As part of our commitment to technological innovation and the advancement of scientific applications based on infrared thermography, bcb recently participated in a technical visit to the ITER Organizatio project, the world’s largest experimental nuclear fusion reactor, currently under construction in southern France, near Marseille.
This visit, organized within the framework of the Big Science Business Forum (BSBF), provided a firsthand look at one of the most ambitious scientific projects in modern history, whose objective is to demonstrate the viability of nuclear fusion as a clean, safe, and virtually unlimited energy source.
The ITER project seeks to reproduce on Earth the same process that occurs naturally inside the Sun: the fusion of hydrogen atoms to release vast amounts of energy. To achieve this, the reactor will reach temperatures exceeding 150 million degrees Celsius, enabling the fusion of deuterium and tritium nuclei within a device known as a tokamak.
The complex, involving more than 4,000 professionals from around the world, represents an unprecedented international collaboration that includes the European Union, the United States, Japan, South Korea, India, China, and Russia.
The heart of the system is the Tokamak building, a structure approximately 60 meters tall that houses the superconducting toroidal coils responsible for generating intense magnetic fields capable of confining the plasma at extreme temperatures. These coils, weighing up to 360 tons and generating magnetic fields of 12 teslas, represent one of the greatest engineering challenges ever tackled.
bcb has previously contributed to the definition and evaluation of the use of LIBS (Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy) technology, a laser-based spectroscopy system used for the detection of beryllium during the machining processes of the so-called first walls, critical components that form the first contact barrier with the plasma. Although the reactor design has recently been updated, replacing beryllium with tungsten as the main material for these structures, this work has represented a significant contribution to the development and technological validation phases of the project. Furthermore, bcb has supplied multiple FLIR A700 thermal imaging cameras, used for advanced thermal monitoring applications, reinforcing our role as a technology partner in infrared measurement solutions for demanding scientific environments.