The world’s largest fusion project is in big trouble: it could be a world record

This may be a new world record, but no one involved wants to talk about it. With the collaboration of 35 countries in the south of France, one of the largest and most ambitious scientific experiments ever conceived is born: the giant nuclear fusion power machine known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

But the only record that seems certain to break for ITER won’t be to “burn” the plasma at temperatures 10 times higher than the sun’s core, keeping this “artificial star” in flames and producing net fusion energy all at once. Instead, ITER is on the verge of an unwelcome record, with accumulated schedule slippage and budget overruns threatening to make it the most overdue and costliest science project in history.

17 years on and the costs are out of control

ITER is expected to revolutionize unlimited energy with fusion. Designed in the mid-1980s, the machine, when completed, will be a giant, high-tech, ring-shaped vessel known as a tokamak, containing hydrogen heated to such high temperatures that the hydrogen will ionize to form a plasma rather than a gas. But that is easier said than done.

The ITER project officially began in 2006, when its international partners agreed to finance an estimated €5 billion ($6.3 billion at the time) 10-year plan that would enable ITER to become operational in 2016. According to the latest official information, the cost was over an estimated €20 billion ($22 billion), with ITER less than two years into operation. However, documents recently obtained through a lawsuit show that these figures are unfortunately out of date. Delays and additional costs are not just a few years and a few billion dollars, but are completely uncertain.

It was scheduled to open in 2025

In early July 2022, ITER’s website announced that the facility was expected to open in December 2025. Now this date has completely disappeared from the website. Years ago, it was planned to complete the foundation construction of the plant and to start the installation of the reactor in 2018. However, many of the machine’s major components were reportedly a year or two or more behind schedule, and assembly processes were pulled from 2018 to 2020. But then Covid came and the process became even more chaotic. By the time of the ITER Council meeting in June 2022, it was reported that the project would be delayed by about 35 months. However, this timeline did not reflect other events that would cause even more delays.

Not only did some components of ITER fall far behind schedule, some of these machines also turned out to be flawed. In November 2022, the ITER Organization decided not only to stop the assembly of the vacuum vessel, but also to disassemble the already assembled part for repair. During this period, France even decided to stop the construction of ITER due to security concerns. While this legal process was going on, it came to the fore that additional barriers could be added to ITER to ensure radiation safety. But it’s unclear whether the foundations of the plant will lift them. A current cost report has not been made available to the public yet.

ITER isn’t the only major scientific project delayed

Whether the wait time is four, five or more years, ITER is not the only major scientific project to face massive delays, cost increase and target deviations. For example, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which has come to the fore with its success these days, was planned to be completed in ten years at a cost of slightly more than $ 1 billion, but it took 20 years and more than 10 billion dollars to bring the telescope to life.

But ITER and JWST are not remotely the same. The origins of ITER can be traced back to a handshake agreement between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s – and the cost is higher than any scientific work in history. Adjusted for inflation, the cost is about the same as the Manhattan Project ($25 billion), which built the first atomic bombs, and will almost certainly increase.

And unlike the JWST, which was fully operational only a few months after launch, ITER will not be fit for purpose even years after construction is complete. ITER’s main goal of performing high-power fusion experiments using a mixture of the heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium won’t happen until more than a decade after the machine reaches its first plasma milestone. As a result, no one can say exactly when the construction of the ITER project will be completed, what the costs and delays are. The process can take “generations,” according to Scientific American.