler / Nature — June 29, 2005
"If all goes well, [ITER] will be the first fusion experiment that generates more energy than it uses."
Charles Arthur / The Register — July 6, 2005
"If it works, ITER will take in 50 megawatts of power and put out between 500 and 1,000 MW. That's right - it could power itself. ... Although the Joint European Torus project in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, managed to generate 80 percent of the power put into it - falling just short of being self-sustaining - it demonstrated what could be done."
Link to source
Craig Freudenrich, Ph.D. / How Stuff Works — Aug. 11, 2005
"The power needed to start the fusion reaction will be about 70 megawatts, but the power yield from the reaction will be about 500 megawatts."
Link to source
TIMELINE NOTE:
The "Agreement on the Establishment of the ITER International Fusion Energy Organization for the Joint Implementation of the ITER Project," for which the Director General of the IAEA is depositary, was signed in Paris on Nov. 21, 2006.
Daniel Clery / Science — Oct. 13, 2006
"The Joint European Torus (JET) in Abingdon, U.K., the biggest existing tokamak, managed to produce 16 megawatts, but that was only 65% of the power used to keep the reaction running. ... ITER aims to produce 500 megawatts of power, 10 times the amount needed to keep it running. German physicist Norbert Holtkamp says that ITER's goal of generating excess power is clear: 'Either it can do it, or it can't. If it fails, the tokamak is out.' ... Although there may be surprises along the way and whole new scenarios may have to be developed, few doubt that ITER will reach its goal of generating large amounts of excess power. But power is not much use commercially in bursts a few minutes long followed by a long wait while the reactor is reconfigured."
Erwin Boutsma / Technisch Weekblad — Oct. 20, 2006
"Iter promises to be the first fusion reactor to deliver more power than it needs to run: 500 MW for ten minutes, ten times more than what is put into it."
Hamish Johnston / Physics World — Nov. 21, 2006
"It is hoped that ITER will produce 500 MW of power to demonstrate that it is feasible to generate power from fusion."
ECONOMIST — Nov. 23, 2006
"Construction of the 500-megawatt reactor is expected to cost $6 billion and take a decade. Another $6 billion will be needed to operate it for 20 years. Even then the reactor will not be used to generate power. For safety reasons, the excess thermal energy produced will be released through cooling towers rather than harnessed to make electricity."
Geoff Brumfiel / Nature — Nov. 21, 2006
"ITER is a giant, €5 billion (US$6 billion) machine designed to prove that fusion power can work. It will use magnetic fields to confine hydrogen isotopes and heat them to hundreds of millions of degrees Celcius. If all goes well, the isotopes will fuse together — producing some 500 megawatts of power in the process."
The Economist — Nov. 23, 2006
"But getting more useful energy out of a machine than you put in has eluded the wit of man for 50 years—and a new move to throw more money at the problem marks political, not scientific, progress. ...
Construction of the 500-megawatt reactor is expected to cost $6 billion and take a decade. Another $6 billion will be needed to operate it for 20 years. Even then the reactor will not be used to generate power. For safety reasons, the excess thermal energy produced will be released through cooling towers rather than harnessed to make electricity. So a commercial reactor is at least 30 years away, as remote a prospect as fusion wonks said it was 50 years ago. And the problem it aims to solve—safely producing power with renewable resources—is being tackled more cheaply in other ways."
Link to source
The Engineer — Feb. 12, 2007
"If ITER achieves self-sustaining fusion, the low power requirements for the magnets and cryonics mean that it will produce 10 times more power than it consumes. ...‘Even though it will have a 500MW output, it won’t be connected to electricity generation machinery,’ said Kaname Ikeda, ITER’s director-general."
Link to source
TIMELINE NOTE: On Jan. 10, 2008, the U.S. DoE advised ITER director-general Ikeda that it was withdrawing from the "500 MWt" project.
Link to source
Matt Ford / Ars Technica, Report on AAAS Meeting — Feb. 16, 2008
"Introduced by Dr. Norbert Holtkamp, ITER's goal is to produce a significant fusion power amplification in a long pulse operation (for ~1,000 sec). The researchers and engineers involved come from seven different geographic groups and hope to put 50 MW into the reactor, yet get 500 MW out in thermal energy."
Geoff Brumfiel / Nature — June 12, 2008
"ITER is designed to test the feasibility of fusion power."
Link to source
Physics World — October 2008
ITER is a €5bn experimental reactor that aims to demonstrate the scientific and technical feasibility of fusion by producing 500 MW of power in 1000 second pulses.
Link to source
Andrew Orlowski / The Register — Oct. 22, 2008
"ITER is designed to produce 500MW for 300 to 500 seconds with an input of 50MW."
Nadia Ramlagan / APS News — November 2008
"ITER will use strong magnetic fields ... producing nearly 500 million watts of power. ... ITER will fuse deuterium and tritium together to form helium and a neutron, while releasing 10 times the amount of energy originally needed to make the nuclei fuse. ... [ITER] will be the first fusion reactor to create significantly more energy than it uses."
Jonathan Fahey / Forbes — Nov. 7, 2008
"ITER, for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, is designed to be the first reactor to produce sustained fusion reactions and generate more energy than it uses."
Ian Sample / The Guardian — Jan. 29, 2009
"In 1991, scientists at JET became the first in the world to produce energy from a deuterium/tritium plasma. While JET generated 16 MW of power, ITER is designed to produce some 500 MW in 400-second bursts."
James Kanter / New York Times — April 29, 2009
"The goal is to prove that energy can be generated through nuclear fusion ... So far, experimental fusion reactors have required more energy to operate than they have produced. ITER and the project in Japan are supposed to prove that fusion could be much more than a drain on the grid. ... Scientists then would spend the next decade or so trying to create bursts of power of up to 500 megawatts for several minutes at a time."
Editors / Nature — April 27, 2009
"[ITER,] the world's first fusion reactor capable of producing net energy."
Geoff Brumfiel / Nature — April 27, 2009
"When scientists inject deuterium and radioactive tritium into the machine, [ITER] should generate roughly 500 megawatts of thermal power — around 10 times the amount of power needed to run it. Such an achievement would be long-sought proof that fusion power can work."
Phys Org — June 18, 2009
"ITER is designed to produce 500 megawatts of power for extended periods, 10 times the energy needed to keep the energy-generating plasma − a form of radioactive gas − at extremely high temperatures."
[Note: In October 2009, New Scientist magazine published two articles and one poster about the ITER project. Four authors collaborated on the documents. Roger Highfield and Valerie Jamieson were editors for New Scientist. Neil Calder was the head of public relations for the ITER Organization and Robert Arnoux was a staff member of the ITER public relations team. The poster says that it was produced "with the support" of the ITER Organization which probably means that they paid the magazine to publish the articles and the poster.]
Roger Highfield, Valerie Jamieson, Neil Calder and Robert Arnoux /New Scientist — Oct. 9, 2009
"ITER: A Brief History of Fusion"
"In JET, TFTR, and JT-60, scientists have approached the long-sought 'break-even point,' where a device releases as much energy as is required to produce fusion. ITER's objective is to go much further and release 10 times as much energy as it will use to initiate the fusion reaction. For 50 MW of input power, ITER will generate 500 MW of output power."
Archive Copy
Roger Highfield, Valerie Jamieson, Neil Calder and Robert Arnoux / New Scientist — Oct. 9, 2009
Article: "ITER: How It Works"
"The aim is for ITER to generate 500 megawatts of fusion power. This would pave the way for a demonstration power plant, called DEMO, in which fusion power will produce steam and – by way of turbines – up to 1000 megawatts of net electrical power. That’s equivalent to a power plant that could supply about half a million British homes."
Archive Copy
Roger Highfield, Valerie Jamieson, Neil Calder and Robert Arnoux / New Scientist — Oct. 17, 2009
Poster: "ITER: The Way to a Benign and Limitless New Energy Source "
"JET marked a key step in international collaboration, and in 1991 achieved the world’s first controlled release of fusion power. While a significant amount of fusion power was produced by JET, and TFTR, exceptionally long-duration fusion was achieved in the Tore Supra tokamak, a EURATOM-CEA installation located at France’s Cadarache nuclear research centre and later in the TRIAM-1M tokamak in Japan and other fusion machines."
"In JET, TFTR and JT-60 scientists have approached the long-sought 'break-even point,' where a device releases as much energy as is required to produce fusion. ITER’s objective is to go much further and release 10 times as much energy as it will use to initiate the fusion reaction."
"For 50 MW of input power, ITER will generate 500 MW of output power. ITER will pave the way for the Demonstration power plant, or DEMO, in the 2030s. As research continues in other fusion installations worldwide, DEMO will put fusion power into the grid by the middle of this century. The last quarter of this century will see the dawn of the Age of Fusion."
Archive Copy
Charles Seife / Sun in a Bottle — Oct. 27, 2009
"JET got 6 watts out for every 10 it put in. It was a record, and a remarkable achievement, but a net loss of 40 percent of energy is not the hallmark of a great power plant."
Oilfield Technology — Feb 19, 2010
"ITER is a large-scale scientific experiment that aims to demonstrate that it is possible to produce commercial energy from fusion. The ratio of fusion power (Q) to input power can be represented thus: Q = 10. The scientific goal of the ITER project is to deliver 10 times the power it consumes. From 50 MW of input power, the ITER machine is designed to produce 500 MW of fusion power - the first of all fusion experiments to produce net energy."
Emiliano Feresin / Nature — April 30, 2010
"And unlike ITER, the ultimate aim of IGNITOR is to demonstrate the feasibility of plasma ignition — a state in which there is enough fusion power to maintain the reaction without the need for external heat. ITER, on the other hand, aims to maintain fusion by generating up to 10 times more power than it consumes."
Geoff Brumfiel / Nature — May 6, 2010
"The energy released by the machine should be roughly ten times the power it consumes."
Geoff Brumfiel / Nature — May 12, 2010
"Researchers hope that ITER, based in the south of France, will prove the viability of nuclear fusion as a power source. ... The process is expected to release ten times the power it consumes."
Geoff Brumfiel / Nature — May 28, 2010
"The doughnut-shaped ITER reactor would use superconducting magnets to heat and squeeze hydrogen until the device ignites a fusion reaction, releasing around ten times the power it consumes."
Geoffrey Brumfiel / NPR — July 27, 2010
"ITER hopes to change all that by producing 500 megawatts of power -- 10 times the energy it consumes."
Harry de Quetteville / Gulf News — Sept. 3, 2010
"When it is switched on for the first time, it will produce 500 MW of thermal energy, from which it will generate nearly 200 MW of electricity, enough to power a small city."
Jonathan Amos / BBC — Oct. 14, 2010
"Iter is designed to produce 500MW of fusion power during pulses of at least 400 seconds. Critically, the machine is expected to demonstrate the principle that it possible to get far more energy out of the process than is used to initiate it."
Matin Duranni / Physics World — Nov. 5, 2010
"If ITER fails to do what it's set out to do, which is to create a deuterium-tritium plasma that produces 10 times more power than is put in, what then?"
"This huge multinational experiment, which is a joint effort of Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea and the US, seeks to create a deuterium-tritium plasma that can release 10 times more power than it consumes. The aim is to show that fusion can potentially be a sustainable source of energy here on Earth."
Geoff Brumfiel / Nature — Nov. 12, 2010
"If all goes to plan, ITER will release ten times
the power it consumes, sometime after 2026."
Leo Hickman / The Guardian — Aug. 23, 2011
"Cowley is referring to the moment of parity when the amount of energy they extract from a tokamak equals the amount of energy they put into it. At present, the best-ever "shot" – as the scientists refer to each fusion reaction attempt – came in 1997 when, for just two seconds, the JET (Joint European Torus) tokamak at Culham achieved 16MW of fusion power from an input of 25MW."
"'We could produce net electricity right now, but the costs would be huge,' says Cowley."
"ITER which, it is hoped, will demonstrate the commercial viability of fusion by producing a tenfold power gain of 500MW during shots lasting up to an hour."
World Nuclear News — Sept. 26, 2011
"ITER is earmarked as being the first fusion reactor capable of producing net power. Fifty megawatts of input power should be enough to produce 500 megawatts output sustained on something closer to a steady state basis."
Adrian Giordani / Science Node — Oct. 19, 2011
"But, it takes more energy than it produces - JET produced 16 megawatts (MW) of power output, but required 24 MW of power input. Energy gain will be the goal of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) that will be built in Cadarache, France in the next few years. "It will have a net energy gain of 10, requiring a 50 MW input for a 500 MW output, which is approaching the levels we will need for commercial power stations," said Romanelli.
Link to source
Professor Tom Murphy / UCSD — Jan. 31, 2012
"The current timeline calls for achievement of a 480 second burst of 500 MW power in the year 2026, although there is
no plan to capture the generated heat for the production of electricity. ... ITER aims for a thermal output ten times that
of the input energy."
Link to Source
Geoff Brumfiel / Scientific American — June 2012
"It will generate around 500 megawatts of power, 10 times the energy needed to run it."
Peter Dunn / MIT News — June 17, 2012
"ITER is designed to produce output of 500MW from input of 50MW, and prove fusion power’s feasibility."
Gaia Vince / BBC — Aug. 13, 2012
"The plan is to use 50 megawatts (in heating the plasma and cooling the reactor), and get 500 MW out ... The JET experiment in the UK, hasn't even managed to break even, energy-wise. Its best ever result, in 1997, achieved a 16 MW output with a 25 MW input."
Science Daily — Jan. 16, 2013
"So far, fusion scientists have succeeded in generating fusion power, but the required energy input was greater
than the output. The international experiment ITER, which starts operating in 2020, will be the first device to
produce a net surplus of fusion power, namely 500 megawatts from a 50 megawatt input."
Link to source
Daniel Clery / Science — Jan. 17, 2013
"It takes so much energy to get a plasma up to a temperature at which fusion occurs that no reactor has yet produced net energy gain. ITER is expected to break through that barrier and generate 500 megawatts from a 50 MW input for periods lasting a few minutes. But it will be only a scientific demonstration; ITER won't generate any electricity."
Archive copy
Soo Bin Park / Nature — Jan. 21, 2013
"ITER's goal of producing 500 million watts for 500 seconds by the late 2020s."
Ge Li / Nature — Sept. 6, 2013
"ITER may produce 500 MWt of power by 2026 and may serve as a green energy roadmap for the world."
REDDIT Thread in Response to ITER Promotional Video "ITER In Five Minutes" — April 8, 2014
chordinine: "I was under the impression that a fusion reaction producing more energy than was put in was still a long ways away, and that a 1:1 ratio had not even been accomplished. Under this plan, they are saying that they can achieve a 1:10 energy ratio. Am I missing something?"
Powerfury: "They said it was a 1:10 ratio, but only for 300 second (5 minutes). So it does not seem sustainable for extended periods of time. This plant sounds more of a research plant for future progress."
nhillson: "ITER, in contrast, uses magnetic confinement fusion, which has produced at least a 70% return on input energy, and possibly a 125% return. It's now just a matter of scaling up, which increases the power produced, as well as the efficiency."
Neoshade: "It's not an advertisement. Billions of dollars have already been spent. Construction is underway in each country.
And yes, profitability is a long way off. ITER is meant to prove that net gain fusion can be done. They intend to produce energy for a matter of seconds, and to use this machine as a proof of concept and to learn more about how to do it right next time. Many smaller machines have been built to study fusion. This will be the largest ever and the first to achieve a net gain in energy."
Link to source
Stephen Harris / The Engineer — April 25, 2013
"The experimental ITER reactor will produce around 500 MW of power."
Archive Copy
Steve Connor / The Independent — April 27, 2013
"For every 50 megawatts of electricity it uses, it should generate up to 500 MW of power output in the form of heat."
Anthony King / Euroscientist — June 17, 2013
"Today, ITER scientists are cautious regards timelines, acknowledging that full-scale fusion plants are decades away. ITER itself aims to show the feasibility of producing 500 megawatts, with an input of 50, and pave the way for a Demo project sometime after 2040."
Declan Butler / Nature — Oct. 15, 2013
"The meeting is the start of a year-long review by ITER to try to keep the experiment on track to generate 500 MW of power from an input of 50 MW by 2028, and so hit its target of attaining the so-called Q≥10, where power output is ten times input or more."
Abhijit Sen / Fusion Science and Technology — Jan. 2014
"ITER will nominally operate at a net fusion power gain Q=10 by producing 500 MW of fusion power against an input power of 50 MW."
Link to source
Raffi Khatchadourian / New Yorker — March 3, 2014
"[ITER will] produce ten times the energy fired into the plasma, at half a gigawatt."
Daniel Clery (quoted in) Physics Today — April 1, 2014
"I’m not a fusion scientist. I think ITER will work and it will produce more energy than it consumes. They’d be really
unlucky if it didn’t. But a power utility is never going to want something like ITER because it’s so complicated."
Paul Rincon / BBC — April 24, 2014
"In 1997, scientists pushed 24MW of energy into JET and managed to get 16MW out - a fusion
energy gain of about 0.7. A fusion energy gain factor (known as Q) of greater than one is
required to achieve "breakeven", where the amount of energy produced equals the amount of
energy consumed."
Oak Ridge Today — May 7, 2014
"ITER, a full-scale, 500 megawatt experimental fusion device."
Rebecca Pool / Engineering and Technology — June 16, 2014
"[JET is] famed for releasing a hefty 16MW of power from a total input power of 24MW in 1997. The tokamak now serves as a blueprint to build the much more powerful France-based International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which aims to release 500MW of energy for 500 seconds, by the early 2020s."
"As Culham’s Prof Cowley explains: “The engineering milestone is when the whole plant produces more energy than it consumes. ITER will be the first to do this."
Elizabeth Gibney / Nature — July 31, 2014
"[ITER] an experimental reactor designed to use nuclear fusion to generate ten times the power that is put in."
Alok Jha / The Guardian — Jan. 25, 2015
"[ITER's] design is a scaled-up version of JET, and the scientists here want to produce 500 megawatts of power, 10 times its predicted input."
Ethan Siegel / Forbes — Aug. 27, 2015
"The breakeven energy point in nuclear fusion [is] where we get out as much energy as we put in. … The reality is we’ve moved ever closer to the breakeven point."
Lev Grossman / TIME — Oct. 22, 2015
"The goal for [tokamak] machines is to pass the break-even point, where the reactor puts out more energy than it takes to run it. The big tokamaks came close in the 1990s, but nobody has quite done it yet."
"The gain (the ratio of energy-out to energy-in) of a commercial fusion plant would have to be in the 15-to-
20 range; right now ITER’s target gain is 10; to date no fusion reactor has yet reached a ratio of 1, the break-even
point."
REDDIT Thread "CMV: We Should Abandon the ITER Project" — Nov. 5, 2015
endless_sea_of_stars: "ITER is a $14 billion project to build a reactor that has the following goals: Produce 10 times the energy it produces, Sustain fusion for 15 minutes at a time, Provide a platform for scientific and engineering research."
Link to source
Daniel Clery / Science — Nov. 19, 2015
"The ITER project aims to show that nuclear fusion — the power source of the sun and stars — is technically feasible as a source of energy. Despite more than 60 years of work, researchers have failed to achieve a fusion reaction that produces more energy than it consumes. ITER … is the biggest attempt so far and is predicted to produce at least 500 megawatts of power from a 50 megawatt input."
Daniel Clery / Science — Nov. 27, 2015
"[ITER] should produce 500 megawatts of power from a 50 megawatt input."
Will Mumford / SBS — Dec. 6, 2015
"In 1997, the Joint European Torus (JET) reactor produced a record 16 megawatts of fusion power; however, it took 24 megawatts of input power to create − a net loss. If successful, ITER will produce 500 megawatts of power for 50 megawatts of input power, a tenfold return."
REDDIT Thread "Will ITER Work?" — Dec. 11, 2015
SynopticOutlander: "I'd like to hear your opinions on the proposed 500MW output to 50MW input, with a 1000sec sustained reaction. How sure are we? Is all the math there? If so, why aren't we more excited? As the facility is slated to be operational in only 2019. If ITER succeeds will that put an end to Stellarators?"
UWwolfman: "As a fusion scientist my goals for ITER are slightly different then the political objective of Q=10 (500MW) for 500s. It is absolutely critical the ITER achieves high Q for a long sustained pulse. But ITER is really a science experiment that is needed to study the physics of a self-heated burning plasma."
Link to source
Nathaniel Scharping / Discover — March 23, 2016
"ITER is projected to produce 500 MW of power with an input of 50 MW, … enough energy to power roughly 50,000 households."
Keith Wagstaff / Motherboard — May 3, 2016
"When completed, ITER is expected to create 10 times the energy that is required to produce and heat its plasma."
Davide Castelvecchi and Jeff Tollefson / Nature — May 26, 2016
"[ITER] is predicted to produce about 500 megawatts of electricity."
Dave Loschiavo / Ars Technica — July 3, 2016
"[ITER] is projected to produce 500 MW of fusion energy while consuming 50MW to heat the hydrogen."
Damian Carrington / The Guardian — Oct. 17, 2016
"ITER should be completed in 15-20 years and claims to deliver 500 MW of power, about the same as today’s large fission reactors."
Stephen K. Ritter / C&EN — Nov. 7, 2016
November 7, 2016 |At a cost exceeding $20 billion, this 20-year project has set a goal of generating 10 times as much energy as it consumes."
Damian Carrington / The Guardian — Dec. 2, 2016
"'We are convinced we can deliver hundreds of megawatts through ITER,’ up to 10 times more energy than is put in, says David Campbell."
Dave Anderson / Listland — Feb. 8, 2017
"[ITER] will be the first device ever created that will produce net energy. Net energy is when the amount of energy that is generated from the system is greater than the energy that is used to power the system itself. The ITER tokamak has been strategically designed to surpass the current world record for fusion power. The current record is held by a European tokamak called ‘Jet.’ This tokamak produced 16MW of power from a 24MW input in 1997. The ITER energy project aims to shatter this record, providing an incredible return on energy. With just 50MW of power put in, it is expected to produce 500MW of fusion power!"
Javier Yanes / BBVAOPENMIND — March 23, 2017
"Chapman sets some dates and numbers: at the beginning of the 2030s, ITER will produce 500 megawatts, consuming between 50 and 100."
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Henry Fountain / New York Times — March 27, 2017
"Although all fusion reactors to date have produced less energy than they use, physicists are expecting that ITER will benefit from its larger size, and will produce about 10 times more power than it consumes."
Fraser Cain / Universe Today — May 28, 2017
"If all goes well, ITER will have a ratio of 10. In other words, for every 10 MW of energy pumped in, it’ll generate 100 MW of usable power."
CNBC International TV — April 25, 2017
"In 2007, work began in the South of France on ITER. The idea was to build the biggest tokamak in the world and produce 10 times more energy than it would take to power it."
Jing Cao / Bloomberg — June 29, 2017
"[ITER’s] developers say it’ll produce 500 megawatts of power, using 50 megawatts to get the reaction going. That output could power a city of 375,000 homes."
Edwin Cartlidge / Nature — July 6, 2017
"ITER [will] generate electricity only in bursts of a few minutes." [Krivit posted comment, Nature corrected article, Nature removed Krivit comment]
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Edwin Cartlidge / BBC News — July 11, 2017
"[ITER] is designed to generate 10 times the power that it consumes."
Jason Socrates Bardi / Inside Science (American Institute of Physics) — July 17, 2017
"The goal of ITER is to prove it’s possible to produce a net gain of energy. That means it will produce more power than it takes to make it. It will produce 500 megawatts of output power but only use 50 megawatts of input power."
S.A. Mathieson / The Register — Sept. 25, 2017
"[JET] set a record, producing 16MW of fusion power from a total input power of 24 MW. ITER, however, is a scaled-up version of JET currently under construction in the south of France planned to open in 2025 – a fusion reactor that aims to use 50 MW to generate 500 MW."
REDDIT Thread: "How Much Energy Will the ITER Produce if Successful--in Layman's Terms? — Oct. 2, 2017
danherczak: "I was reading this article which states that the ITER will produce 500MW of power out of an input of 50MW. The efficiency itself is very exciting, but what does it actually mean? How many homes can you run on that, and for how long? And will it produce 500MW a day, 500MW an hour...?"
RobusEtCeleritas: "ITER is not intended to be used for commercial power. It’s for fusion research, and proving that we can in fact reach ignition using magnetic confinement fusion reactors."
danherczak: "Thank you for your answer. What will they do with the energy it produces? Are they not even going to capture it?"
restricteddata: "The heat energy is just 'waste' if you don't do anything with it. They have a cooling system that works like most other cooling systems (cycles water through so that the heat can be removed and sent to cooling towers), albeit tuned to the expected needs of ITER."
Soloandthewookiee: "I would bet that the 500MW number is power-thermal, i.e., the heat generated from the reactor, not the electricity generated. I don't know that they would bother capturing it since that would require an entire steam cycle with turbines and generators. More likely, they'll use heat exchangers and reject the heat to the atmosphere or in some other manner. Also realize that it's an experimental reactor and is only intended to run for about 15 minutes at a time, so there's not much energy to be gained there.
To answer your original question, though, assuming the reactor generates 500MW-thermal and it has an efficiency of 33% (similar to fission reactors), subtracting the 50MW needed to sustain the reaction, it would generate around 150MW-electrical. The average US home uses about 1.2kW of electricity, so 150MW would be enough to power 125,000 homes."
Link to source
TIMELINE NOTE: On Oct. 6, 2017, New Energy Times published "The ITER Power Amplification Myth," which led to many corrections and retractions of ITER power claims. Some of Bernard Bigot's subsequent public communications such as this one , this one, and this one, avoided the claim that the reactor would require only 50 MW of input power. Other organizations continued publishing the 50 MW input power claim without realizing that it was wrong.
Peter Teffer, EUObserver — Nov. 15, 2017
"The current challenge is to prove that a fusion reactor can be built which produces more power than it consumes."
Mark Lapedus / Semiconductor Engineering — Dec. 5, 2017
"The world record for fusion power is held by JET, a European effort. In 1997, JET produced 16 MW of fusion power from a total input power of 24 MW, according to ITER. In comparison, ITER is designed to produce 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of input power."
Alan Boyle / Geekwire — Dec. 6, 2017
"ITER’s ambition is to demonstrate a sustained fusion reaction that produces a net gain in energy."
Frank Jordans / Associated Press — Dec. 6, 2017
"[ITER is] a vast international experiment designed to demonstrate that nuclear fusion can be a viable source of energy. ... Scientists hope it will demonstrate that such a fusion reactor can produce more energy than it consumes."
Hannah Osborne / Newsweek — Dec. 6, 2017
"[ITER] would prove that fusion energy on a commercial scale is a possibility."
AP/Daily Mail — Dec. 6, 2017
"[ITER] is designed to show a fusion reactor can produce more energy than it consumes."
Agencia EFE — Dec. 6, 2017
"ITER, the giant experimental machine that wants to demonstrate the viability of fusion energy as an alternative to fossil [fuels], ..."
Charles Q. Choi / Live Science — Dec. 7, 2017
"Its goal? To fuse hydrogen atoms and generate 10 times more power than goes into it. By the 2030s, ... the ITER tokamak should generate 500 megawatts of power."
Anmar Frangoul / Yahoo — Dec. 7, 2017
"[ITER is] a vast project to prove that fusion power is sustainable and can be generated on a commercial scale."
Charlie Wood / Christian Science Monitor — Dec. 11, 2017
"If successful, the colossal International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will produce 10 times as much energy as it takes to run."
World Nuclear News — Dec. 11, 2017
"[ITER] is a major international project to build a 500MW tokamak fusion device (requiring an input of 50 MW) designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy."
Natasha Romanzoti / Hypescience — Dec. 11, 2017
"So far, no one has built a fusion reactor that could supply a small town, a state or country. ITER is the hope to change that."
Veronique Le Billon / Les Echos — Dec. 12, 2017
"The goal of the 'big machine': to produce 500 megawatts with 50 megawatts of initial power."
Sputnik News — Dec. 12, 2017
"ITER project scientists calculate that their working experimental generator will generate about 500 megawatts of energy, five times the amount it consumes through its operation."
Lea Udov / Stakrog — Dec. 13, 2017
"The purpose of [ITER] is to build the largest experimental fusion reactor, in which, by means of fusion, they would generate 10 times as much energy as the reactor [uses]."
RIA — Dec. 13, 2017
"It is assumed that in the operating mode the installation will give 500 megawatts of energy. This is five times more than it consumes."
"The goal of the big machine: to produce 500 megawatts with 50 megawatts of initial power."
Link to source
Patrick J. Kiger / How Stuff Works — Dec. 19, 2017
"But so far, [experimental tokamaks have] required more energy to operate than the fusion generates. But ITER hopes to overcome that. … ITER will use 50 megawatts of power input to generate 500 megawatts of fusion energy, in the form of heat."
Christa Marshall / E&E News — Dec. 21, 2017
"The international demonstration is aiming to generate about 10 times its input power."
Christa Marshall / Science — Dec. 21, 2017
"The international demonstration is aiming to generate about 10 times its input power."
Dom Galeon / Futurism — Dec. 30, 2017
"Best of all, the ITER tokamak has been designed to 'produce 500 MW of fusion power (Q≥10) from 50 MW of heating input power.'"
John Russell /VOA — Dec. 31, 2017
"The director of the ITER project says the facility is 50 percent complete and on track to produce low-cost energy."
Publico — Jan. 2, 2018
"500 megawatts of thermal power will be produced."
Muhammad Huzaifa Ali / The Nation (Pakistan) — Jan. 8, 2018
"ITER ... will be able to produce 500 MW for up to 1,000 seconds with an input of only 50 MW."
Atul Pant / Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses — Jan. 10, 2018
"In all the experimentation conducted to date, it has not proved possible to obtain a higher output of fusion energy than the input energy. The best output to input energy ratio has been 65 percent."
John Draper, Peerasit Kamnuansilpa / The Nation-Thailand Portal — Jan. 12, 2018
"Sometime after 2035, ITER is expected to produce 500 MW of fusion energy for 50 MW of input energy."
Brittany Crocker / USA Today/Knox News — Feb. 15, 2018
"ITER is an international endeavor to build a reactor that produces much more energy than it uses."
Maria Temming / Science News — Feb. 17, 2018
"ITER in France is an international effort to build the first magnetic fusion reactor that pumps out more energy than it consumes."
Timothy Gardner / Reuters — March 6, 2018
"An international project to build a nuclear fusion reactor in France that would start generating electricity in 17 years will face delays if Trump administration cuts are not reversed in a few months, the head of the venture said on Tuesday. ... [ITER is] a nuclear fusion reactor in France that would start generating electricity in 17 years."
Reuters - Japan Times — March 6, 2018
"An international project to build a nuclear fusion reactor in France that would start generating electricity in 17 years will face delays if U.S. cuts are not reversed in a few months, the head of the venture said on Tuesday. ... [ITER] would generate electricity from a process similar to the fusion that powers the sun."
Giuliano Aluffi / La Repubblica - March 10, 2018
"We plan to produce 500 megawatts with 50 megawatts of consumption." [Tim Luce, director of research for the ITER project.]
Link to source
Editors / The Guardian — March 12, 2018
"JET hasn’t even managed to break even, energy-wise. Its best ever result, in 1997, remains the gold standard for fusion power – but it achieved just 16 MW of output for 25 MW of input."
Éanna Kelly / Science Business — March 15, 2018
"When completed, ITER will theoretically produce 10 times as much energy as it needs to run. It will be a 'massive, safe, clean, and predictable energy source for hundreds of thousands of years,' said Bigot. 'If we succeed - and we will - the breakthrough will be so large.'”
Samuel Sheppard / The Boar — March 28, 2018
"ITER promises to create a fusion reactor that can generate 10 times more energy than is put in."
Geert De Clercq / Reuters — April 13, 2018
"[ITER,] a prototype fusion reactor to generate electricity in a process similar to the nuclear fusion that powers the sun."
Editors / World Nuclear News — April 19, 2018
"Iter is a major international project to build a 500MW tokamak fusion device (requiring an input of 50MW) designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy."
Richard L. Hudson / Science Business — May 2, 2018
"ITER aims to switch on in 2025, and generate power by 2035."
Katherine Bourzac / C&EN — Aug. 6, 2018
"By 2035, ITER will use 50 MW of input power to produce 500 MW of fusion power."
Sean O’Neill quoting Melanie Windridge / New Scientist — Sept. 15, 2018
"[ITER is] aiming to get about 10 times more energy out of the fusion reaction than they put in. That will prove fusion energy is possible."
Vishal Gulati / Indo-Asian News Service — Oct. 11, 2018
"ITER aims to prove that fusion power can be produced on a commercial scale."
Vishal Gulati / Indo-Asian News Service — Oct. 11, 2018
"...world's largest tokamak fusion device, a donut-shaped configuration designed to produce 500 MW of thermal fusion energy."
APS Announcement of Lecture by Tim Luce, ITER Chief Scientist — Nov. 5, 2018
"By producing 500 MW of power from an input of 50 MW — a gain factor of 10 — ITER will open the way to the next step: a demonstration fusion power plant."
Link to source
Jack Kilbride and Bang Xiao / Australian Broadcasting Corp. — Nov. 15, 2018
"ITER is set to be the first fusion device to consistently produce net energy, producing 500 megawatts of clean and sustainable power ... ITER will be the first fusion device in the world to produce more energy than it takes to run."
Andreas Dietl / JUNGLE.WORLD — Jan. 3, 2019
(German) "Hier in Cadarache soll zum ersten Mal ein Fusionsreaktor entstehen, der tatsächlich als Kraftwerk funktioniert. Das heißt vor allem, dass der Reaktor mehr Energie liefern soll, als für seinen Betrieb nötig ist – genau gesagt: zehnmal mehr. 50 Megawatt Leistung soll der Internationale Thermonukleare Experimentelle Reaktor – kurz: ITER – verschlingen, gleichzeitig jedoch 500 Megawatt produzieren. Die Ingenieure sprechen von einem Q-Wert von 10, und das ist der Wert, dem sie nachjagen. Der bisherige Weltrekord für einen Fusionsreaktor ist ein Vierteljahrhundert alt und liegt bei 0,67."
(English) "A fusion reactor is to be built here in Cadarache for the first time, which actually functions as a power plant. Above all, this means that the reactor should deliver more energy than is necessary for its operation - to be precise: ten times more. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor - ITER for short - is expected to devour 50 megawatts of power, but at the same time produce 500 megawatts. The engineers speak of a Q value of 10, which is the value they are chasing. The previous world record for a fusion reactor is a quarter of a century old and is 0.67." Link to source
Peter Gwynne / Physics World — Jan. 8, 2019
"The ITER fusion reactor aims to show that it is technically feasible to get usable amounts of energy from a controlled fusion reaction. ... the facility aiming to generate 500 MW of power."
Stuart Nathan / The Engineeer — Jan. 3, 2019
"[ITER] is expected to be the fïrst fusion plant to
achieve a net energy gain."
"ITER is intended to produce about 10 times as much energy as it takes to maintain fusion," [Donné] said. “We call the ratio of ‘power out’ to ‘power in’ the Q factor, and at the moment no
fusion reactor has exceeded a Q factor of one (Q1). ITER’s performance we call Q10, but
because of the inefficiencies inherent in generating electricity – with heat exchange and turbines – Q10 is nowhere near enough to be useful."
Editors / World Nuclear News — Jan. 30, 2019
"ITER is a major international project to build a 500 MW tokamak fusion device (requiring an input of 50 MW) designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy."
Stéphane Loignon / Le Parisien — Feb. 5, 2019
" Objectif: produire 10 fois plus d'énergie qu'il en est consommé (500 MW – mégawatts – pour 50 MW). Le record actuel, nettement inférieur, est détenu par le Tokamak JET, au RoyaumeUni, qui n'avait généré, en 1997, que 16 MW. Bien moins que les 24 MW qu'il avait consommés!"
"Objective: produce 10 times more energy than it consumes (500 MW - megawatts - for 50 MW). The current record, much lower, is held by the Tokamak JET, in the United Kingdom, which had generated, in 1997, only 16 MW. Much less than the 24 MW it had consumed!"
Link to source
Éanna Kelly / Science Business — Feb. 28, 2019
"[JET] ran the most successful fusion attempt ever, in 1997, creating 16 mega-watts (MW) of power – a return of 60 per cent on the energy fed in. The energy, which lasted for mere hundreds of a second, could very briefly power the nearby town of Abington (population 9,668). So far, no fusion experiment has been able to get more energy out of a reaction than was put in. JET’s record 16MW pulse needed 24MW to make it happen. ... Over the next few years before handing the baton to ITER, JET is aiming for the coveted goal of break even, where fusion yields as much energy as it consumes. 'I think we can do better than we did in 1997. I’m hoping we can smash our record,' said Chapman. ... ITER meanwhile promises to produce net fusion power sometime after 2035, if the present schedule holds."
L’Écho de Vinon-sur-Verdon — March-May 2019
(French) "L'objectif est de parvenir à produire 10 fois plus d'énergie que celle fournie pour le déclenchement de la réaction de fusion."
(English) "The goal is to produce 10 times more energy than that provided for initiating the fusion reaction."
Link to source
Molly / Power Technology — March 11, 2019
"ITER is aiming to generate 500MW of fusion power from 50MW of input heating power by 2025. This puts it roughly in the same generation capacity bracket as fission SMRs, although it is much larger."
Jillian Ambrose / Telegraph — March 31, 2019
"By 2025 they expect to start the first milestone experiments to prove that fusion technology can produce ten times more energy than it uses."
Jonathan Leake / Sunday Times — March 31, 2019
"Britian's JET experiment has achieved fusion, but only for a few seconds at a time."
David Stanway / Reuters — April 12, 2019
"While nuclear fusion could revolutionize energy production, with pilot projects targeting energy output at 10 times the input, no fusion project has up to now created a net energy increase. ... ITER is scheduled to generate first plasma by 2025. A demonstration reactor will then be built, with the aim of creating 500 megawatts of power from just 50 megawatts of input, a tenfold return on energy."
Xavier Boivinet / INDUSTRIE-TECHNO.COM — April 23, 2019
(French) "Les scientifiques tenteront de montrer que la fusion nucléaire peut produire dix fois plus d’énergie qu’elle n’en consomme pendant une durée relativement longue : 500 MW produits pour 50 MW consommés sur environ 10 minutes."
(English) "Scientists will try to show that nuclear fusion can produce ten times more energy than it consumes for a relatively long time: 500 MW produced for 50 MW consumed over about 10 minutes."
Link to source
The Economist — May 2 2019
"Iter, a reactor in France, may deliver fusion power as early as 2045."
Editors / World Nuclear News — June 20, 2019
"[ITER] is a major international project to build a 500 MW tokamak fusion device (requiring an input of 50 MW) designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy."
Caroline Peachey / Nuclear Engineering International Magazine — June 18, 2019
"The goal of the project is to harness nuclear fusion – the reaction that powers the stars – and to prove its viability as an energy source."
Caroline Delbert / Popular Mechanics — July 28, 2020
"...with a trio of heating elements pulling a combined 50MW of power, enough for about 10,000 homes. That will bring the plasma to a temperature 10 times greater than the sun’s in the doughnut-shaped reactor to generate as much as 500MW of energy for brief bursts."
Vishal Gulati / Indo-Asian News Service — July 24, 2019
"ITER — a project proving that fusion power can be produced sustainably on a commercial scale."
Le Parisien — July 28, 2020
"ITER, s'il était raccordé au réseau électrique, ne produirait que 200 MW d'électricité, de quoi alimenter quelque 200 000 foyers."
"ITER, if connected to the electricity grid, would produce only 200 MW of electricity, enough to power
some 200,000 homes."
Alex Hickey / Morning Brew — Aug. 15, 2019
"[ITER,] the first fusion device to generate net energy. ... By the late 2030s, the ITER tokamak is expected to produce up to 500 megawatts of fusion power in pulses that last 400 seconds, Danas Ridikas, head of the physics at the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Brew."
lemondedelenergie.com — Aug. 24, 2019
"Le comité scientifique d’ITER œuvre en effet à la conception d’un réacteur tokamak capable de produire 10 fois plus d’énergie qu’il n’en consomme"
Hugo Leroux / Science et Vie — Sept. 27, 2019
(French) "En 1997, le plus grand tokamak actif formait, pendant une seconde, un plasma dégageant 16 mégawatts (MW) pour 24 MW dépensés. ... Son objectif - générer pendant 20 minutes 500 MW de puissance avec 50 MW de puissance injectée."
(English) "In 1997, the largest active tokamak formed, for a second, a plasma giving off 16 megawatts (MW) for 24 MW spent. ... [ITER's] objective - to generate 500 MW of power for 20 minutes with 50 MW of injected power."
Link to source
Jon Asmundsson, Will Wade, Christine Harper / Yahoo Finance and Bloomberg — Sept. 28, 2019
"The Joint European Torus, or JET, sets a record with a fusion output of 16.1 megawatts, equivalent to about 67% of the input energy, a Q of 0.67.
"Construction of ITER, an international fusion demonstration project, in the south of France is 60% complete. When turned on, ITER is expected to produce 10 times the energy it consumes, a Q of 10.
"When ITER achieves its first plasma, which is slated for 2025, it’s expected to hit a fusion milestone: It will produce more energy than it consumes. “There’s nobody knowledgeable in the space who doesn’t believe when they turn ITER on that it’s going to produce net energy out,” says General Fusion’s Mowry. ITER is expected to produce 500 megawatts while consuming 50. In the parlance of the field, it will have a Q>1. Specifically, since it’s expected to produce 10 times the energy put in, it would have a Q=10."
Philip Ball / The Guardian — Oct. 27, 2019
"In 1997 Jet set a world record for the highest ratio of energy out to energy in. But that was still just two-thirds of the break-even point where the reactor isn’t consuming energy overall. ... [ITER] hopes to conduct its first experimental runs in 2025, and eventually to produce 500 megawatts (MW) of power – 10 times as much as is needed to operate it.
Link to source
Amy Wass / The Appalachian — Nov. 7, 2019
"ITER is using the participation of 28 countries, including China, members of the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States, to create an experimental device that produces net energy."
Nuclear Engineering International — Nov. 11, 2019
"Iter, a 500 MW tokamak fusion device, requires an input of 50MW."
Link to source
REDDIT Thread: "The Iter Reactor's Construction Is Complete, Lets Hope It Will Be Successful" — Nov. 19, 2019
ukezi: "Reaching fusion temperature and creating the magnetic bottle takes a lot of energy. You can start fusion reactions with smaller reactors on the scale of Wendelstein 7-X, no problem there. However these reactors don't produce more power then they consume. We need them to be this big [ITER] to actually produce energy."
Ralath0n: "Yea, the goal of ITER is to demonstrate that we can actually build something that gets net energy out of fusion. ITER isn't actually going to generate electricity though, it doesn't have turbines to turn the produced heat into electricity."
Gary Elinoff / Electropages — Nov. 19, 2019
"The goal for this project is the production of 500 megawatts of power from an electrical input of 50 megawatts of electrical input, or a gain factor of ten to one."
Camille Guittonneau / LEMONDEDELENERGIE — Nov. 22, 2019
(French) "Le projet ITER permettra d’attendre une puissance de l’ordre de 500 MW pour 50 MW de puissance injectée. On est donc en présence d’un facteur 10 en termes de gain de puissance."
(English) "The ITER project will make it possible to expect power of the order of 500 MW for 50 MW of injected power. We are therefore in the presence of a factor of 10 in terms of power gain."
Link to source
Adrian Cho / Science — Feb. 6, 2020
"In 1994, PPPL’s largest machine ever, the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR), briefly generated 10.7 megawatts of power, still the record for U.S. efforts. ... ITER aims to be the first tokamak to produce more energy than it consumes. But TFTR was also supposed to do that and it came up short."
Daniel Michaels / Wall Street Journal — Feb. 6, 2020
"ITER targets a 10-fold increase in power between what goes in and what comes out. If all goes well, Mr. Bigot foresees others leveraging ITER’s research to build commercial fusion plants in the 2050s."
Tim L. Peckinpaugh, Michael L. O'Neill, Abraham F. Johns and R. Paul Stimers (K&L Gates)/ The National Law Review — as of March 4, 2020
"Using magnets to control the plasma inside, the reactor set the record for the first generation of power by nuclear fusion, creating 16.1 megawatts (“MW”) of fusion energy, though it required 25 MW to produce the reaction."
Link to source
I wrote to the authors. They did not respond. A few days later, I wrote to Jennifer B. Schaller, Managing Director of the National Law Review. Her staff member Eilene Spear responded: "We are working to address this issue, and we have reached out to the authors for clarification. In the interim, we have removed the article from our site while we seek clarity on these issues." (Article removed from URL) I checked the page on April 2, 2020. The article was back. The entire sentence had been removed.
Tim L. Peckinpaugh, Michael L. O'Neill, Abraham F. Johns and R. Paul Stimers / The National Law Review — as of April 2, 2020
Stephen Johnson / BIGTHINK.COM — March 20, 2020
"The goal of the project is to prove that commercial nuclear fusion is possible by demonstrating that a reactor can produce more energy than it consumes."
Link to source
Antony Funnell / ABC Radio National — April 7, 2020
"For ITER to be considered a success, according to Professor Garrett, it must demonstrate that it can achieve an energy gain of a factor of 10. '"ITER consumes 50 megawatts of power to produce this plasma at 150 million degrees, and the goal is to produce 500 megawatts of power from that plasma,' he says."
Link to source
Jenna Tsui / Technology Networks — April 28, 2020
"ITER is expected to generate a maximum of 500 megawatts of power. This is about the
production of an average coal-fired power plant, butmore than 140 times greater than the
power output of the average wind turbine, which produces around 3.5 megawatts. The ITER
project's power output will also be much more consistent than that of a wind farm or solar
array."
Caroline Delbert / Popular Mechanics — April 28, 2020
"Ultimately, ITER’s adherents say it will take in exterior energy and produce 10 times as much energy output. (New Energy Times' Steven Krivit strongly contests this number and shows his work as to why."
Jonathan Tirone / Bloomberg News — May 2, 2020
"Economies are counting on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor to prove whether limitless quantities of clean energy can be generated."
Princeton University Announcement of Bigot Lecture — May 14, 2020
"[ITER is] designed to build a 500-MW fusion plant in southern France, which is slated
to be the first fusion experiment to produce more energy than it consumes."
Daniel Clery / Science — May. 27, 2020
"The $25 billion ITER project, which aims to build the world’s largest fusion reactor and finally demonstrate that melding together hydrogen nuclei is a viable energy source..."
World Nuclear News — May 29, 2020
"ITER will be a 500 MW tokamak fusion device (requiring an input of 50 MW) designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy."
Vishal Gulati / IANS — June 17, 2020
"The ITER project -- a collaboration of 35 nations, comprising India, to prove that fusion power can be produced on a commercial scale and is sustainable..."
Rosaria Cercola / Massive Science — June 16, 2020
"This will put its power output on par with traditional coal or oil-powered plants."
Wallace Manheimer / (Letter in) Physics Today — July 1, 2020
"According to the ITER website (www.iter.org), the reactor is designed to produce a 10-fold or better return on energy; that is, it should produce 500 MW of fusion power from its 50 MW of input heating power."
Vishal Gulati / IANS via Tribune of India — July 26, 2020
"World's largest fusion plant set to create history ... [ITER] will work on the tokamak concept where the reaction of hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium produces energy by the mass-energy conversion principle, thereby proving to be a source of unlimited energy. The project aims to complete through first plasma in 2025, a key milestone toward full fusion power by 2035. The ITER facility aims to produce about 500 megawatts of thermal power."
ITER Organization Press Release — July 28, 2020
On July 28, 2020, the ITER organization conducted a publicity event to "celebrate" the fact that, many years after construction on the project had started, they were now beginning to assemble the components. The organization also issued a press release that day with two false and exaggerated power claims. The event and press release resulted in at least 100 repetitions of the false claims in the press release in the English language alone. I contacted the ITER organization. They did not reply. But they did remove the press release from their Web site.
Jeff Berardelli / CBS News — July 28, 2020
"If all goes according to plan, the plant at ITER will produce about 500 megawatts of thermal power. The team says that if operated continuously and connected to the electric grid, ITER would be able to generate about 200 megawatts of electric power, enough for about 200,000 homes."
Damian Carrington / Guardian — July 28, 2020
"Iter project will replicate the reactions that power the sun and is intended to demonstrate fusion power can be generated on a commercial scale. ... The Iter project will be the first to achieve a “burning” or self-heating plasma and is expected to generate 10 times more heat than is put in, far more than any previous attempt."
Link to source
Ariel Cohen (Contributor) / Forbes — Aug. 7, 2020
"ITER is supposed to become the world’s first reactor capable of self-burning plasma and would ideally generate up to 10 times the amount of heat that it consumes. ... If successful, the reactor will draw 50 megawatts (MW) of electricity to ignite the fusion process and produce stable plasma. This plasma would then put out some 500MW of power (in short bursts),
thereby generating a whopping 10x energy return."
Link to source
Pelle Axelsson / Intellectinterviews — Aug. 19, 2020
"[ITER] will be the first magnetic fusion
device to produce net energy (more energy output than input)."
Link to source
Payal Dhar / IEEE Spectrum — Aug. 24, 2020
"If everything goes to plan, the first deuterium–tritium fusion experiments will be demonstrated by 2035, and will in essence be replicating the fusion reactions that take place in the sun. ITER estimates that for 50 MW of power injected into the tokamak to heat the plasma (up to 150 million degrees Celsius), 500 MW of thermal power for 400- to 600-second periods will be output, a tenfold return (expressed as Q ≥ 10). The existing record as of now is Q = 0.67, held by the JET tokamak."
Link to source
Henry Fountain / New York Times — Sept. 29, 2020
"Researchers laid out the evidence that Sparc would succeed and produce as much as 10 times the energy it consumes."
Power Technology — Oct. 19, 2020
"Those working on ITER estimate that if everything goes according to plan, an input of 50MW will result in an output of 500MW. This would solve the issue of putting in more energy than you get out and help prove the technology’s viability. ... 'ITER is the culmination of 60 years of R&D. Success for ITER means demonstrating the technical and scientific feasibility of fusion by producing a net energy gain,' says an ITER spokesperson."
World Nuclear News — Oct. 21, 2020
" Iter is a major international project to build a 500MW tokamak fusion device (requiring an input of 50MW)."
Chris Lee / Ars Technica — Oct. 27, 2020
"[ITER and SPARC] are expected to produce more energy from fusion than the direct input energy, though neither is expected to produce useful power. ... they will show that fusion reactors that can produce useful electricity are possible."
Adam Vaughan / New Scientist — Dec. 2, 2020
"That might change in 2025, when the world’s biggest fusion project, ITER in France, is due to switch on. The hope is it will turn 50 megawatts of power into 500MW, proving a net gain is possible."
Daniel Clery / Science — Dec. 2, 2020
"The ITER tokamak in France, due for completion in 2025, will be the first to demonstrate energy gain, although that won’t happen until after 2035 and even then, the fusion energy won’t be used to generate electricity."
Peter Ray Allison / BBC — Dec.
15 2020
"[ITER] will be a fully-working demonstration fusion reactor, providing 500 megawatts of fusion power – enough, if converted to electricity, to power a city the size of Liverpool."
S&P Global Platts — Feb. 22, 2021
"Construction of the 500 MW ITER Tokamak is 72% complete, according to ITER's website. ... The world record for fusion power is held by the European tokamak JET, which in 1997 produced 16 MW of fusion power from a total input heating power of 24 MW. The in-construction ITER Tokamak is designed to produce a 10-fold return on energy, or 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of input heating power. The project will not capture the energy it produces as electricity, but prepares the way for a machine that can, ITER said."
Elizabeth Gibney / Nature — Feb. 22, 2021
"It is this fuel mix that ITER will use in its attempt to create more power from a fusion
reaction than is put in — something that has
never before been demonstrated. ... The [JET] facility succeeded in achieving a record ratio of power out to power in (known as a Q value) of 0.67. That record still stands today; 1 would be break-even."
Caroline Delbert / Popular Mechanics — Feb. 22, 2021
In fact, the world’s existing fusion reaction record, a 0.67:1 ratio of fusion output to input, was set at JET using tritium in 1997. (For a fusion reactor to make power, it must reach a ratio of 1.01:1"
TIMELINE NOTE: On April 11, 2021, New Energy Times released the film ITER, The Grand Illusion: A Forensic Investigation of Power Claims
World Nuclear News — April 25, 2021
"The goal of ITER is to operate at 500 MW (for at least 400 seconds continuously) with 50 MW of plasma heating power input. It appears that an additional 300 MWe of electricity input may be required in operation. No electricity will be generated at ITER."
Matthew Sparkes / New Scientist — June 15, 2021
"The plan is to create 500 megawatts of usable energy from an input of 50 megawatts."
Giulia Petroni / Wall Street Journal — Aug. 10, 2021
"ITER, a $22 billion multinational government-funded project in southern France designed not to produce electricity, but to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion by producing a net energy gain."
John Markoff / New York Times — Aug. 11, 2021
"The [ITER] consortium hopes to begin generating electricity at the site in 2035. ... So far, the best effort to reach positive energy output from a fusion reactor was achieved by the Joint European Torus, or JET, project, a
Tokamak that began operation in 1983 in Oxfordshire, England. The device was able to produce 16 megawatts of fusion power while
consuming 24 megawatts."
Kenneth Chang / New York Times — Aug. 17, 2021
"In the late 1990s, the Joint European Torus experiment in England was able to generate 16 million watts of fusion power for a brief moment, going about 70 percent of the way to producing as much power as it consumed."
Editors / Nature — Aug. 17, 2021
"[ITER] has the ultimate goal of
generating an output power that is ten times its input power, 500 MW versus 50 MW."
Katie Brigham /
CNBC — Oct. 1, 2021
"[ITER] hopes to be the first to demonstrate the viability of fusion by generating more energy than it consumes."
Isaac Schultz / Gizmodo — Oct. 19, 2021
"Nuclear fusion has already been achieved. The record holder for controlled fusion power is
held by a machine affectionately called JET, which produced 16 megawatts of fusion power in
the late 1990s. The difficulty that physicists and engineers face now—and have been facing
since fusion was achieved—is managing to get more power out of nuclear fusion reactors than
is used by the machines to run the reactions."
"ITER’s goal is to produce
10 times as much fusion power as the power the machine needed to make it—500 megawatts
produced from 50 megawatts."
Isaac Schultz / Gizmodo — Oct. 19, 2021 (Updated Oct. 21, 2021)
"Nuclear fusion has already been achieved. The record holder for controlled fusion power is held by a machine affectionately called JET, which produced 16 megawatts of fusion power in the late 1990s. The difficulty that physicists and engineers face now—and have been facing
since fusion was achieved—is managing to get more power out of nuclear fusion reactors than is used by the machines to run the reactions."
"ITER’s goal is to produce 10 times as much fusion power as the power the machine needed to make it, but that’s just the fusion breakeven the machine is trying for—it doesn’t account for the amount of electricity put into the system to generate the initial plasma. So an entire operation that generates net power (what’s called engineering breakeven) is a loftier goal, one that ITER isn’t striving for."
"Neither of these projects will actually put electricity on the grid; they are experiments that are attempting to prove the principle of fusion itself, that more power can be produced than was used to generate the reaction."
"Update: This post has been updated to clarify that the tests of the new reactors could prove the technological feasibility, not necessarily the economic viability, of fusion power, and to emphasize that neither SPARC nor ITER will be putting electricity back into the grid; both are experiments hoping to demonstrate fusion power is possible."
Maurizio Di Paolo Emilio / EETimes — Nov. 5, 2021
"The next milestone will be 'first plasma,' scheduled for 2025, followed by a fully powered reactor by 2035 that would demonstrate the ability to produce more energy than consumed."
Cahal Milmo / iNews — Nov. 11, 2021
"ITER, which will be fully operational by 2035, is designed to provide definitive proof of
fusion’s potential by taking an input of 50 megawatts and turning it into an output of
500MW, enough to power a city the size of Leeds or Liverpool."
Philip Ball / Nature — Nov. 17, 2021
"
[ITER,] ultimately with the goal of continuously extracting 500 MW of power — comparable to the output of a modest coal-fired power plant — while putting 50 MW into the reactor. (These numbers refer only to the energy put directly into and drawn out of the plasma; they don’t factor in other processes such as maintenance needs or the inefficiencies of converting the fusion heat output into electricity.)"
Josh Marcus / The Independent - Jan. 13, 2022
"If ITER works, it will be the first fusion device in history to
produce a net energy gain, producing 10 times more power than it needs to function."
Oliver Gordon / Energy Monitor — Nov. 17, 2022
"The current record dates back to 1997, when the Joint European Torus (JET) in the UK used 23MW to generate 16MW of power by magnetic fusion ... [ITER] aims to produce ten times as much power as it consumes by heating the
plasma with 50MW to produce 500MW of energy."
Helena Pozniak / Engineering and Technology — Feb. 16, 2022
"But generating more energy than goes in is key to unlocking fusion as a viable source of energy – and no one is there yet. It was the European experimental facility JET (Joint European Torus), based at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, that came closest. Briefly it generated 67 per cent of energy input in 1997."
Dan Clery / Science — Feb. 24, 2022
"
ITER is designed to show net energy output can be achieved, but
it comes at a high cost—estimates start at about $25 billion for its construction—because of
the complexity of the reactor and the huge superconducting magnets required to keep the hot
gases in place. "
James Broughel / Forbes — March 23, 2022
"There are some reasons to be optimistic. For one, several major breakthroughs have occurred in recent years, including in a DOE lab [NIF] that momentarily created a laser-induced burning plasma, coming close to so-called “ignition,” whereby the reactor begins powering itself."
Dan Clery / Science — July 8, 2022
"The biggest reactor, the one
that's gonna actually start producing more energy than it takes to run it is called ITER, and it is
nearly completed."
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