An influential force has been the commitment of over $20 billion by an international consortium of funding agencies to construct ITER, a tokamak magnified to the proportions of a 10-story building. ITER is currently under construction in southern France since 2010 and is anticipated to initiate experiments with deuterium-tritium fuel in 2035.

However, the machine assembly has encountered setbacks primarily linked to the complexity of coordinating the efforts of multiple nations, including the EU, US, China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and India, and the disruption of the manufacturing processes during the pandemic.