The technologies developed on the Tore Supra tokamak have made it possible to produce and study plasmas in the stationary/permanent regime. Tore Supra/WEST is the only European tokamak equipped with superconducting magnets, actively cooled ‘plasma-facing components’ and additional continuous heating systems. This equipment improves the tokamak’s stability in the face of the power flows generated by the plasma. The record-breaking plasma “discharge” in December 2003, lasting 6.5 minutes and supported by 3 MW of power, managed more than 1,000 megajoules of thermal energy. Today, other Asian tokamaks have achieved similar performances.
In the space of forty years, thanks to a combination of advances in physics and technology, the plasma temperature obtained using tokamaks has increased by a factor of 1,000, and the duration of plasmas by a factor of 100,000.
To date, the research carried out has enabled scientists to gain a better understanding of plasmas, increase their energy performance and design a plasma capable of operating at Q = 10.
The ITER international tokamak, near the CEA centre in Cadarache, is the next step in a long line of machines. ITER is the first installation to meet all the conditions required to obtain and study a burning plasma, i.e. a plasma dominated by the fusion reactions that it will itself produce.
With the ITER reactor, the scientific community is changing the scale of experimentation and aiming to demonstrate integrated physical and technological feasibility.
