European Industry

A key feature of the European Fusion Programme is the constant interactive knowledge transfer between the programme and industry. EU Industry has been instrumental in the success of JET and of other medium sized fusion experiments in Europe. It has also played a significant role in the ITER Engineering Design Activities.

ITER will be one of the most challenging scientific and engineering enterprises of the 21st century. For the engineering companies and manufacturing industries that will take part in ITER construction, it will be not only an opportunity to develop and establish, at industrial level, cutting-edge new technologies relevant for ITER and fusion devices beyond ITER, but, more importantly, an occasion to grow within an international endeavour which will set a new standard for the technical management of complex engineering projects.

The full involvement of industry, including large companies, consortia and the SME´s (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises), will be essential for the success of the joint construction and exploitation of ITER. During the ITER-project, the industrial companies that will construct the European part of the ITER-device will use high-tech know-how developed in fusion research institutions around Europe. It is expected that a lot of technological innovation will result from the exploitation of this knowledge, which opens many opportunities for high-tech companies to participate fruitfully to the project.

EFDA has created a database in order to survey the interest and availability of companies in the EU in various areas of industrial competence relevant for the construction of ITER. The database allows the company to register itself, adding a number of "activity codes" that detail areas of specialty of the company and allow focused information. Details can be found here.

The Committee on Fusion Industry (CFI)

The Committee on Fusion Industry (CFI) has been established as a sub-committee of the CCE-FU (Consultative Committee for the Euratom Specific Research and Training Programme in the Field of Nuclear Energy (Fusion)). The role of the CFI is to act as a point of contact between the European fusion programme and European industries involved in fusion (Terms of Reference). It also acts as a point of contact among these industries, finally advising the Commission, through the CCE-FU, on Fusion-Industry matters. CFI membership currently comprises nine members from industry, including members associated with EU utilities, and six members from the EU Fusion Programme. A further membership requirement is the assurance of a good representation of the SME´s.

Companies involved in fusion

The list below contains companies that have completed Art.7 contractual work under EFDA. It represents only a part of all companies which are involved in the fusion effort, as many companies have worked together with Fusion Laboratories across Europe. A longer list of companies, which have contributed to the research and development carried out during the Engineering Design Activities of ITER, can be found on the ITER homepage.

The ITER Toroidal Field Model Coil: a European Success Story

In JET and ITER, powerful magnetic fields confine the fusion plasma inside the vacuum chamber. To produce these fields on ITER requires superconducting Nb3Sn coils of unprecedented size and performance. A full size Toroidal Field Model Coil (TFMC) has been built and tested in Europe - as one of seven large ITER R&D projects - to demonstrate its feasibility.

Figure 1:A full-size Toroidal field
model coil, produced by European
Industry

The TFMC was designed by European fusion laboratories (co-ordinated by EFDA) and constructed by a consortium of European companies. During testing, the TFMC achieved a record current of 80 kA producing a magnetic field up to 9.97 T (very close to ITER operation values). The magnetic energy stored in this coil was around one hundred times higher than that stored in previous "state of the art" superconducting coils.