Construction begins on world’s largest fusion reactor

BBC : After numerous delays, the first of some one million components is being delivered to ITER, the international nuclear fusion project at the Cadarache research center in southern France. The project is building the world’s largest tokamak, which will create a plasma of superheated gas within a giant magnetic field created by 28 magnets. By forcing deuterium and tritium atoms to fuse together and release energy, the process will generate 10 times more energy than required to initiate the reaction. The seven ITER members—the European Union, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the US—are funding the giant project, budgeted at €15 billion ($20 billion). Because of the complexity of building such a large machine from parts manufactured all over the world and of negotiating over inspections, import duties, and taxes, the project is nearly two years behind schedule.