The final section of what scientists and engineers say will be the largest and most powerful pulsed, superconducting magnet in the world has been completed at the Poway campus of San Diego-based General Atomics.

The 270,000-pound module is poised for shipment to France where it will join six other identical sections at the ITER project — an ambitious international effort aimed at determining whether the so-far-untapped potential of nuclear fusion as an energy source can be practical or not.

“This is a momentous achievement,” General Atomics Chief Executive Officer Neal Blue said Thursday during a news conference at the company’s Magnet Technologies Center in Poway.

All seven modules were fabricated at General Atomics.

Six pieces will be stacked together to make up what’s called the Central Solenoid at the center of the ITER facility. The seventh piece on display Thursday will be used as a spare.

When the six modules are put together, they will form a colossal magnet nearly 60 feet tall, 14 feet wide and weighing more than 1,000 tons. Scientists at GA say the magnet will be powerful enough to lift an aircraft carrier out of the water.

Engineers and researchers call the Central Solenoid “the beating heart” of the sprawling 445-acre ITER facility, which is still under construction and expected to begin operations in 2034.

The modules were designed by General Atomics and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Five previously constructed sections have already been successfully shipped overseas. A sixth is on its way to France, while the final module on display Thursday is scheduled to leave Poway in about six weeks.

It will take the same journey as the others — hauled via a specially built transport truck to the Houston Ship Channel, subsequently shipped across the Atlantic to Marseilles, France, and then trucked about 45 miles to the ITER facility.

John Smith, GA’s senior director of engineering and projects, has taken the lead in developing the modules since the company signed onto the project in 2011. “Seeing them go out, I don’t think it has really sunk in yet,” he said while standing in front of the final piece.

Seven feet high and 14 feet in diameter, each module is surrounded by 3.6 miles of conductor segments with six layers of insulating tape that total more than 180 miles.

The Central Solenoid at ITER is designed to generate a powerful magnetic field that steers and shapes an intensely hot, energy-producing plasma that looks like a cloud. When the hydrogen plasma reaches 150 million degrees Celsius (more than 300 million degrees Fahrenheit), fusion occurs.

That temperature is 10 times hotter than the core of the sun.

Pronounced “eater,” ITER is not a power plant. Rather, it’s a research project that looks to pave the way for the development of facilities that could use fusion to generate electricity.

A coalition of 35 nations is contributing components and expertise to ITER, including Japan, Russia, China and the 27 members of the European Union.

The U.S. contribution makes up about 9% of ITER’s costs, but the U.S. will receive access to 100% of the project’s data and intellectual property, which would prove valuable in the development of future fusion programs and potential power plants.

Nuclear fusion is not to be confused with nuclear fission, the process used to generate electricity in nuclear power plants such as the now-shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Unlike fission reactors, fusion leaves behind no long-lived or highly dangerous radioactive waste.

Its promoters say a technological breakthrough resulting in the construction of commercial fusion reactors would transform the energy sector by offering an almost infinite supply of power that emits no greenhouse gases.

“Scientists have recognized the potential for fusion for many decades,” said Anantha Krishnan, senior vice president of the GA Energy Group. “That’s why it’s been called the Holy Grail.”

But finding a way to harness its vast capabilities has taken decades, and fusion has its share of detractors.

Fusion technology developed the hydrogen bomb in the 1950s but as an energy source, fusion power has been generated only for very short periods in the laboratory and no commercial reactors exist. There’s a long-running joke in the energy industry that commercial fusion is always 30 years away.

But Krishnan foresees progress coming sooner rather than later.

“We expect to truly demonstrate a viable path to fusion energy through pilot plants in the 2030s, and the actual emergence of commercial power plants in the 2040s,” he said.

However, the ITER project has run behind schedule and over budget.

Construction began in 2010 but slowdowns that included complications due to COVID-19 that delayed manufacturing and shipments have pushed back the timeline for the start of research operations to 2034, nine years later than previous estimates.

According to the Congressional Research Service, initial budget projections for ITER were around $10 billion but the price tag has more than doubled, leading some to question its value.

But representatives from ITER, who were in Poway for Thursday’s event, defended the pursuit of commercializing nuclear fusion.

“You often talk to scientists who don’t want to overpromise, but what is very, very clear is that by collaboration we can go faster,” said Laban Coblentz, ITER’s director of communications. “In America, we are accustomed to moon shots, so something that has this level of payback, this level of return on investment, I really think we can do it.”

With scientists and policymakers keen on finding carbon-free sources of power, fusion has garnered a lot of attention. The emergence of artificial intelligence and its corresponding need for electricity to power its data centers has also spurred interest — and financial investment.

Privately funded fusion ventures have launched around the world, with billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman among those investing in various projects. According to the Fusion Industry Association, more than $8 billion has been spent on startups.

Just this week, a private company called Inertia Enterprises announced its launch. The San Francisco startup is looking to commercialize nuclear fusion by using laser technology.

“If California is able to establish itself as a leader in fusion energy … San Diego can be the Silicon Valley version for energy,” Krishnan said.

General Atomics has been a major contributor to fusion research for decades. Among its work, GA operates the DIII-D National Fusion Facility on its San Diego campus, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Pronounced “dee-three-dee,” DIII-D is home to North America’s largest operating tokamak — a doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber that is surrounded by powerful electromagnets.

Originally, ITER stood for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor but organizers sought to disassociate the name from thermonuclear weapons since the project does not produce the fissile materials needed to build an explosive. Instead, they prefer emphasizing the Latin word “iter,” which means “the way.”

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