Fusion reactors: Resources and labour

Superconducting magnets, beryllium armour and a few grams of fuel

What this tab covers The natural resources (land, water, materials, fuel or feedstock) and the labour needed to capture this energy, per unit, with the reason each is needed.

A fusion plant is a large, metal-intensive machine: superconducting magnets, beryllium or tungsten armour, steel structure and a lithium blanket. Fuel mass is tiny.

Natural resources

Resource	How much	Why it is needed
Superconducting wire and tape	ITER: 100,000 km of niobium-tin strand (over 400 tonnes). SPARC: about 10,000 km of high-temperature superconducting tape.¹²¹⁴	Only superconductors carry the currents for confining fields (20 tesla in the SPARC test magnet) without resistive losses that would consume the plant's output.
Beryllium, copper alloy and stainless steel (first wall)	440 panels of about 1 x 1.5 m with 6-10 mm of beryllium tiles, rated for 2 to 4.7 MW/m2 of heat¹³	Light beryllium atoms knocked off the wall cool the plasma less; copper conducts the heat to the coolant.
Steel and structural metal	ITER machine about 23,000 tonnes; vacuum vessel with ports, blanket and divertor 8,000 tonnes⁴¹²	The vessel holds a vacuum, resists forces from magnets storing up to 41 GJ, and shields the magnets from neutrons.
Land	ITER site 180 hectares, main platform 42 hectares¹²	Tokamak building, tritium and cryogenic plants, power supplies and assembly halls.
Fuel (deuterium, tritium bred from lithium)	Less than 4 grams in the ITER vessel at any moment¹⁶	Energy per kilogram is enormous, so fuel is a minor resource; lithium is covered on the Fusion fuels tile.

Labour

Phase	How much	Skills	Why it is needed
Construction (research machines)	About 5,000 people at ITER, up from about 1,400 in 2014¹²	Precision heavy engineering, welding, cryogenics, vacuum and nuclear-grade quality control	Components weighing hundreds of tonnes must be aligned to millimetres.
Manufacturing and supply chain	About 4,600 direct staff at private fusion firms and an estimated 9,300 supply-chain jobs; over 18,000 projected to build pilot plants¹⁵	Superconductors, lasers and optics, power electronics, remote handling	Most hardware is first-of-a-kind and made to order.
Operation (experiments)	Over 300 scientists and engineers in JET's final deuterium-tritium campaign⁶	Plasma physics, diagnostics, control, tritium handling	Each pulse is an experiment needing analysis and machine protection.
Jobs per MW	No estimate exists, because no plant generates electricity¹⁵	Not applicable	Workforce intensity can only be judged once commercial plants are built.

Neutron damage means wall components must be replaced periodically, adding to material throughput over a plant's life.

Sources

Baseline press conference summary, July 2024 ITER Organization, 2024
JET's final tritium experiments yield new fusion energy record UK Government (DESNZ / UKAEA), 2024
Facts and figures ITER Organization, 2025
Blanket first wall ITER Organization, 2025
This Fusion Reactor Is Held Together With Tape IEEE Spectrum, 2024
The global fusion industry in 2025 Fusion Industry Association, 2025
Safety and the environment ITER Organization, 2025