From independent national laboratories to the world-record-setting JET tokamak and the massive ITER collaboration, Europe has built the most sustained and institutionally sophisticated fusion research effort on Earth.
Europe's fusion program stands out for its remarkable institutional continuity. While other programs have surged and contracted with political cycles, the European effort—anchored first by Euratom, then by successive framework agreements, and now by EUROfusion—has maintained steady investment and strategic direction for over six decades. Europe hosts both the most successful tokamak ever built (JET) and the construction site for ITER, the international experiment designed to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power.
European fusion research began independently in several countries in the 1950s. The UK established a program at Harwell under the Atomic Energy Authority, famously announcing—then retracting—a claim of fusion achievement with the ZETA pinch device in 1958.¹ Germany launched programs at Garching (Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics) and Jülich. France pursued research at Fontenay-aux-Roses and later Cadarache. Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, and others built smaller programs. A critical institutional step came in 1958 when the Euratom treaty brought fusion research under a coordinated European framework, enabling resource sharing and strategic planning that no individual nation could sustain alone.
The Joint European Torus (JET), located at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, England, was approved in 1978 and achieved first plasma in 1983. JET was the first tokamak capable of operating with deuterium-tritium fuel. In 1991 it produced the first controlled release of fusion power using D-T fuel. In 1997, JET set a world record of 16 megawatts of fusion power.² A 2021–2022 campaign produced 59 megajoules of fusion energy over a sustained pulse, breaking its own record and demonstrating plasma scenarios relevant to ITER.³ JET concluded its experimental program in December 2023 after 40 years of operation—the most productive and scientifically impactful tokamak in history.
Europe's institutional framework for fusion is uniquely sophisticated. The Euratom fusion program coordinated national efforts for decades. In 2014, the European Consortium for the Development of Fusion Energy (EUROfusion) was established, bringing together research organizations from 25 EU member states plus the UK, Switzerland, and Ukraine.⁴ EUROfusion manages the European fusion roadmap, coordinates research across dozens of facilities, and manages Europe's contributions to ITER. This institutional depth has provided a continuity of funding and strategy that has been the envy of fusion programs worldwide.
Europe's most consequential fusion commitment is ITER, under construction at Cadarache in southern France. Europe, through Fusion for Energy (F4E), is the host party and contributes approximately 45% of the project's construction costs.⁵ ITER aims to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power from 50 megawatts of heating input, demonstrating a tenfold energy gain (Q=10). Although the project has faced delays and cost overruns, it remains the centerpiece of the global fusion effort and represents the largest scientific construction project in history.
European planning extends well beyond ITER. The EUROfusion roadmap envisions a demonstration power plant called DEMO that would generate electricity for the grid, with conceptual design work already underway. National programs continue to contribute: Germany operates the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, the world's most advanced, and the UK has launched the STEP program to build a prototype fusion power plant by the 2040s. Europe's combination of institutional continuity, world-class facilities, and strategic planning positions it as a central player in the global effort to deliver fusion energy.