As part of the Festival of Theory 2022, the CEA is organizing a public conference in Aix-en-Provence, Thursday July 7 at 6.30 p.m., town hall, Salle des Etats de Provence. Come and join us !

The international ITER program aims to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of hydrogen fusion, a source of energy powering the Sun and the stars, and thus to open the way to a new source of energy, massive, safe and environmentally friendly. Construction of the ITER facility is now 80% complete, and assembly of the machine has continued at a steady pace since May 2020.

Free admission subject to availability (Aix en Provence City Hall, Place de l’Hôtel de Ville).

The ITER project is currently under construction and assembly. Since the signing of the international agreement between the seven project partners (China, Korea, the United States, Europe, India, Japan and Russia) in 2006, ITER’s mission has been to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of hydrogen fusion. To meet this Promethean challenge, men and women from all over the world are at work in Cadarache (Bouches du Rhône) and in the partner countries. The « road », as the word « iter » is translated in Latin, is now paved with several key stages. The seminar will provide the public with an update on the considerable progress of the ITER project, in a complex health and international context. It will also discuss hydrogen fusion as an energy source in the climatic and sovereign issues of the current and future energy transition.

Alain Bécoulet will present this conference where we expect many of you.

Alain Bécoulet is Director of Engineering for the ITER Organization since February 2020. Previously, he headed the Plasma Heating and Containment Department of the Institute for Research on Magnetic Fusion (IRFM) at CEA Cadarache from 2004 to 2010, and was appointed Director of IRFM from 2011 to 2019.
He is the author of « Fusion Energy » (Odile Jacob Edition, 2019) and « Star Power: ITER and the International Quest for Fusion Energy » (MIT Press 2022), and was awarded the China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award in 2020, and the Huangshan Friendship Award of Anhui Province in 2021.