The JET experiment, the largest facility of its kind in operation, was commissioned by the Council of the European Community in 1973 and opened by the Queen in 1984. In 1991, the world's first controlled release of fusion energy was achieved, and in 1997 JET produced 16 megawatts of fusion power, a world record. At the moment JET is working towards handing over research in this field to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a huge experiment being constructed in Cadarache in the south of France. The ITER project aims to make the long-awaited transition from experimental studies of plasma physics to full-scale electricity-producing fusion power plants, and is funded by the EU, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States. ITER is designed to produced 500 megawatts of power, and is intended to be the stepping stone between purely experimental fusion physics and applying the practices to commercial use. It will begin experiments in 2020.

The MAST experiment is a smaller experiment that is designed to test different principles related to fusion energy, specifically the shape of the tokamak.