Over the next twenty years, fusion research will be dominated by ITER, and most of the efforts of the global fusion community will be devoted to making the ITER project a success.
However, in parallel with ITER, a number of technological challenges still need to be overcome before we can move on to the DEMO stage. These challenges have been identified since the very beginning of fusion research, and specific research has been carried out to find solutions. While many of these solutions will already be tested on ITER, their integration on the scale of the reactor will be the subject of the next stage: DEMO.
A global vision of the fusion programme leading to the production of electricity has been developed by the European fusion community1, in the form of a roadmap that sets out the stages that will make ITER a success while preparing DEMO.
1. In particular through the EUROfusion European Consortium