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Page added on May 15, 2014
Fusion reactor ITER: The long wait on the ignition
Enter banned: seventeen meters deep and several football fields is Europe’s biggest construction site, you may visit only with a special permit for a short time and only under supervision and then only from the top. The walls of the excavation are protected against demolition concrete, inside the huge cranes around heave tons of steel or catch all kinds of material with their long arms. So big, the workers who tirelessly welding, measure, hammer, lay wire mesh and steel girders look like ants. Engineers counsel in groups what to do next. Inside of ITER will be – maintain the fusion fire for several minutes and at least ten times of the originally applied heat output of 50 megawatts generated so 500 megawatts. “That would be the first time that it generates as it previously has inserted more energy with fusion,” says Henrik Bindslev, Director of F4E, (fusion for Europe), the European Consortium in the international ITER project. “A challenge for us.” The word “challenge” falls on this day many times. Except on the purely physical objectives ITER scientists are interested in the development of new techniques for a future fusion power plant, which is to win power for the first time through the fusion of atomic nuclei. Demo could stand but only at the earliest in the year 2050 available, says Binslev, who has worked up to 2012 to the European fusion reactor “Jet” in the British Culham. Iters smaller predecessor and currently the world’s largest fusion reactor it had reached in 1997 for the first time a yield of 60 percent.  ITER, one wants to test including the behaviour and the resistance of various materials and construction methods under strong neutron radiation. The neutrons emerge as by-products in the fusion and trigger nuclear reactions, where they meet, what inevitably leads to material wear. For the experiments, ITER should be at least 15 years in operation. . Extended data can be read visiting http://fi.topwinnersclub.eu.
21 Comments on "Fusion reactor ITER: The long wait on the ignition"
meld on Thu, 15th May 2014 7:28 am
What a lovely expensive playground for all the benefit claimers (fusion scientists)
Davy, Hermann, MO on Thu, 15th May 2014 7:45 am
Amen to that, Meld
PCTECH on Thu, 15th May 2014 9:48 am
Even if ITER eventually works, the machine will be so expensive as to be unusable.
Northwest Resident on Thu, 15th May 2014 10:00 am
PCTECH — Exactly. And not only that, nuclear fusion will not be able to magically generate millions of gallons of gasoline/diesel daily, without which transportation worldwide comes to a grinding halt and along with it the global economy and any semblance of BAU.
GregT on Thu, 15th May 2014 10:20 am
NWR,
Exactly, and even if fusion COULD somehow magically replace liquid fuels, all of our other predicaments would only continue to get exponentially worse.
Plantagenet on Thu, 15th May 2014 10:52 am
It is important to conduct science and continue to develop technology. While ITER may not replace oil, it will lead to new scientific discoveries.
GregT on Thu, 15th May 2014 11:07 am
“It is important to conduct science and continue to develop technology.”
Only if you believe that the Earth isn’t important for our survival.
HARM on Thu, 15th May 2014 12:02 pm
I have my doubts about fusion as well, but, c’mon people, let’s not all be Luddite caricatures! Like Plant said, even if it does not produce exactly as planned, it might be an amazing physics R&D platform producing all sorts of discoveries.
Also, it’s a good idea not to put all our our energy eggs in one basket, no? We can and should invest in renewables (and should be doing a lot more here) as well as experimenting with alternatives like fusion and LMFRs.
Plantagenet on Thu, 15th May 2014 12:04 pm
GregT:
So you think being science damages the Earth?
Sorry…you are wrong. Science is the key tool to understand the earth. Without science you are left with ignorance.
Plantagenet on Thu, 15th May 2014 12:05 pm
Greg T:
So you think science damages the Earth?
Sorry….you are wrong about that. Science is humanity’s best tool to understand the earth. Without science you are ignorant.
chilphil1986 on Thu, 15th May 2014 1:03 pm
The knowledge gleaned from science is important and by itself is the height of human accomplishment. It’s always the large scale application of it in industry and commerce where the problem lies. The exploitation of constrained aspects of knowledge in the pursuit of money is the backwards part. That’s where all the resource abuse and civil strife comes from.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Thu, 15th May 2014 1:56 pm
Chil said – The knowledge gleaned from science is important and by itself is the height of human accomplishment.
Mark Twain said – Hunger is the handmaid of genius.- “Following the Equator”
GregT on Thu, 15th May 2014 3:02 pm
Plant,
“So you think science damages the Earth?”
No, but I most certainly do think that human technology is damaging the Earth, and much of that damage is accumulative and irreversible.
If we don’t stop soon enough, we could very well become one of the 200 species daily that we are driving into extinction.
Science studying how we can best live sustainably, and in harmony with nature, I believe to be a good thing. Unfortunately, we don’t tend to listen much to those scientists.
Northwest Resident on Thu, 15th May 2014 4:33 pm
Science isn’t damaging planet earth, it is irresponsible, greedy and power-hungry people applying science to enrich themselves that are damaging planet earth. Human civilization, powered by fossil fuel, learned too much too fast. We weren’t ready for it. We were like children playing with fire. We abused it, to the hilt. And we will pay the price. We already are, but not nearly as much as we will be. That logic is written on the wall.
Bor on Thu, 15th May 2014 6:31 pm
The ITER project will be abandoned within a 2-3 years for a lock of financing. As far as I know a very few people believe in a successful outcome of the project.
HARM on Thu, 15th May 2014 7:48 pm
@GregT
“If we don’t stop soon enough, we could very well become one of the 200 species daily that we are driving into extinction.”
Actually that estimate is far too low.
“Only 869 extinctions have been formally recorded since 1500, however, because scientists have only “described” nearly 2m of an estimated 5-30m species around the world, and only assessed the conservation status of 3% of those, the global rate of extinction is extrapolated from the rate of loss among species which are known. In this way the IUCN calculated in 2004 that the rate of loss had risen to 100-1,000 per millions species annually – a situation comparable to the five previous “mass extinctions” – the last of which was when the dinosaurs were wiped out about 65m years ago.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/mar/07/extinction-species-evolve
GregT on Thu, 15th May 2014 9:42 pm
Sorry Harm,
My bad. Call me an optimist.
Joe Clarkson on Thu, 15th May 2014 11:15 pm
During my morning walk with my wife yesterday, we tried to come up with products or processes from science (and its related technologies) that could be said to have only unmitigated good outcomes for both humankind and the rest of the biosphere. The only things we could think of were condoms (and related birth control) and reading glasses for old folks. The reading glasses only qualified because, by the time we need them, we are well beyond our reproductive years.
It is amazing how so much of scientific knowledge results in stuff that seems great in the short run, but ends up causing huge problems long term, either for humankind or the other species on the planet. I think the Luddites were on to something important.
Meld on Fri, 16th May 2014 1:42 am
Fusion is like the rapture for the infinite progress cultists. It’s just there over the hill, waiting for us, if we could only just keep following the holy path of scientific progress we will get there and live out our lives in harmony and peace. Nobody here is a ludite, we just understand that there is a good equilibrium of technology/energy usage which was passed sometime ago. Fusion won’t work without fossil fuels to subsidize is anyway, and probably won’t work on such a small scale anyway. There is a reason the sun is a star and Jupiter is a planet. Size.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 16th May 2014 5:50 am
Joe, I like the condom thing. A vasectomy is better because after that first “snip snip” there is no waste flow. Joe, you bring up a great point of human evolution. I firmly believe our big brain and associated knowledge, technology, and organization is an evolutionary dead end in a finite world. It was truly a Pandora’s Box. Further the access of concentrated high quality energy magnified this negative human trait. Knowledge, technology, and organization is a two edged sword even in our personal life. I believe it has caused us to lose much of our humanness, spirituality, and connection to the ecosphere. It has isolated us in self-awareness and self-consciousness. Maybe if we would have had an environmental predator of some sort to have kept our population in check it is possible we could have had a different outcome. Within a family, tribe, and small community knowledge, technology, and organization has many benefits and can be managed if population is held in check. When I read about many pre-European Native American cultures I find a fascination with their deep culture of spiritual community and connection to the ecosphere. That level of technology, knowledge and organization was an optimum level IMM. These people were limited by environment from overshoot. Overshoot with knowledge, technology, and organization we are finding out is a very ugly thing. Sure the benefits are immense but the negatives are much worse. This Native American culture of relative harmony may have only been temporary because absent of the European discovery they may have eventually developed into what we saw in the rest of the world. Currently we are peak knowledge, peak technology, and peak organization. We are in overshoot and limits of growth. Our knowledge, technology, and organization is at diminishing returns. We will never again reach this level. The human world is a plague that will initiate a great extinction, end of the current climatic stability, and altered the geography as much as natural erosion of a millennium. So the apple we took in the garden is truly a devils gift. It has led to mechanization, dehumanization, spiritual death, environmental degradation, and ecosystem alienation.
GregT on Fri, 16th May 2014 10:30 am
Well said Davy,
As I contemplate our predicament, I often think about that ‘apple’. Like telling your kids not to do something that will cause them harm, sometimes they just need to learn on their own.