Artistic project : TOKAMAK

 

"An inalienable fact: there is day, there is night.

The Sun is a dazzling sphere of light.

 

Nuclear fusion is a process that releases a phenomenal amount of energy, the same energy that governs this star as it does most stars in the Universe. By means of a magnetic containment system, it is now possible to contain in a toroidal (torus-shaped) chamber, a plasma heated to a very high temperature reproducing a nuclear fusion reaction more powerful than that produced naturally in the core of the Sun. If we are not looking to recreate day or night, why try to make a super-sun in a box? ITER, whose name means "the way” in Latin, is a colossal international project to experiment with an energy of the future.

 

Inside this 63,000-tonne doughnut, an ethereal luminous fog of colours ranging from blue, purple and pink will appear, the temperature of which will exceed 100 million degrees. Through a collaboration with researchers and engineers, artist Cyrille Courte is following the protocol that the Experiment in Art and Technology organisation initiated in the late 1960s in the United States. The ITER Project has been under way since 2007, in Cadarache, southern France.”