en.Wedoany.com Reported - The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) organization announced that its Magnet Cold Test Facility has officially commenced operations after successfully cooling the first magnet coil to 4 Kelvin (minus 269 degrees Celsius).
ITER's magnet cold test program, launched in 2023, is part of the revised plan for ITER assembly and commissioning. Located in a building in Cadarache, France, which previously housed European institutions producing the four largest ITER poloidal field coils, the facility fully leverages the existing building's scale, lifting equipment, and proximity to cryogenic systems. This test platform enables ITER to test individual superconducting magnets at their operating temperature of 4 Kelvin, up to full current, before installation into the tokamak.
The ITER magnet system consists of toroidal field coils, poloidal field coils, correction coils, and a central solenoid. The first coil tested is a 330-ton ITER toroidal field coil, wound with niobium-tin superconducting material. Subsequent tests will include other toroidal field coils from different suppliers, as well as a ring-shaped poloidal field coil—ITER's smallest coil, PF1. The first coil was cooled to 4 Kelvin over 12 days in the facility's 800-cubic-meter cryostat. This achievement was announced on May 21, with committee members attending the ITER Council Management Advisory Committee meeting and the technical team holding a small celebration at the ITER control center. ITER stated that the conductor has now entered a superconducting state, and high-current testing is expected to commence soon, with each coil's test cycle estimated to last four to six months.
ITER stated that while no external test can fully replicate the operating conditions inside the ITER tokamak, the magnet cold test facility's experiments will provide critical data on magnet behavior, cryogenic performance, electrical interfaces, instrumentation systems, and key joints connecting superconducting conductor layers within the coils, while also strengthening ITER's risk mitigation measures and operational readiness.
The main test objectives include: verifying high-voltage insulation to ground at various temperatures, demonstrating quench detection capabilities, validating coil performance at rated currents (68 kA for toroidal field coils, 48 kA for PF1 coil), and testing instrumentation links, control logic systems, and key magnet protection functions. The central solenoid modules have already undergone cryogenic testing before delivery.
ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi stated: As an unprecedented project, ITER requires both innovation and discipline. By repurposing existing infrastructure, leveraging our cryogenic plant capabilities, and mobilizing multidisciplinary teams, we have created a practical approach to reduce risks before integrated commissioning begins. This is crucial for ITER and also serves as an example of how ITER supports the broader fusion ecosystem—by creating knowledge, infrastructure, and operational experience that can be used by others.
After completing tests on multiple ITER magnet coils, the cryogenic test facility will be made available to other fusion research stakeholders under ITER's knowledge-sharing and private fusion sector collaboration initiatives.
ITER is a large international tokamak-type fusion device project aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of fusion energy as a large-scale carbon-free energy source. ITER's goal is to achieve 500 MW of fusion power (sustained for at least 400 seconds) with 50 MW of plasma heating input power. The operation may require an additional approximately 300 MW of electrical input, and ITER itself does not generate electricity. Thirty-five countries are collaborating to build ITER, with the European Union covering nearly half of the construction costs, and the remaining six parties (China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the United States) sharing the remainder equally. Construction began in 2010, with an initial target of first plasma in 2018, later postponed by the ITER Council to 2025. In June 2024, ITER released an updated project plan aiming for "a scientifically and technically robust initial operational phase, including deuterium-deuterium fusion reactions by 2035, followed by operation at full magnetic energy and plasma current."
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