ITER announces D-T operations slip to 2039 in revised baseline schedule

Cadarache project confirms revised schedule and €5B additional in-kind contributions; first plasma now scheduled for 2034.

The ITER Organization formally adopted a revised baseline schedule that pushes deuterium-tritium operations from 2035 to 2039 and first plasma from 2028 to 2034. The change was approved by the ITER Council at its June meeting in Cadarache and reflects accumulated delays in the manufacture and repair of vacuum vessel sectors and thermal shields.

ITER director-general Pietro Barabaschi said the revised plan also includes roughly €5 billion in additional in-kind contributions from the seven member parties, with the largest share absorbed by the European Union via Fusion for Energy (F4E). The total project cost is now estimated at approximately €22 billion in 2025 euros, a near-doubling of the original 2006 estimate.

Despite the slip, the revised baseline preserves the project's full scientific mission: a Q=10 burning-plasma demonstration on D-T fuel. The schedule change has been broadly anticipated by member-state laboratories and by the commercial fusion sector, several of which now expect their pilot-plant programs to deliver burning-plasma physics ahead of ITER.