Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on August 14, 2014
ITER Nuclear Fusion Could Be “The Way” to Solve World’s Energy Problems
Huge ITER Cryosat to Tap Energy Generation Of Stars
The word “politician” is almost an obscenity these days, but looking back at an event involving Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and Jacques Chirac, we may be reminded politicians sometimes try to do good. In November 1985, these three large-than-life figures signed an agreement for a $12.8 billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) to be built in southern France.
What is even more notable is they probably had no idea what they were doing. After all, the agreement called for using fuel, a mixture of deuterium and trillium and two isotopes of hydrogen heated to more than 150 million °C, hoping it would solve the world’s energy challenges without “unintended consequences.” In fact, ITER required 22 years of intense and painstaking conceptual engineering and design before it could be officially christened viable, finally becoming an official organization in 2007.
ITER: Latin for “the way” or “the road”
In May, 2013 IndustryTap wrote “Can Fusion Energy Generate Unlimited Clean Energy by 2017?” about the current state of nuclear fusion. The ITER Cryosat Fusion Reactor, soon to be the world’s largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor, is under construction with opening expected in 2027. Using ITER, scientists will attempt to produce 10 times more thermal energy from fusion heating than by auxiliary heating; produce a steady-state plasma; maintain a sustained fusion pulse; ignite a self-sustaining, burning plasma, develop technologies needed for a full-scale fusion power plant, test tritium breeding concepts and refine neutron shield and heat conversion technology.
History of Tokamak Design
The Tokamak design was invented by Soviet physicists Igor Tamm and Andrei Sakharov in the 1950s. Tokamak reactors use four kinds of heating: ohmic, neutral-beam injection, magnetic compression and radio-frequency heating. Liquid helium and nitrogen are used to cool the reactor.
“Tokamak” is a transliteration of the Russian word токамак, an acronym for “Toroidal Chamber With Axial Magnetic Field”. The Tokamak design has been widely adopted because scientists believe it provides the best environment in which to safely and efficiently run a fusion reaction.
In simpler terms, tokamak is a doughnut-shaped magnetic confinement reactor that suspends a fusion reaction inside the doughnut within electromagnetic fields. This is necessary because no solid material has yet been found or created that could withstand the extremely high temperatures, greater than 15 keV or 150 million degrees Celsius, of fusion plasma.
ITER’s website has papers, images, videos and interactive webpages that go into detail on all aspects of the project.
20 Comments on "ITER Nuclear Fusion Could Be “The Way” to Solve World’s Energy Problems"
ghung on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 10:10 am
“After all, the agreement called for using fuel, a mixture of deuterium and trillium….”
Uh,, I thought Trillium is a plant that grows in the forest around my house. Silly me….. Oh, wait! Wasn’t trillium an important isotope in a Star Trek episode?
“Trillium 323 is a highly prized mineral isotope possessed in large quanitities by the Caldonians. The Caldonians made access to this resource the center of their proposal to Premier Bhavani during negotiations for rights to the Barzan wormhole in 2366.”
Either way, we’re saved, and I could be rich someday.
Don on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 10:39 am
He meant tritium. It’s the stuff that makes the sights in your AR glow.
Kevin Cobley on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 10:46 am
This bizarre and hugely expensive project is just a silly as the cold fusion con, it ain’t ever going to work it’s just going to suck up enormous amounts of money. If they had of just spent it on windmills and solar panels they would at least be generating some power.
These projects are run by Trekkies.
penury on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 10:51 am
As with all projects which are going to save the world-in 15 or 50 years. i hope so, but I would not bet on it. Life is what happens while your busy making plans.
JuanP on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 12:27 pm
I am not that worried about the world’s energy problem, it’s the world’s population problem that makes me anxious. Seven billion humans growing at a rate of 80 million a year. How do we solve that?
hculliton on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 12:49 pm
Juan: don’t worry about solving population growth – nature will take care of it if we don’t. It’ll just hurt a whole lot more.
meld on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 2:39 pm
@JuanP – nature sorts out population growth, not you or anyone else. Nobody is going to stop fucking and having babies because someone thinks it’s a bad thing. We’re animals, we fuck like animals and when there are too many of us we die like animals. Oh and ITER? HAHAHAHAHA it’s job seekers allowance like NASA. Scrounging bastards, get a real job.
Bob Owens on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 2:50 pm
I am tired of talking about this lame effort. It will not work, cannot work, has never worked and is not economically viable, not now or ever. I am moving on.
JuanP on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 3:05 pm
meld, Of course nature will sort us out. You are preaching to the choir. As far as my nature goes, I am sterile and childfree by choice because I had a Vasectomy and no children. I still fuck like an animal, though, but I am not having any babies. Tell you what; you have your own nature and I’ll have mine. You are wrong to assume that everybody else is like you. Most, maybe, but not all and my existence is irrefutable proof of that. Now go be an animal yourself. 🙂
jim anglin on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 5:05 pm
Re: article. Yeah, and my ass chews tobacco.
redpill on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 7:59 pm
“opening expected in 2027”. Well, if the Limits to Growth has it’s projections correct, then this should come just in time to save us:)
energyskeptic on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 8:15 pm
ITER is a disaster, so is most other fusion research.
http://energyskeptic.com/2014/why-fusion-will-never-work-and-fry-planet-if-it-did/
If you want to know why physicists joke that “fusion is 10 years away and always will be”, see all the unsolved challenges in the 2013 National Academy of Sciences “An Assessment of the Prospects for Inertial Fusion”. Energy Committee on the Prospects for Inertial Confinement Fusion Energy Systems; Board on Physics and Astronomy; Board on Energy and Environmental Systems; Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences; National Research Council
Nony on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 10:02 pm
Whether or not they can get fusion to work is one thing. But ITER is a massive clusterfuck. They have all the differet countries doing parts and they don’t fit together. It’s a nightmare. Total fluffy silliness.
dissident on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 10:21 pm
The only fusion we know that works in nature is gravitational confinement driven in stars and uncontrolled detonation via a fission explosion of tritium. Magnetic confinement has serious problems associated with plasma stability that cannot be fixed with engineering. They are fundamental nonlinear effects of this dynamical system.
We could be better off trying to conceive of a method to reduce hydrogen bomb detonations to very small sizes and have a sequence of them in a containment structure. They would need an initial fission detonation trigger and and then could be sustained with hydrogen inputs. But such miniaturization may be physically impossible.
verstapp on Fri, 15th Aug 2014 3:05 am
>going to suck up huge amounts of money.
actually, [the promise of] fusion has been sucking up enormous amounts of money, to no useful result, since the late ’40s.
Arthur on Fri, 15th Aug 2014 3:25 am
“Juan: don’t worry about solving population growth – nature will take care of it if we don’t. It’ll just hurt a whole lot more.”
99% of all species have gone extinct. Conclusion: mother nature loves genocide.
Arthur on Fri, 15th Aug 2014 3:29 am
The solution is so simple. If every village could have a church in the past, it could have a windturbine and panels on every roof. The rulers in the capital should be able to build a number of national hydro-bassins in the mountains and the problem is solved. No need to invent new technology, everything is there.
Norm on Fri, 15th Aug 2014 4:34 am
fusion power = welfare bum scientists because it don’t work. oh, that. you wanted it to work? Bwaaa haaa haaaaa !!!! Sure pally, even though its on the pink sheets now, dont worry it’ll go thru the roof any day now baby, and you’ll get all your money back.
Davy on Fri, 15th Aug 2014 6:07 am
Art, I do agree, if we want to maintain civilization we have to have much more AltE infrastructure. We can manage the fall from descent of growth and the resulting BAU destruction. We once did not have electricity and survived but that was with the infrastructure and population knowledge acclimated to that meme. Today our meme centers around electricity and energy intensity with a population not acclimated to pre-electrical civilization in overshoot to carrying capacity. If we are going to avoid a descent that in drastic in degree and duration we have to have transition mechanisms to break the fall like a parachute. Now, Art, I disagree with you on AltE future. I see no indication AltE has any future beyond a transition extender for an industrial age to go postindustrial. There is no indication AltE can replicate itself and can maintain complexity at the level to support the very complex AltE industry. We have to have lifeboat infrastructure for transition. Each passing day moves us further from a manageable fall in descent without massive efforts now. We really needed to do this in Jimmy Carters era. Yet, anything helps save something. To give up now is not an option. The fight against entropic decay can never end if we are to maintain our species let alone our culture. If you notice I said manage our fall in descent. I did not say manage descent. Descent cannot be manage. Descent can only be reacted to. Descent involves a randomness of breaks, abandonment, and system fractures. Yet, if a population is resilient and has some sustainability it can manage the fall. This is why we need localized, low complexity, and resilient energy sources. AltE fits that description. One other issue Art I disagree with is your idea of centralized, complex, and inclusive AltE applications. IOW lets power and wire Europe. IMHO this is fantasy like outposts on Mars. It may be possible in theory but not practical considering the incredible adversity we are facing from a Mega predicament of multiple, inclusive and converging smaller predicaments.
peakyeast on Fri, 15th Aug 2014 10:45 am
“Using ITER, scientists will attempt to produce 10 times more thermal energy from fusion heating than by auxiliary heating”…
Not even close to needed efficiency. There is a long way of optimizing to be done in mouse steps.