Cranes lift ITER’s cryostat base into the tokamak pit to begin reactor assembly. By Daniel CleryThe $25 billion ITER project, which aims to build the world’s largest fusion reactor and finally demonstrate that melding together hydrogen nuclei is a viable energy source, passed a major milestone today as construction crews lifted the first major piece of the reactor, known as a tokamak, into place.Over 2 days, a crew of about 200 carefully lifted the cryostat base, a steel dish big enough to fill a baseball diamond and weighing as much as a giant redwood tree, into the tokamak pit near Cadarache in France.
The cryostat base—the single largest and heaviest tokamak component—is the bottom section of a huge metal can that will eventually contain