How does Poland take part in European fusion research?

Who represents Poland

The Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion in Warsaw was established in 1976 and works on magnetic confinement fusion, inertial fusion with lasers and pulsed high-power technology. EUROfusion describes it as a research institute supervised by the Polish minister responsible for energy, and as the body that coordinates Polish fusion research under the Euratom programme.

The Association EURATOM–IPPLM was established in 2005 with five institutions. When it marked its twentieth anniversary in Warsaw on 19 September 2025, EUROfusion wrote that it had grown to over a dozen partners across Poland. IPPLM also created the Scientific and Industrial Centre for New Energy Technologies (CeNTE), which, according to EUROfusion, links research teams from more than 20 research institutions and industrial companies.

A network of universities and institutes

Within EUROfusion, IPPLM is the beneficiary and other Polish institutions take part as its linked third parties. IPPLM lists thirteen of them (status as of 3 November 2026): AGH University of Science and Technology, the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center of the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Low Temperature and Structural Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Lodz University of Technology, the Maritime University of Szczecin, the National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ), Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN), the University of Opole, the University of Szczecin, Warsaw University of Technology, the West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin and Wrocław University of Science and Technology.

EUROfusion lists the areas in which Polish teams work: plasma–wall interactions, diagnostics, modelling, neutronics, high-performance computing, materials testing, advanced superconductors and socio-economic studies. Poland also brings its own facilities, which EUROfusion names: the PF-1000U plasma focus device at IPPLM, the MARIA research reactor and the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center.

On Europe’s big machines

IPPLM researchers have taken part in this work since 2005, and the JET tokamak in Culham was one of its main stages. In describing JET’s 2021 record of 59 megajoules of fusion energy, the Polish government listed what IPPLM researchers did: preparing and optimising plasma scenarios and heating for the deuterium–tritium campaign and for ITER, analysing data from diagnostics, studying plasma impurities, helping to design soft X-ray detectors, measuring neutrons and alpha particles, calibrating the neutron diagnostics, reconstructing the plasma from bolometer data and developing codes that extrapolate the results to ITER. A Polish researcher also served as a session leader in JET experiments.

For the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Greifswald, IFJ PAN in Kraków assembled the busbars that feed the superconducting coils and made their electrical connections between 2007 and 2012 (see Tokamak or stellarator: what is the difference?).

For ITER, EUROfusion says that Poland contributes to the preparations for the machine’s operation. An undated article on IPPLM’s website, taken from the Polish Press Agency’s science service, describes examples: a team from Wrocław University of Science and Technology has been taking part in the design of ITER’s cryogenic cooling system since 2008, a team from Lodz University of Technology designs control and data acquisition systems, and IPPLM with IFJ PAN worked on a radial neutron camera, an instrument that measures where in the plasma neutrons are produced.

Polish names on TCV papers

The link to Lausanne is direct. TCV is one of the four medium-sized tokamaks in EUROfusion’s experimental programme (see Swiss Plasma Center). EUROfusion says these machines make experiments possible that could not be done on JET, complement and confirm its results and broaden the experimental database – work that does not require a country to own a tokamak. The overview “Experimental research on the TCV tokamak”, published in the journal Nuclear Fusion in 2024, lists 18 authors with Polish affiliations: 14 from IPPLM in Warsaw, three from NCBJ in Otwock and one from IFJ PAN in Kraków.

The paper covers the topics for which TCV is known – plasma shaping, negative triangularity, divertor and exhaust studies and real-time control, including a controller based on reinforcement learning. What the machine itself does is described on TCV.

Beyond today’s machines

In practice, Polish teams prepare diagnostics, calculations and analyses, and collect data on machines in other countries – in Culham, Greifswald or Lausanne. Polish participation also extends to the facilities that will test materials for future reactors. The Polish CeNTE consortium has been granted observer status in the DONES programme, which prepares IFMIF-DONES, a high-performance neutron source to be built in Granada, Spain, to study how intense neutron radiation affects the structural materials of fusion reactors.

Switzerland, home to TCV, followed a different path in recent years: its participation in Euratom and Fusion for Energy was interrupted from 2021 to the end of 2025 and has since been restored, as described on Swiss Plasma Center. Both countries now take part in the same European programme.

Where to start for students

For students and young researchers, one regular entry point in Poland is the Kudowa Summer School “Towards Fusion Energy”, organised by IPPLM in Kudowa-Zdrój. Its 17th edition, from 3 to 7 June 2024, was attended by 61 people from 11 countries, and IPPLM announced the next edition for 2026.

What the experiments are aiming for, and how far they still are from producing net energy, is explained in Has fusion ever produced more energy than it used?