74 Scientific American, December 2020WORLD’S LARGEST: The tokamak chamber, seen from the top ( 1 )
and middle ( 2 ), is a cylinder that will hold the ITER experiment. The
word “tokamak” is a Russian acronym for a “toroidal chamber with
magnetic coils”—a concept first developed in 1957 by physicist Igor
Golovin. ITER’s tokamak will be the biggest ever built, twice the
size of the largest currently operating. The base of the machine was
lowered into the chamber in July 2020, marking the beginning of
the project’s assembly at the site in the south of France. The site is
funded by Europe, which is paying for nearly half of the total cost
of the project; Europe’s contribution is managed by Fusion for Energy.1