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The long motorcade arrived in front of the Assembly Hall just after 12:30 and with it, a new page of ITER history was written. In the 20 years since the ITER Members had decided to site the project in Cadarache, France—an announcement that resulted in French President Jacques Chirac making a brief visit in June 2005 to meet the team that would be initiating the first project activities—none of the heads of state from the seven Members or the host party France had personally visited the project underway¹.  

Greeting President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the entrance of the ITER Assembly Hall, Director-General Pietro Barabaschi said he was proud to welcome them to a “centre of technology innovation,” spurred by the engineering and scientific savoir-faire of the ITER Members.  

ITER is also a “model of science diplomacy even in challenging times,” an example for the world “of which we are particularly proud,” he said.

In the dramatic setting of the Assembly Hall, approximately 100 people—comprising the official delegations, ITER senior managers, journalists, and security personnel—made their way along a narrow path that led them past massive steel components in various stages of readiness and a jungle of purpose-built tools, some standing over seven stories tall. An order had gone out for a temporary work stop in the building—or it would have been too hard to converse—and the assembly teams stood at attention all along the trajectory.

As the heads of state greeted the teams and expressed encouragement, the Director-General and other specialists explained the machine assembly activities visible in the Hall and the scale of the challenges. Director-General Barabaschi also made it a point to stress that during the past year at ITER, the project has systematically met all of its objectives, executing repairs on major components, achieving milestones, and meeting cost performance index targets. “You have come at a good time,” he quipped. “I’m glad you are here.”

India contributes approximately 9% of ITER construction costs, nine-tenths of which is delivered in the form of “in-kind” procurement (components and systems). India’s largest package is the ITER cryostat—a nearly 4,000-tonne stainless steel vacuum pressure chamber. The Indian manufacturer Larsen & Toubro fabricated the segments of the cryostat in India and then shipped them to the ITER site for subsequent assembly into four large sections. Described to Prime Minister Modi as a “magnificent structure” by the ITER Director-General, part of the cryostat was visible during a stop at a viewpoint looking into the tokamak pit. A second part of the cryostat—the top lid—served as a backdrop to the photo taken with 200 members of Indian staff before the heads of state were ushered back into the car by their aides, seeking to keep the visit on schedule.

On social media a few hours later, Prime Minister Modi complimented the team working on the ITER project, calling it “a commendable step toward sustainable and limitless clean energy for the future.” 

The ITER visit came on the heels of the Artificial Intelligence , co-hosted in Paris by President Macron and Prime Minister Modi on 10 and 11 February. The two heads of state continued on to Marseille, where together they paid tribute at the Mazargues War Cemetery to Indian soldiers who had lost their lives during World War I, they jointly inaugurated the new Indian Consulate of Marseille, and they visited the control room of CMA CGM, a French shipping and logistics company. A joint statement of Prime Minister Modi’s three-day visit to France was issued on the Elysée website (in French) . 

¹In July 2020, during ITER’s virtual start-of-assembly celebration, President Macron had delivered an address from Elysée Palace in Paris, while Prime Minister Modi had sent a statement that was read by the Indian ambassador at that time. 

See the press release issued by the .

See a video of the visit .

See the gallery below for photos of the historic visit.