- JET’s operator, UK Fusion Association, Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, CCFE
JET – A European joint venture
The Joint European Torus (JET) investigates the potential of fusion power as a safe, clean, and virtually limitless energy source for future generations. The largest tokamak in the world, it is the only operational fusion experiment capable of producing fusion energy. As a joint venture, JET is collectively used by more than 40 laboratories of EURATOM Associations. The European Fusion Development Agreement, EFDA for short, provides the work platform to exploit JET in an efficient and focused way. As a consequence more than 350 scientists and engineers from all over Europe currently contribute to the JET programme.
JET’s successor ITER
The roadmap towards a fusion reactor builds in the main on three devices: JET, its successor ITER and a demonstration reactor called DEMO. While JET represents a pure scientific experiment, the reactor scale experiment ITER is designed to deliver ten times the power it consumes. The next foreseen device, DEMO, is expected to be the first fusion plant to reliably provide electricity to the grid.
JET, equipped with unique facilities needed to operate a fusion power plant, paves the way to meet ITER’s ambitious goal. As a matter of fact, the experimental results and design studies performed by JET are consolidated to a large extent into the ITER design.
