EU fusion research

To produce energy from fusion reactions, a mixture of deuterium and tritium gas has to be heated to an extremely high temperatures, forming a plasma. Fusion research focuses on how to confine a hot fusion plasma using strong magnetic fields, on the engineering required to heat plasmas to the temperatures required for fusion to occur, and on developing the tools needed to measure, diagnose and control what happens inside a fusion reactor.

Plasma physics

Fusion on earth requires the fusion fuel to be heated to 150 million degrees. In that state, matter forms a plasma. For the operation of a fusion power plant, a thorough understanding is needed of the behaviour of this "fourth state of matter". Read more >>

Plasma engineering

In a fusion power plant, the plasma needs to be monitored and controlled. This involves a close collaboration of engineers and physicists in the fields of heating systems, diagnostic development and plasma wall interactions studies. Read more >>

Tokamaks and alternatives

European fusion research focuses on using strong magnetic fields to confine and control hot fusion plasmas. Although the principle is the same - magnetic confinement - very different kinds of devices are used in fusion research: tokamaks, stellarators, spherical tokamaks and reversed field pinches. Read more >>

Technology R&D

The design, construction and operation of future advanced fusion reactors requires the development of a number of technologies, such as superconducting magnets, a large vacuum vessel, the breeder blanket system and shielding, heating and current drive systems, fuel cycle, and diagnostics. Read more >>

Experimental facilities

The many fusion research institutions across Europe together operate more than twenty specialised fusion experiments, of which the largest is the Joint European Torus (JET) in the UK. In addition, engineering R&D is carried out on a number of technological facilities. Read more >>