The torus-shaped magnetic chamber that leads the pursuit of fusion power, designed in 1951 by Soviet physicists Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm. Magnetic fields confine a plasma of deuterium and tritium at temperatures no material wall could touch; the challenge, unsolved after seven decades, is to hold the fuel hot and dense for long enough that fusion releases more energy than the heating consumes, which is what the international ITER machine is built to demonstrate.
Facts
Classification
MaturityTRL 9: Actual System Proven in Operational Environment 1 Technology TypeMagnetic confinement fusion device 2 Invented Year Connections
Associated With
Inertial confinement and magnetic confinement (tokamak) are the two main experimental approaches to fusion energy.
Source World Nuclear Association Information Library
Stellarators and tokamaks are the two leading magnetic confinement fusion device designs.
Uses Source
Source World Nuclear Association Information Library
Sources
1. Tokamak - Wikipedia
Technology maturity, Wikipedia introduction extract fetched 2026-09-25Quote, Technology maturity, Wikipedia introduction extract fetched 2026-09-25
In the late 1970s, the Kurchatov Institute tested the first superconducting magnets and divertors in tokamaks, ubiquitous in modern large designs.
2. World Nuclear Association Information Library
World Nuclear AssociationInformation Library, Nuclear Fusion Power, Fusion technology
Magnetic fields are ideal for confining a plasma because the electrical charges on the separated ions and electrons mean that they follow the magnetic field lines.
Associated With: ITER, Information Library, Nuclear Fusion Power, Fusion research
The goal of ITER is to operate with a plasma thermal output of 500 MW (for at least 400 seconds continuously) with less than 50 MW of plasma heating power input.
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