Progress Towards Burning Plasmas

The next frontier for fusion science is the study of burning plasmas. The international ITER facility will advance research efforts into this new regime. In this paper we will first define burning plasmas and describe their distinctive features. One such feature is dominant self-heating (exothermic) by a large population of alpha particles, created from thermonuclear reactions. Next, we will briefly review how previous experiments on JET and TFTR to attain breakeven have laid the foundation for taking the present step to ITER. Then, we will describe various physics and technology issues that need to be addressed for burning plasmas. In addition to the scientific opportunities, we will also describe how ITER, being operated as a large-scale international project, is making progress in terms of organization, mission, funding, and programmatic coordination worldwide.