Infrastructure for research and devlopment of fusion reactors: ITER and DEMO

Forskningsprojekt, 2022 – 2026

Security of energy and electricity supply is a matter of national and international interest: several challenges to the present energy systems have been identified, such as global warming and climate change, shortage of supply of fuels and key materials, environmental impact, population growth and increase in demand.
Therefore, an energy strategy involving a broad spectrum of different techniques needs to be developed. Nuclear fusion is one of these techniques and it has the potential to provide safe, abundant and carbon-free base load electricity to the grid. The realization of net fusion power is an exceptionally difficult challenge that is coordinated through an international effort of several different international organizations and facilities.The application seeks support for the Swedish Research Unit (SRU) as national node towards the European EUROfusion consortium supplemented with activities facilitating direct integration with ITER International organisation (ITER IO) and the European procurement agency Fusion For Energy (F4E). The SRU support the Swedish participation to the international infrastructure and is a consortium formed by the Swedish research groups having VR as the ministriy appointed administrative beneficiary towards EUROfusion.  The SRU contributes to ITER and DEMO mainly via the EUROfusion consortium agreement and supports the adaptation and support within the recognized strengths of the Swedish research programme towards the succesful development and deployment of ITER and beyond.The competences and the network developed within this context will be used to promote a stronger interaction with relevant Swedish industry and research institutes in areas of common strengths, such as,  materials research, diagnostics, real time plasma control, modelling and artificial intelligence.The research infrastructure is set up to enhance the national competence in the fusion science and technoloy area in view of both ITER and next step devices as DEMO.