India Helps The World Edge Closer To Nuclear Fusion Power, Builds World’s Largest Cryostat Base For ITER

India has successfully built the world’s largest Cryostat base which will be used at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) being built in Southern France, IANS has reported.

ITER aims to commercially harness power via nuclear fusion, dubbed as the energy of the future. ITER comprises of seven world nations including India and also the European Union.

The $25 billion ITER reactor is expected to complete through the first plasma by 2025 and aims to begin generating sustainable fusion power on a commercial scale by 2035.

Specifically, ITER seeks to generate 500 MW of power for up to 1,000 seconds breaking the previous record held by Joint European Torus, which produced 16 MW of power for less than a second.

The Cryostat base weighing 3,850 tonne was manufactured by Larsen & Toubro (L&T) at its factory in Gujarat’s Hazra. The high-vacuum pressure chamber and the lower cylinder built by L&T was transported to the ITER reactor in France.

Director-General of ITER, Dr Bernard Bigot praised L&T for its engineering feat, “The fabrication of this component has been an unprecedented engineering challenge and achievement in terms of both its massive size and its intricate specifications”.

ITER seeks to harness Nuclear Fusion energy via hydrogen fuel controlled by superconducting magnet to produce massive heat energy without emitting CO2. The reactor will seek to heat and fuse hydrogen nuclei at 150 million degrees.