This is The World's Most Complex Construction Project

this is the world's most challenging construction project the largest and most powerful nuclear fusion reactor ever built an amazing team of scientists and construction workers are trying to replicate what happens inside the Sun potentially unlocking a source of clean and virtually inexhaustable energy and it's demanding one of the biggest International collabor ations in [Music] history the answer has eluded scientists for decades now it's being seen as the great hope for generating clean power but if it does work it could help save the planet today is an historical moment successful nuclear fusion has long been a

dream for scientists worldwide no fewer than 35 nations are teaming up and combining their strength to build something that's never been built before without that extraordinary partnership the Epic International thermonuclear experimental reactor simply wouldn't be possible although its Origins can be traced back to the mid 20th century A lot's happened here since I first visited in 20122 back then we only scratched the surface of what's really going on inside these walls we are building arguably the most complex machine ever designed I just cannot believe the scale of the engineering challenge to build a device that

is this complex is a Ferro onic or herculan sort of project it's such a a humbling experience I got goosebumps just talking about it building something together with people from all around the world it's one of the greatest things you can uh can dream to work on I'm here to see how this amazing team of people is managing this planet's most Monumental build [Music] [Music] I'm driving through the south of France and I've got a very big smile on my face not just because the sun shining but because I'm on my way to see the

world's coolest construction site set in Pine Forest in the south of France is the world's biggest nuclear experiment the biggest and most expensive scientific experiment in human history this place looks like nothing from the outside looks like an industrial complex but inside these buildings something truly astonishing is happening experts from dozens of Nations have joined forces for one very important science experiment together they hope to finally crack a riddle that's remained unsolved for decades creating virtually Limitless amounts of energy through nuclear fusion but before I explain what that actually is it's important to kind of

take a step back and grasp why it's such a big deal if Humanity can make nuclear fusion happen at scale then it could solve one of our greatest challenges and quite literally change the world thermonuclear burning Fusion if you will a process that literally is the ultimate source of energy in the universe you see nuclear fusion can generate 4 million times more energy than fossil fuels like coal oil and gas it also doesn't emit any harmful greenhouse gases such as CO2 unlike those other forms of energy we just mentioned there's no fundamental reason why nuclear

fusion is not achievable and if that word nuclear makes you feel a little bit uneasy then fear not because a nuclear fusion reactor doesn't create any long-lived radioactive waste either and because there's no plutonium or uranium using it to make weapons is a lot harder instead it uses tritium and uyum both of which are isotopes of hydrogen and that just happens to be the most abundant elements in the entire universe so how does all this work and why are these reactors taking so much longer to master than the ones we've been using for more than

half a century well producing energy from nuclear fusion rather than nuclear fision which is what most traditional reactors do is a lot more difficult instead of splitting atoms apart Fusion reactors for for them together in a controlled way that causes huge amounts of energy to be released it's essentially what happens inside the sun when hydrogen nuclei Collide at extreme speeds and temperatures to form helium atoms now amazingly this machine mimics that process but contains it inside a structure which as you can imagine is not an easy thing to do all of the construction work you

see here at eer all the activity going on across this vast site all those system those buildings all of it revolves around one Central enormous device known as the toac to put it in very basic terms just to get us started it's an enormous chamber that uses giant magnets and a whole lot of heat to create something called plasma inside a vacuum in just a few moments I'm going to be journeying to the heart of the toac to learn more about it and to stand in the very place that in years to come could unlock

a new power source that's clean abundance and affordable that's why it's seen as the Holy Grail of energy scientists have dreamed of controlling Fusion Energy harnessing it to man's needs freeing him from limited oil supplies the pollution of coal if it sounds complicated it's because it is and it's one reason why construction Works took decades to even begin this is the massive Assembly Hall eer where components come before they're thoroughly checked and then lifted over into the [Music] toac I've been in here before but walking in here just never gets old it changes all the

time and it's the most humbling experience it's massive not just physically but the scale of what they're doing here this is scientists and construction teams pushing Frontiers that have never been broken before it's such a a humbling experience I got goosebumps just talking about it the best of this industry in one room it's men it's difficult to get across the extreme complexity of this project nothing else comes close to it the toac alone has a million components and 10 million individual parts and it's got to be right there's no room for error so all the

individual components are brought here first this massive room and then these huge cranes on the ceiling these huge yellow beams above me are cranes that pick those components up and carry them over for assembly in the toac pit it's extraordinary really is for instance with this being one of the biggest and most complex systems of its kind ever constructed all of the vacuum components have to be 100% leak tight because you really don't want leaks inside a vacuum especially when it's part of a fusion reactor specialist welding procedures are in place fullscale leak tests are

going to be carried out in the r up to the launch and amazingly iter is even developing technologies that can detect leaks measuring the width of a hair divided by 1 million it's easy to see they're taking this extremely seriously [Music] in fact EA's Beginnings go way back to the 1980s when Mikel corbacho of the Soviet Union and US President Ronald Reagan formed the international Fusion initiative with the Cold War nearing an end the two leaders wanted to bring forth a new source of energy that is essentially inexhaustible for the benefits of all mankind after

its launch in 1986 other European countries joined the partnership along with Japan and ITA was officially born today there are seven ITA members one of them being Europe with its 27 EU countries Switzerland and the UK are also Partners but with Less Direct involvement around 45% of construction funding is coming from those European nations while Japan China India Russia Korea and the US are covering about 9% each it took until 2001 for the design of the reactor to be finalized along with a cost estimate of5 billion for the construction a few years later a site

for the incredibly unique project was selected and in 2010 building work finally got underway four years were spent building the ground support structure and the seismic foundations for the toac which itself has been in the works for a decade the building where it's situated is simply enormous a sstory structure that rises 60 m above the ground and drops 13 M below it and here it is all 180 hectares of what's been dubbed The Ether Enclave it's an enormous chunk of land that's almost the size of Monaco and it's an area that France gave to the

E organization so they could build that incredible machine and it's crazy to think that in 2010 there wasn't much here but now look at it the toac building and Assembly Hall take up a staggering amount of space but they're just one PA of Isa Al together there are 39 different buildings and technical areas on this huge site they include things like cooling towers a control room Waste Management facilities and a cryogenics plant that will make the liquid helium needed to cool the 10,000 tons of superconducting magnets now that's important because if they aren't kept close

to absolute zero that's- 269 de C to be exact the magnetic fields needed to maintain the plasma won't be possible there'll also be a a huge Area Housing all the high voltage electrical systems and two large buildings like this for converting the electricity that comes in from alternating to direct current before it goes over to those massive magnets what I'm basically standing in here is the world's biggest power adapter so who's responsible for building all this unsurprisingly some of the biggest construction firms in the world are involved including major International collaborations one of them is

the VFR Consortium which is delivering nine of these structures including the toat complex the Assembly Hall and the Control building we have been in charge of the construction of the St works of the toak complex and we have been installed more than 100,000 uh embed plates we have exhausted work to find cracks and uh to monitor them and to control we have faced High densities for the river we have done specific concrete formulas for the Tokamak construction we have performed complex geometries as well as opening inside the building VFR consists of two French companies Vinci

and raisbeck along with fovial of Spain together they've spent over a decade carrying out civil engineering works on the toac complex as you know this is a very complex project main of our people come from Spain and mainly the people from the other companies have were French so one of the first ch challenge we've faced was this difference of culture so we've been working with them in a very uh open and friendly way and in a very collaborative way and the outcome of this has been [Music] incredible to get an even better sense of the

insane engineering involved in this massive project I've been urged to take a look inside its foundations hi Fred hello how you doing good welcome thank you let's go now crawling underneath a nuclear fusion reactor that weighs as much as 3 and a half Eiffel Towers doesn't sound like fun thankfully Duco yansen construction manager for the eter organization has agreed to come with me this this is pretty unique this is uh the basement of ether we're underneath the toak you're underneath the toak so this is the slab which is holding it wow you can see around

500 seismic bearings which are supporting it so these these rubber pads we see that's isolating the whole toac Absol an assembly hole from the rest of the ground so if there was an earthquake the energy gets absorbed by those yes indeed and it it prevents any shock to the reactor at any point it's it's to prevent any issues with the investment of course but also during operations to make sure that it's all [Music] okay when you're down here the the contrast with the Assembly Hall is really St cuz it's so it's so complex and clean

up there whereas down here it's a lot lot simpler feels more like a sort of a standard construction site but this bit is critically important right you've got to have this bit to enable the rest of it to work and it's the combination between the very rough Civil Works combined with the very fine mechanical clean which is uh actually also one of the challenges of building it it's an extraordinary amount of work for a science project but what they're trying to do here simply can't be done without going big I guess many people can relate

to a housing project you know doing up your home that's complicated enough but this must just be that times 10 on a nuclear fusion react what length you having to go to here that you wouldn't have to go to in normal construction projects yeah everything almost everything is unique about this and a term very much related to ether is first of a Kind so very many elements that uh are used here are uh in two ways complicated It's Complicated by the technology that is used which is very often novel to create certain curves or certain

m materials that are unique but it's also due to the size of ether ether is very large compared to also previous tokom marks which are already existing around the world and in order to make these elements in the right dimensions and within the right tolerances this is an engineering uh challenge in itself back above ground one of the key elements during construction of the toac complex was the ring Fortress it's a massive steel and concrete bios Shield that wraps around the toac 3 m thick and six stories high its purpose is to protect workers and

the surrounding environment from radiation when the fusion reaction kicks in as Europe is the host member most of the buildings and infrastructure are coming from across this continent but one crucial element was built and supplied by a nation that's much further away the eer CH stat is the largest stainless steel vacuum chamber in the world and it was manufactured in India weighing almost 4,000 tons it surrounds the vacuum vessel and the magnets ensuring everything stays cool and protected its immense size meant it had to be divided up into 54 segments and shipped to marsill in

stages but that wasn't the end of their Journey they still had to be transported to the actual facility over 100 km away from the sea luckily a specially modified Road was built for that exact purpose called the eter itinery it's a route stretching all the way to eer HQ from the nearest port and it enables the largest pieces of the toac weighing hundreds of tons to be carried there on the back of huge vehicles and I'm currently driving along what is just part of that route now all along here Bridges have been reinforced junctions have

been adapted roadways have been widened including just up here where the route passes really close there some pretty big Cliffs now it might sound like a lot but if they hadn't done that many of the bigger components simply wouldn't have got in other examples of parts that come from outside Europe include the terial field coils thought to be the most technically challenging element of the entire build they've now all been successfully manufactured they're the biggest most powerful superc conducting magnets ever designed and half of them were produced in Japan altogether these components and their superstructure

weigh 6,000 tons accounting for more than a quarter of the toomax overall weight the complexity of this project really is mindboggling but the amazing team of construction workers who are putting it all together is almost as intricate as the machine itself an estimated 15,000 workers from 5,000 companies have taken part in the construction and around 90 countries are represented in the workforce making ITA a truly Global project in fact ITA claims it's the broadest International participation of any science project on record it means that teams on the ground here are not just faced with the

inedibly complex task of assembly they're also dealing with different construction methods different working cultures even differences in spoken language across the site every day for example although English is listed as the common language Across The eer Enclave only about 15% of the organization were native speakers in the early part of construction the difference of culture the difference of approaches of how to do things the complexity of the work the complexity of the site lots of people involved in the same site Logistics and they work differently they talk different languages they approach issues in a different

way so this is very challenging and very rewarding also one thing that's proven crucial to delivering a project of this magnitude is the use of technology and we don't just mean things like robots digital platforms like procore have helped to boost communication and collaboration as well as efficiency on a scheme that certainly demands it fovial has been using procore to complete a critical contract called tb20 a awarded by Fusion for energy iter's European domestic agency it involves designing supplying and installing more than 200 nuclear doors for the toat complex since embracing the tech foval has

seen significant improvements in areas like project management decision making and problem solving testing manufacturing construction and all these records and B models require the use of state-of-the-art Technologies such as procore that we couldn't avoid using here that was a must for us in order to success in the project without this kind of tools we would have been able to carry out this works technological assistance like this has been critical to helping eer get into its current position and it's steadily helping it inch towards its goal of coming online in the not too distant future as

of right now more than 3/4s of all the design manufacturing construction transport assembly and installation activities have been completed [Music] so how on Earth is iter creating what's basically a mini star here on Earth to generate power well it's time for me to gear up and head to the very spots where it's set to happen as soon as you started recording I've become an absolute idiot at getting [Music] dressed here's the entrance to the pit okay so in here is where the talk about's coming together indeed indeed [Music] [Music] wow wow it's a bit like

um an opera house in a way and this is where we'll be creasing nuclear fusion that is the plan scientists who wish to control Fusion must cope with its enormous heat they hope to use this technology as a Cornerstone for a fusion reactor so everything you see on the Easter site all the infrastructure the buildings the assembly rooms all of it is geared up to this spot yes what it's all about yes it all indeed it all comes together here yeah and everything is more or less supporting the fact that here in the end we'll

have the experiment and that experiment is planned to go something like this at the center of the toac is an enormous vacuum chamber consisting of a large vessel surrounded by powerful superconducting magnets hydrogen fuel is released inside where it forms plasma a super hot gas full of electrical charge to reach this point the hydrogen atoms are heated to extreme temperatures as high as 150 million de C that's the part where they fuse together and unleash all that energy these enormous d-shaped magnets the toroidal field coils we told you about earlier can find plasma inside the

vessel and there are 18 of them in total they do this in combination with six ring-shaped magnets the poloidal field coils once the plasma has been created and held in position this place will become both the hottest and coldest place in the known universe one very important aspect is the concept of confinement if you you have to keep the heat where it is and in order to do that we need very strong magnets funny enough these strong magnets work much better if they are cooled to a very low temperature only a few degrees above the

absolute zero point and at the same time we have a very hot plasma which is only a few tens of centimeters away from each other I you know the word mind-blowing gets used a lot but it really is applicable here cuz you're saying it's me I just I just cannot believe a scale of the engineering challenge yes and this is why we have a very engine National big team of very smart Engineers who are all focusing on the different aspects of it and make sure that it's well fought through once everything is assembled and in

place it'll then be time to turn it on now the original idea was to do that for just milliseconds on low power to create something known as first plasma but that all changed recently which we're going to come on to in a bit before we move on it's important to recognize that another team of scientists has already managed to achieve nuclear fusion but on a limited scale what eer doing is much bigger and takes things quite a step further it wants to be the first to create burning plasma that's where the fusion reaction becomes self-

sustaining and continues to generate energy without much additional heating now the vast majority of the physical infrastructure here is already built and in place and you can see it all around you from the main buildings to the support structures the networking even the drainage systems all that has been constructed but despite that and the insane level scrutiny that goes into making sure that every piece of the puzzle is correct before it gets slost into place there have unfortunately been some setbacks in November 2022 iter revealed significant issues which have been identified with some of the

components which left them with no choice but to make timeconsuming repairs there were cracks in cooling pipes and non-conformities in parts of the vacuum vessel it means that work on the Assembly of the toac is currently paused and can't continue until those problems have been sorted out it's also not the first time the organization has faced complications that have caused delays since the initial design was revealed in 2001 there have been rising labor and material costs advancements in Fusion sites that had to be factored in and more time has been spent on assembly and commissioning

than first thought this called for a design review in 2007 followed by another in-depth analysis in 2016 by then the price tag had reach reached 22 billion the target date for first plasma was pushed back to 2025 with full operation expected 10 years later then came covid-19 followed by those technical issues we just mentioned all of which has pushed things back even further another project plan with new dates and costs was put forward in June 2024 and that's currently under review the idea now is to do away with first plasma Al together and just have

the machine start up at full power to enable more advanced experiments but that won't happen until 2036 the cost has jumped again too by an estimated 5 billion EUR so what stage are we at now what's the next step I know there's been some disassembly happening not everything went fluently and there are some quality aspects that we had to take care of which were mainly related to the the vacuum sectors in itself so the the the the real confinement vessel and also with the thermal Shields that separate the very warm from the very cold and

um both topics were unrelated but had to be resolved but fortunately in the organization we have made action teams to solve them and now we are ready to have the first module back into the pit and that is going to happen um early next year the project hasn't gone entirely smoothly but teams here are trying to break a new frontier they're pushing the boundaries of science construction and Engineering they're doing something that hasn't been done before so trying to get it right first time was always going to be a bit of a tough ask what

they're trying to do here could be revolutionary but the thing is despite the impressive scale of this place it's never actually going to produce electricity for the grid and that's because this place is an experiment the clues right there in the title it's an experimental reactor the idea is that they use this place to prove that Fusion can be done at the scale we need it to be done first and then for others to come in and learn from what's been achieved here at the Easter site but if that sounds like a bit of an

anticlimax then it shouldn't be because there are multiple other organizations designing and building their own Fusion reactors and they too are making progress for physicists here at the max plank Institute these flickering images are a milestone in the hunt for clean Boundless Energy Germany's brilliantly named wendelstein 7X stellarator has already achieved first plasma back in 2015 and since then it's managed to maintain a stable reaction for a whole 8 minutes a significant breakthrough in the Quest for nuclear fusion energy this Laboratory first is a first step towards clean energy and in December 2022 scientists at

the national ignition facility in California part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory made their own piece of History last week scientists at the National ignition facility achieved Fusion ignition they became the first to successfully produce more energy through a fusion reaction then was put in to start it and they did it through a completely different method to E's machine instead of generating Plasma in a toac lasers were fired at a tiny capsule filled with those same hydrogen Isotopes used at eer tritium and detarium the capsule then imploded from the power of the lasers forcing the

atoms to collide or fuse together releasing energy from the 2.05 Meg of laser energy that went in 3.15 Meg of Fusion Energy came out but that doesn't mean they've solved the whole thing and that others like eer might as well give up because they've lost the race those lasers take a very long time to fire that net energy gain is Tiny compared to the massive power demands of today and it's not actually a race at all far from it all of those organizations as well as private startups that have beg gun their own projects in

recent years are all United under one goal to bring nuclear fusion energy to the grit where e is a bit different is that it's uniting 35 Nations pulling together all their resources all their talent to help this project take a big step and go where no one's gone before I think it's a breakthrough in humankind taking advantage of all this knowledge this complexity all these languages and all these people it's incredible it's an incredible opportunity it's simply amazing every day there's a new puzzle to solve and there is new things that pop up that require

attention and and the The Challenge and is and the fun also is to make sure that in the end when we when we go home uh every evening we've we've made a little bit progress further technical complexity the coordination uh all the Multicultural participants there is no other project [Music] L I've been lucky enough to travel the world and see so many construction projects and two things really strike me about iter the first is how unlike anything else it is so many other projects are they for transport they're for housing they're commercial projects but this

is different the scale of the ambition the extent of the engineering the attention detail is honestly mindblowing it's hard to think that the place where I'm standing could in one day become the birthplace of a new form of energy this spot could literally see the start of something that could change the world the second thing that really strikes me is actually just how similar this project is to so many other construction sites around the world so many construction projects run and are driven by amazing people amazing people coming together to coordinate to plan to pull

off the impossible and yes this is more extreme this takes all that and puts it up in the clouds at an extreme level of ambition that's the thing about construction it runs on that same recipe the same ingredient amazing people coming together making the impossible happen and shaping our world this video was sponsored by procore you can learn more about that at the link below don't forget that we're raising awareness of construction's Mental Health crisis and supporting charities in this space through our get construction talking initiative there's a video series on our Channel and you

can find support or donates over at get Construction talk.org And as always guys if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more from the definitive video channel for construction from the channel that takes you into the heart of a nuclear fusion reactor hit that that subscribe button [Music]