As signatories to the ITER Agreement, the ITER Members China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States will share of the cost of project construction, operation and decommissioning, and also share in the experimental results and any intellectual property generated by the project. Twenty years of collaborative research experiments are planned on the machine.

Europe is responsible for the largest portion of construction costs (45.6 percent); the remainder is shared equally by China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the US (9.1 percent each). The Members contribute very little monetary contribution to the project: instead, nine-tenths of contributions will be delivered to the ITER Organization in the form of completed components, systems or buildings. In this way, the scientific and industrial fabric in each Member is prepared for the step after ITER—the conception and realization of the type of prototype fusion reactor that will demonstrate industrial-scale fusion electricity within this half of the century. For all Members, the potential benefits of participation are significant: by contributing a portion of the project's costs, Members benefit from 100 percent of the scientific results.

As the scientific installation rises on a 42-hectare (100 acre) site in southern France, fabrication activities for the ITER machine and systems are underway all over the globe. According to a carefully planned timetable, completed components will be shipped over a period of five years, beginning in 2014, to the ITER site for integration into the plant.

Each Member has created a Domestic Agency to fulfil its procurement responsibilities to ITER. These agencies employ their own staff, have their own budget, and contract directly with industry. Communication between the ITER Organization Central Team and the Domestic Agencies is facilitated by state-of the art collaborative CAD design tools, integrated project teams for specific components or projects, and video conferencing. The working language for the project is English.

Taken together, the ITER Members represent three continents, over 40 languages, half of the world's population and 85 percent of global gross domestic product. In the offices of the ITER Organization Central Team and the Domestic Agencies, in laboratories and in industry, literally thousands of people are working toward the success of ITER.