In November 2024, while wandering around France, I accidentally came to a small town called Manosque in Upper Provence, where I unexpectedly learned about some things about controlled nuclear fusion.

The inconspicuous town of Manosque in France harbors a huge international project called ITER, which stands for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.
ITER is an international organization, not a domestic project in France, so diplomatic license plates are everywhere on Manosque Street, and various suspicious people are searching for information everywhere – not including myself, I am just passing by.
According to locals, these suspicious looking people may be spies, but unlike the spies in movies who come and go without a trace and kill without a trace, they know who the spy is at first glance. Moreover, spies are not mysterious at all. Any non locals who do not have a formal job or are not on a short-term trip and are just wandering around asking questions will be accepted as spies.
Working at ITER is a very enjoyable thing. The tax rate in France is particularly high. Generally, if you receive 2000 euros after tax, the company will have to pay around 4000 euros in actual expenses. However, working at ITER, you don’t have to pay taxes to the French government. The nuclear scientists inside usually earn a monthly salary of seven or eight thousand euros, which can be directly credited to your account without tax. A yearly income of 100000 euros is equivalent to an annual salary of 700000 to 800000 RMB after tax in China.
And the common small villas in Manoske – I think this type of small villa is more suitable for rural self built houses, usually with two floors totaling 200 square meters, which does not meet the standards of domestic villas – usually cost only 300000 euros, or 2.3 million yuan, so scientists here can easily buy one to settle in.
Paired with a small car with a diplomatic license plate that costs over 20000 euros, and the most expensive French restaurant in the area that only costs 50 euros per person, you can walk horizontally in the town.
And this institution is also super stable, rarely firing people, and most employees can work for a long time. The engineer who has worked here for the longest time in China retired directly after 18 years of work.
The working hours are not long every day, with a weekly working time of 35 hours (which may be mistaken here). I clock in and leave work at the right time, which is usually more than state-owned enterprises.
If someone really wants to be fired, they will be compensated with N+6, which is truly a paradise for slacking off scientists.
In short, this ITER is quite wealthy and powerful.
How did this ITER come about?
This matter needs to be discussed slowly.
After World War II, both the Soviet Union and the United States planned to pursue nuclear fusion, but took two different paths.
In 1951, led by Sakharov and Tam, the Soviet Union developed the “ring-shaped magnetic cage”, which later became the tokamak; On the United States side, Lyman Spitzer established the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory to develop star mimics and took two different paths towards controlled nuclear fusion.

Tokamak is a doughnut, and the star imitator is a Fried Dough Twists in Tianjin, which is easy to remember.
In principle, the longitudinal magnetic field of a tokamak is very strong, provided by an external longitudinal field coil, and the plasma current contributes to the polarized magnetic field.
The longitudinal and polar magnetic fields of the star simulator are completely provided by external coils, avoiding instability caused by current distribution, but the magnetic field is relatively weak.
Most people should not understand the working principle above. Don’t worry, I also didn’t understand it. This is what I found on Baidu, and ordinary people don’t need to understand. This is a matter for nuclear scientists. The most important thing for ordinary people in this life is to pay the mortgage, which is not our turn. We just need to remember that there are two different routes of controllable nuclear fusion: one is the Soviet doughnut, and the other is Fried Dough Twists, Tianjin, the United States.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Europe simultaneously conducted research on controlled nuclear fusion. However, there was little progress in the early stages, and scientists from all three directions were unable to figure it out. Therefore, they decided to work together to find a solution, openly exchange ideas, and showcase their research results to each other.
In August 1968, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Fusion Energy Conference was held in Novosibirsk. Azimovich said that the electronic temperature of the Soviet T-3 tokamak had reached 10 million degrees Celsius, which was more than 10 times higher than the temperature of the American Princeton tokamak.
Europe and America thought this data was too outrageous and didn’t believe it at first. Azimovich asked them to go to the site for inspection, and the result was even more outrageous than he claimed, much higher than 10 million degrees Celsius.
Everyone was convinced, and countries around the world began to build tokamak devices, constructing many donuts in one go.
In 1982, the ASDEX tokamak device in Germany discovered the plasma high confinement mode, which brought success closer and closer. Countries focused more on tokamak technology, and in 1996, Japan’s JT-60U device even dried the temperature to 400 million degrees Celsius.
But if we continue our research, we need to build a super large device and superconducting coil that can achieve extremely low temperatures of minus 269 degrees Celsius and high temperatures of billions of degrees Celsius. The risks, costs, and technologies involved are no longer something that a single country can solve.
In 1985, the Cold War was coming to an end, and on the Soviet side came Gorbachev, who wished he could commit suicide on the spot. He went to discuss with Reagan and said that it was time to slow down the hostility now. Let’s make something together and be intimate. I think the controllable nuclear fusion project is very good. In order to provide clean and almost unlimited energy supply for all mankind, our two major powers are calling for a team to work together.
Reagan agreed and greeted the European Union and Japan. After discussion, everyone began the preliminary preparations, and ITER was thus formed.
But this project is too big and sci-fi. It started conceptual design in Vienna in 1988, engineering design in 1992, and ITER device design in 1998. The work hasn’t started yet. Thirteen years have passed, and China has started to lay off a large number of workers. The actual product hasn’t been seen yet.
Subsequently, China, India, and South Korea joined the project, each holding a 10% stake. Overall, there are seven shareholders, namely the European Union, the United States, Russia, Japan, China, South Korea, and India.
Seven countries allocate funds and assign scientists to join teams to jointly promote the energy industry for humanity.
Time flies to the 21st century, Reagan has been dead for a year, and ITER was only established in 2005 in the town of Manosque in southern France.
Why choose France?
Because in the United States, Russia does not agree; Placed in China or Russia, the United States does not agree; Placed in Japan, China disagrees; In India, no one agrees; Let’s find a balance and keep looking around, let’s just talk about France. It doesn’t seem like we have any deep hatred towards each other, and France did have a high level of nuclear technology at that time. Many Chinese nuclear scientists were going to France for further studies.
Why did you choose this small town? It’s because it’s close to the French Atomic Energy Agency and convenient for handling affairs.
Everything was settled in the early stages, and on October 24, 2007, the ITER International Organization was officially established. From conception to implementation, 22 years have passed, and leaders from various countries have changed several times, consuming an entire generation.
What is grand narrative? This is the grand narrative.
When I go to Manosk in 2024, another 17 years have passed, which is almost another generation’s time.
39 years have passed by, how is the project going?
At present, ITER has over 2000 employees, including more than 1100 scientists and over 1000 administrative support (miscellaneous) staff. After 17 years of hard work, there is still no progress in the controllable nuclear fusion project.
The ITER project has become a contemporary Tower of Babel, and its completion is far away.
The first reason is the high technical difficulty and high requirements for related products. Due to the extremely special working environment, each screw required must be specially customized, and individual production requires a lot of financial and material resources from upstream factories. The production cycle is also particularly slow.
The second reason is that all participating countries want to obtain data on the nuclear fusion process. Sometimes, after completing a process, some countries may require it to be done again if they did not participate. At most, a process has been done seven times and repeated work has been done repeatedly.
The third reason is that each country in the world has its own unique challenges and intense internal political struggles. The fiercest fighters in ITER are not Indians, as they usually only have short-term contracts of 5 years and will not stay at ITER for too long. Their power is relatively weak. The fiercest fighters in ITER are Italians, who often leave before finishing their work and lack a sense of responsibility, forcing CNNC to wipe their butts clean.
There was once a strong executive in ITER, Bigot, a French Jew. Under his leadership, it was expected that ITER would be completed by 2027. However, a global pandemic struck, and Bigot died in early 2022, marking the beginning of ITER’s slow paced historical process.
The latest news is that ITER is expected to be completed by 2035, but whether it can be completed by 2035 is uncertain, and some even joke that the project may never be completed.
Perhaps for scientists, in such a beautiful town in France, everyone has a house, a car, and a diplomatic license plate. They work 7 hours a day and have weekends off, doing a relatively easy and endless job, and living a peaceful and stable life is not a bad thing.

At present, the ITER project has burned through 20 billion US dollars, and the annual salary alone is over 100 million euros. Although it is not a big sum of money to be shared among countries, 20 billion US dollars is still money.
The previous Manhattan Project in the United States only burned $2 billion, which is equivalent to $30 billion today, so ITER is often criticized for “burning down a Manhattan and not being able to get anything done
The global leaders who formulated this project back then no longer have a living Gorbachev, and he fell in August 2022. However, the project still cannot find a completion date for the first phase.
The Chinese have been making great efforts to contribute to controllable nuclear fusion.
CNNC helped ITER successfully install the heart equipment vacuum Dewar, and in February 2024, signed a vacuum chamber module assembly contract with ITER.
The main body of this device consists of 39 buildings and technical areas, extending from 12 meters underground to 60 meters above ground. There are also assembly halls, control rooms, liquid helium factories, and other facilities nearby.

Currently, in addition to the immensely large ITER in France, countries around the world are also developing their own controllable nuclear fusion technologies. However, only China and the United States, as well as Europe, Japan, South Korea, and India, have made it to the final round.
The NIF in the United States is engaged in laser controlled nuclear fusion, with an energy input of 2.05 megajoules and an output of 3.88 megajoules in July 2023.
China’s controllable nuclear fusion research is focused on the two major projects, HL-2M and EAST, both of which follow the tokamak route. However, HL-2M is the largest experimental equipment, while EAST is a superconducting experimental equipment.
In 2021, EAST achieved stable operation at 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds, indicating that China has made significant breakthroughs in the tokamak route.
The reason why China chooses tokamak is because this route is more mature and safer, while the laser fusion in the United States produces a large amount of harmful substances such as nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides, which can lead to environmental pollution and ecological damage, and the cost is also higher.
After returning from France, I checked domestic literature and found that engaging in nuclear fusion in China can avoid human issues such as negotiations, disputes, and delayed funding for international controllable nuclear fusion projects. Thinking back to the information I learned in Manosco, I suddenly felt that the author was secretly mocking the ITER project.
In order to achieve controllable nuclear fusion, in December 2023, China National Nuclear Corporation led 24 central government, research institutes, universities, etc. to establish China Fusion Energy Co., Ltd. in Chengdu.
New Olympic Group, Three Gorges Group, Dongfang Electric, and China National Heavy Duty Truck Group have all come to collaborate on development, each receiving the first batch of task lists, while the China National Nuclear Science and Technology Innovation Fund is responsible for providing financial support.
China has made it clear that controllable nuclear fusion is the only direction for future energy.
Since 2015, China has surpassed the United States in applying for relevant patents. Currently, China leads the world in nuclear fusion technology patent applications, followed by the United States, and the United Kingdom and Japan once again.
Due to the rapid development of human computing power, laboratory investigations are accelerating, and controlled nuclear fusion is currently at a critical turning point in history.
We don’t know how far ahead controllable nuclear fusion is, but we can take it step by step and walk steadily.