“Circular economy” needs Sustainable Sources of Energy
Superconductivity Cables
Tratos is part of the team working on the €49 million project to supply super conduction wire for the world ITER reactor and the Japanese JT60SA – the Fusion 4 Energy initiative. Fusion is the process that powers the sun and the stars.
Tratos is a key player in this work which sets out to develop a safe, limitless and environmentally responsible energy source.
Superconductivity is the capacity of certain metals, alloys and ceramic materials to allow electrical current flow with no resistance or energy dissipation. The critical values of temperature, magnetic field and current density are specific characteristics of each super- conductor material.
This is Tratos is working at the edge of technology. ITER designed and built an experimental fusion reactor based on the “tokamak” concept.
A tokamak is a device which uses a powerful magnetic field to confine a hot plasma. The tokamak is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices being developed to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power.
The ITER project, in the South of France, is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of energy production by controlled thermo-nuclear fusion.
A world-scale research project, it sees the Italian National Agency for New Technologies (ENEA) working in conjunction with Tratos and Criotec (a specialist in components operating at extremely low temperatures). The quality of the results achieved from the collaboration’s prototypes led to the team being selected to take the programme forward.
Tratos processed the specialised superconducting material at its plant in Pieve Santo Stefano in Italy.
ITER, meaning “the way” in Latin, is a major international experiment. This work is 30 times more powerful than the Joint European Torus (JET), the world’s largest comparable experiment. From injecting a thermal input of 50 MW into its plasma, ITER produces a thermal output of 500 MW for around seven minutes. ITER allows scientists and engineers to develop the knowledge and technologies needed to proceed to a next phase of electricity production through fusion power stations.
This is international science and engineering working together to solve shared challenges for a secure future.
Tratos is actively campaigning for change in the following areas:
