However, ITER was universally misunderstood by the public, news media, and government officials as an overall reactor system that would produce a potentially usable thermal power output of 500 million Watts. How did this misunderstanding happen?
ITER basically is a fun project to test the most recent coil technology - with less brain than Wendelstein - and to check some newer plasma physics models. ITER was never meant to produce any usable amount of anergy. The main profiteers of ITER are French construction companies and project managers having fun wine and dine in south of France.
If they let ITER run for one minute only as they would like.. and it works just halve way.... then some 20'000 tons of medium active nuclear waste will be produced and the building must be closed for a very long time....
ITER simply is fraud!