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Fusion - Taking the heat

The United States is responsible for 8 percent of the Toroidal Field Conductor that the huge experimental fusion reactor now being built in France requires. ITER will use 80,000 kilometers of low-temperature helium-cooled superconducting wire to generate the immense magnetic fields needed to confine the burning plasma. By September, said Kevin Chan, US ITER's Toroidal Field Coil Conductor project engineer, US ITER will have completed its share of that wire to support the toroidal field magnets to rein in the burning plasma. The internal temperature of that plasma will be 150 million to 200 million degrees Celsius „ more than 10 times the internal temperature of the sun.