World’s Biggest Nuclear-Fusion Project Plans to Reset Without UK
- ITER reactor in southern France preparing new budget, timeline
- Talks between ITER, UK on collaboration agreement have stalled
Employees work inside the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor construction site in Saint-Paul-les-Durance, southern France.
Photographer: Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty Images
The world’s biggest fusion-energy experiment is planning a reboot without one of its most important members, after the UK announced funding for a rival project trying to replicate the sun’s energy on Earth.
With the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, revising its budget and construction timeline following months of delay, the UK announced Wednesday it’s readying £600 million ($749 million) to attract investors willing to build a competing prototype. The UK’s membership in ITER lapsed earlier this year when it dropped out of the European Atomic Energy Community, or Euratom, and efforts to find a compromise solution have stalled.