The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) fosters international collaboration and coordination to help close existing gaps in fusion science, technology, safety and regulation. The IAEA’s activities in this field span a wide range of topics in fusion energy research and development, covering both magnetic and inertial fusion approaches. To advance this work, the IAEA maintains cooperation agreements with the ITER Organization, the Fusion Industry Association, the International Energy Agency, and several national institutes and laboratories. As of October 2025, three institutions have been designated as IAEA Collaborating Centres in fusion: the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, and the Southwestern Institute of Physics.
The IAEA Fusion Portal serves as the centralized platform for the Agency's activities, offering access to the Fusion Energy Conferences, coordinated research projects, technical meetings, workshops, and training schools, as well as dedicated workspaces, databases, news, media, and publications related to fusion research and development.
The Fusion Portal also hosts the IAEA's Fusion Facility Database (FFDB), a comprehensive resource on public and private fusion facilities, covering both experimental devices and plant designs including demonstration, prototype, and power plants. The database contains information on facilities that are operational, under construction, or planned, and provides detailed technical specifications, country-level statistics, and research data, including insights derived from the Fusion Energy Conference series.
It is also home to the
CICLOP database, developed under the IEA Technology Collaboration Programmes on Cooperation on Tokamak Programmes and on Stellarators and Heliotrons, in coordination with the IAEA Technical Meeting on Long Pulse Operation of Fusion Devices. CICLOP is a 0-D multi-machine database that compiles and integrates experimental results from both tokamaks and stellarators.
Looking ahead, a major step forward is the
Fusion Data Lake, being developed under the IAEA’s
AI for Fusion Project to modernize how fusion data is organized, accessed, and shared. By improving interoperability and availability, the Fusion Data Lake is designed to accelerate research and foster collaboration through three core deliverables: a comprehensive data catalogue, a data lake for medium-term storage, and a data federation for centralized access.
Together, FFDB, CICLOP, and the Fusion Data Lake form a complementary suite of globally accessible resources, linking established databases with new data infrastructures, that support comparative studies, inform research strategies, and accelerate progress in fusion research and development.
Want to learn more about our activites? Please contact M.Barbarino [at] iaea [dot] org
