Italian firm ASG Superconductors
on Friday presented the first magnet for ITER, the world's
largest experimental plant designed to show it is possible to
produce energy from nuclear fusion.
It is 14 metres high, nine metres long, weighs 300 tonnes -
as much as a Boeing 747 - and is the shape of a big capital D.
The super-high-tech magnet, the first of 18 destined for the
ITER project, was made by the Malacalza family's ASG
Superconductors in its La Spezia plant, which will go on to
produce another nine (plus one spare one) of the 18 which will
form the core of the Iter reactor being built at Cadarache in
southern France.
The other nine will be made in Japan.
"We are very proud," said ASG Superconductors President
Davide Malacalza, "we and all those who worked on building it:
the head of production had goose pimples when he moved this coil
for the first time.
"It took five years to realise the prototype".
The first experiments with nuclear fusion are scheduled for
2025, ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot said, stressing the
"great enthusiasm" among the 35 countries collaborating on the
project.
The production of clean energy through nuclear fusion, which
reconciles the energy needs of the modern world while
safeguarding the environment, is a challenge that researchers
and industries have been striving to meet.
The quality of ASG's nuclear fusion offering is the result of
"unequalled technical and productive expertise", according to a
statement on its website.
ASG magnets have been used in all the main fusion experiments
undertaken so far in Europe.
ASG plays a leading role - as a supplier of magnets - in ITER
(Europe) and JT-60SA (Japan), the two principal research
projects which aim to study the feasibility of producing clean
energy by replicating the process that takes place in the sun
and stars.
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