Now Europe's physicists seek shift in strategy for fusion research

摘要

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, already reeling from a recent US decision to slash funding for fusion research, is facing a further blow — a report by a panel of physicists that calls on the European Union (EU) to rethink its strategy for fusion research. ITER, formally launched in 1988 as a collaborative project between the EU, the United States, Russia and Japan, aims to demonstrate the feasibility of controlled nuclear fusion by building a huge tokamak reactor with three main goals: igniting a magnetically confined deuterium-tritium plasma; sustaining fusion for 1,000 seconds; producing 1,500 MW of thermal power.