Workers inspecting superconductors at ITER.
Story by Boštjan Videmšek
Photographs by Matjaž Krivic
May 30, 2022
The world has been trying to master this limitless clean energy source since the 1930s. We’re now closer than ever.
Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France — From a small hill in the southern French region of Provence, you can see two suns. One has been blazing for four-and-a-half billion years and is setting. The other is being built by thousands of human minds and hands, and is — far more slowly — rising. The last of the real sun’s evening rays cast a magical glow over the other — an enormous construction site that could solve the biggest existential crisis in human history...