ITER (originally an acronym of International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering project, which is currently building the world's largest and most advanced experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor at the Cadarache facility in the south of France. The ITER project aims to make the long-awaited transition from experimental studies of plasma physics to full-scale electricity-producing fusion power plants. The project is funded and run by seven member entities — the European Union (EU), India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States

Over the past 50 years, immense progress has been made in the fields of plasma science and fusion technology. Still, harnessing fusion power and delivering it for industrial applications remains one of the greatest challenges of our time.

One of the tasks awaiting ITER is to explore fully the properties of super hot plasmas—the environment in which the fusion reaction will occur—and their behaviour during the long pulses of fusion power the ITER machine will enable