“‘Globalization With Hardware’: ITER’s Fusion of Technology, Policy, and Politics”, 2010-12-08 ():
This article explores the history of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a fusion energy megaproject currently being built in southern France. It examines 3 main aspects of the project’s history, focusing largely on the European research community’s perspective.
First, it explores how European scientists and science managers constructed a transnational research community around fusion energy after 1960 that was part of Europe’s larger technological integration. This article also expands Gabrielle Hecht’s concept of ‘technopolitics’ to the larger international dimension and explores how the political environment of the late Cold War and the post-9/11 era helped shape ITER’s history, sometimes in ways not entirely within researchers’ control.
Finally, this essay considers ITER as a technological project that gradually became globalized. At various stages in the project’s 30-year history, we discover processes whereby national borders became less important while social, economic, legal and technological linkages created a shared social space for fusion research on an expanding scale.
[Keywords: International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), fusion energy, transnational, technological integration, globalization, technopolitics]