Delusional, ruinous and obsolete -the ITER nuclear fusion project

The ITER fusion project is 18 years late and can do nothing about climate change, writes Antoine Calandra

https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/03/16/delirante-ruineuse-et-obsolete/

ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is an international tokamak nuclear fusion research and engineering project, which has been significantly over budget and schedule, and is currently under construction next to the Cadarache nuclear facility in southern France.

India is one of the seven partner countries in the ITER project, along with the European Union, Russia, Japan, the United States, China, and South Korea. Macron may boast as much as he likes, but ITER is a complete fiasco, a delusional, ruinous, and obsolete project.

On November 14, 2024, the annual public meeting entitled: ITER, 15 years: what assessment? was held in Peyrolles.

I was expecting a big event and to get some recent information on the ITER construction site…But surprise, none of that!

A nondescript multipurpose room, no decor, no documents available, unpleasant white light, around forty people present, only interns (CEA ITER* employees, CLI members, local elected officials, a few union members)

For the event, the tables and chairs were arranged differently, “for a more convivial, cabaret-like atmosphere,” I heard. Oh!?

Pietro Barabaschi, Director General of ITER, was not there.

No agenda to announce the evening’s schedule with the names of the speakers, as in previous occasions. A very meager presentation of the ITER project (5 or 6 images) and that was it. And “time for questions from the audience.” Ah!

In short, the most pathetic ITER public meeting I have ever attended. A public meeting that reflects the ITER assessment.

ITER, what is the outcome?….a disaster!

We already wrote in 2005 with the MEDIANE association: “ITER, a dangerous, ruinous and doomed nuclear project”

The latest important news regarding ITER came on July 3, 2024, during the press conference of Pietro Barabaschi, the current ITER Director General, news that had been expected for a year.

A new calendar: 9 more years late!

The first plasma was originally scheduled for 2016, then postponed to 2025. It has been postponed to 2034. We are 18 years behind schedule.

And with the new calendar, an additional cost of €5 billion!

That’s at least €25 billion of public money to date, a cost multiplied by five. And in reality, more than €40 billion, including the in-kind contributions from the project’s partner countries.

The ITER Director acknowledged that “Fusion cannot come in time to solve the problems our planet faces today, and investments in other technologies, both known and unknown, are absolutely necessary.”

However, the speeches and commitments to get this nuclear fusion project accepted were completely different in 2006 at the time of this charade of public debate.

It was even possible to read that after ITER, DEMO, a pre-industrial demonstrator, was planned to “prove the industrial feasibility of this technology around 2040 and demonstrate that fusion can, by 2050, produce electricity on an industrial scale.”

Once again, the seven partner countries (the European Union, Russia, Japan, the United States, China, India, and South Korea) have agreed to pay more. But the ITER Director is now considering finding private actors to try to fill this financial gap.

Several private companies no longer expect anything from ITER, but they firmly believe in nuclear fusion and promise electricity production in a shorter timeframe.

Some even claim that ITER will be obsolete by the time it is commissioned.

I would add that ITER will probably not work and that there will never be industrial production of electricity through nuclear fusion.

Nuclear fusion will be neither “a revolution for humanity” nor “the energy of the future.”

It is not clean energy, nor even abundant energy. It is dangerous to human health and produces radioactive waste.

Its interest is above all military and to try to save the nuclear industry which has been in a bad state for several years.

ITER will probably never work and will end in total fiasco, worse than SuperPhénix*, which was supposed to be the flagship of the French nuclear industry.

But by squandering all these billions, the ITER monster will have succeeded in blocking any progress towards another energy model and imposing the continuation of the nuclear industry for years to come.

This myth of free and inexhaustible energy that allows for indefinite consumption and waste must be eradicated from people’s minds once and for all. It is also time to put an end to this gigantism and centralization of production in the hands of powerful, commanding states that serve the richest.

The solutions for the future have been known for a long time:

save energy, put an end to waste, develop and improve renewable energies (solar, wind, hydraulic) the only truly clean and future energies.

And not to develop them in an industrial and centralized manner, which is obviously and unfortunately the case.

The industrialization of the world must be fought. A new social project is a prerequisite for any energy project.

The future lies in small production units, local or regional, with technology accessible to the greatest number, low energy consumption, avoiding the cost of distribution.

Nuclear fusion, like fission, is a dangerous, dirty, and expensive energy source. It’s a complex, centralized technology reserved for wealthy countries, leading to proliferation, dependency, injustice, and war.

* CEA: Atomic Energy Commission

* CLI: Local information commission

* SuperPhénix, a former nuclear reactor, commissioned in 1986 and definitively shut down in 1997, is a prototype of a sodium-cooled fast neutron reactor. A dangerous machine that consumed more than 60 billion francs while operating for only thirty months in its twelve years of existence.

Antoine Calandra is a former administrator of the “Sortir du nucléaire” network and a member of the Médiane association. This article was first published in French on Mediapart.