Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on August 7, 2013
‘Critical phase’ for Iter fusion dream
The world’s largest bid to harness the power of fusion has entered a “critical” phase in southern France.
The Iter project at Cadarache in Provence is receiving the first of about one million components for its experimental reactor.
Dogged by massive cost rises and long delays, building work is currently nearly two years behind schedule.
The construction of the key building has even been altered to allow for the late delivery of key components.
“We’re not hiding anything – it’s incredibly frustrating,” David Campbell, a deputy director, told BBC News.
“Now we’re doing everything we can to recover as much time as possible.
“The project is inspiring enough to give you the energy to carry on – we’d all like to see fusion energy as soon as possible.”
After initial design problems and early difficulties co-ordinating this unique international project, there is now more confidence about the timetable.
Since the 1950s, fusion has offered the dream of almost limitless energy – copying the fireball process that powers the Sun – fuelled by two readily available forms of hydrogen.
The attraction is a combination of cheap fuel, relatively little radioactive waste and no emissions of greenhouse gases.
But the technical challenges of not only handling such an extreme process but also designing ways of extracting energy from it have always been immense.
In fact, fusion has long been described as so difficult to achieve that it’s always been touted as being “30 years away”.
Now the Iter reactor will put that to the test. Known as a “tokamak”, it is based on the design of Jet, a European pilot project at Culham in Oxfordshire.
It will involve creating a plasma of superheated gas reaching temperatures of more than 200 million C – conditions hot enough to force deuterium and tritium atoms to fuse together and release energy.
The whole process will take place inside a giant magnetic field in the shape of a ring – the only way such extreme heat can be contained.
The plant at JET has managed to achieve fusion reactions in very short bursts but required the use of more power than it was able to produce.
The reactor at Iter is on a much larger scale and is designed to generate 10 times more power – 500 MW – than it will consume.
France’s fusion reactor would work like the sun
Iter brings together the scientific and political weight of governments representing more than half the world’s population – including the European Union, which is supporting nearly half the cost of the project, together with China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
Contributions are mainly “in kind” rather than in cash with, for example, the EU providing all the buildings and infrastructure – which is why an exact figure for cost is not available. The rough overall budget is described as £13bn or 15bn euros.
But the novel structure of Iter has itself caused friction and delays, especially in the early days.
Continue reading the main story
Cryostat
Magnets
Vacuum
Blanket
Heater
Divertor
Each partner first had to set up a domestic “agency” to handle the procurement of components within each member country, and there have been complications with import duties and taxes.
Further delay crept in with disputes over access to manufacturing sites in partner countries. Because each part has to meet extremely high specifications, inspectors from Iter and the French nuclear authorities have had to negotiate visits to companies not used to outside scrutiny.
The result is that although a timeline for the delivery of the key elements has been agreed, there’s a recognition that more hold-ups are almost inevitable.
The main building to house the tokamak has been adjusted to leave gaps in its sides so that late components can be added without too much disruption.
The route from the ports to the construction site has had to be improved to handle huge components weighing up to 600 tonnes, but this work too has been slower than hoped. A trial convoy originally scheduled for last January has slipped to this coming September.
Continue reading the main story
Preparation work at the Iter site in Cadarache began in 2007. Some 90 hectares has been cleared and levelled for scientific buildings and facilities, leaving the other half of the site in its original wooded stateUnder an initial plan, it had once been hoped to achieve the first plasma by the middle of the last decade.
Then, after a redesign, a new deadline of November 2020 was set but that too is now in doubt. Managers say they are doubling shifts to accelerate the pace of construction. It’s thought that even a start date during 2021 may be challenging.
The man in charge of coordinating the assembly of the reactor is Ken Blackler.
“We’ve now started for real,” he told me. “Industrial manufacturing is now under way so the timescale is much more certain – many technical challenges have been solved.
“But Iter is incredibly complicated. The pieces are being made all around the world – they’ll be shipped here.
“We’ll have to orchestrate their arrival and build them step by step so everything will have to arrive in the right order – it’s really a critical point.”
Command and control
While one major concern is the arrival sequence of major components, another is that the components themselves are of sufficiently high quality for the system to function.
The 28 magnets that will create the field containing the plasma have to be machined to a very demanding level of accuracy. And each part must be structurally sound and then welded together to ensure a totally tight vacuum – without which the plasma cannot be maintained. A single fault or weakness could jeopardise the entire project.
Assuming Iter does succeed in proving that fusion can produce more power than it consumes, the next step will be for the international partners to follow up with a technology demonstration project – a test-bed for the components and systems needed for a commercial reactor.
Ironically, the greater the progress, the more apparent becomes the scale of the challenge of devising a fusion reactor that will be ready for market.
At a conference in Belgium last September, I asked a panel of experts when the first commercially-available fusion reactor might generate power for the grid.
A few said that could happen within 40 years but most said it would take another 50 or even 60 years. The fusion dream has never been worked on so vigorously. But turning it into reality is much more than 30 years away.
18 Comments on "‘Critical phase’ for Iter fusion dream"
Arthur on Wed, 7th Aug 2013 2:58 pm
“A few said that could happen within 40 years but most said it would take another 50 or even 60 years. The fusion dream has never been worked on so vigorously. But turning it into reality is much more than 30 years away.”
Cut the crap.
The trouble of course is that the state loves these kind of mega-projects, not in the least because of all sorts of tax opportunities these centralized setups offer, in contrast to panels on a roof.
LT on Wed, 7th Aug 2013 3:13 pm
Fusion is FICTION!
One thing is certain: Mother Nature gives birth to mankind. But not the other way around.
dave thompson on Wed, 7th Aug 2013 3:22 pm
All this to boil water some day?
Stilgar on Wed, 7th Aug 2013 3:48 pm
If it takes that long to construct and has to be made to such precise tolerances, even if it works as planned (which remains to be seen), how practical will it be for these reactors to be built by the thousands around the world? Will it even be economical when figuring cost of construction vs. time in operation before extreme temps cause a vacuum leak?
From the article: “And each part must be structurally sound and then welded together to ensure a totally tight vacuum – without which the plasma cannot be maintained. A single fault or weakness could jeopardies the entire project.”
Achieving a net energy return and having a viable long term energy production solution may end up being different things. The first will not insure the latter.
rollin on Wed, 7th Aug 2013 4:15 pm
The article is a bit confusing, especially in it’s conclusions. Having seen some of the first attempts in the late 1960’s since my physics professor was a leader in this field, they have come a long, long way.
Of course custom, cutting edge systems are difficult, time consuming and expensive to produce. Once this system shows positive energy output there will be a huge level of interest from many countries. I figure practical fusion power sources will only be a decade away from that first pilot demonstration.
Stilgar on Wed, 7th Aug 2013 7:26 pm
rollin, if you’re right about fusion, can you imagine the Human population bomb that would go off with another round of cheap energy? Another round that is from the one brought to us by FF. I’ll say a prayer now for all the species that would go extinct (beyond all the one’s currently headed that way).
Bob Owens on Wed, 7th Aug 2013 7:56 pm
This project is a joke and always will be. If we had spent this money on solar hot water heaters every home in the world would now have hot water from the sun! Instead we are messing around with this nonsense which should have died 20 years ago! Wake up America! Stop being stupid.
Arthur on Wed, 7th Aug 2013 8:19 pm
It is not just America, the entire world is engaged in the project.
“…the European Union (EU), India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States. The EU, as host party for the ITER complex, is contributing 45% of the cost, with the other six parties contributing 9% each.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
Norm on Wed, 7th Aug 2013 9:40 pm
Welfare Bums.
BillT on Thu, 8th Aug 2013 12:19 am
Nothing need to be added to the above comments…
Jimmy W on Thu, 8th Aug 2013 9:27 am
Fusion is a natural process of energy release, it is happening in every star in the universe … and it is easily the most powerful energy source we could hope to master, but it’s not easy for politicians and government officials to engage with the difficulty of achieving it, any more than it is for such people to admit the value of having done so. Of course the human race would need to get a lot smarter about managing itself if fusion energy was available, because the earlier comment about the resulting population bomb is absolutely right. Cheap energy drives over-population, which in turn drives the environment to crisis and other species to extinction !
Nevertheless it is in human nature to try to do better… we cannot deny that. The ITER project is badly managed and an outrageously expensive way of tackling this problem, but we still need to try. The other approach to fusion energy using giant lasers is in fact probably closer to reaching a solution than the Tokamak approach. Scientists at the National Ignition Facility in USA don’t enjoy the massive funding that ITER commands, but they are steadily closing in on the goal of controlled fusion with credible energy gain… the “holy grail” for anyone seeking to produce energy on the industrial scale. The NIF in California may get there first… watch that space !!!
simon on Thu, 8th Aug 2013 11:25 am
Where are they getting the tritium from ?
Arthur on Thu, 8th Aug 2013 1:04 pm
Jimmy, we cannot gamble our future on that. Maybe fusion will work in the 22 century and our descendants will be glad to get rid of all these endless fields littered with panels and windturbines. But for now, we do not have the time to further postpone action. The coming decades wind and solar it will be.
efsome on Thu, 8th Aug 2013 1:43 pm
its naive to think itd solve our problems. if they ever succeed it’ll probably have a nasty side effect like nuclear tech, and it’ll be used to grow more otherwise unsupportable population. when will we stop growing? is it when we invade and desecrate every inch of earth? i hope the experiments go wrong and they blow themselves up 🙂
Matt Charles on Thu, 8th Aug 2013 3:24 pm
Although this fusion technology is 30-50 years from mastering, with construction happening at ITER, I firmly believe it would be successful. 90% of everyone who commented has stated that it will fail miserably, displaying facts to support their statements, but if we don’t try, how will we know if it will work? Humans are smarter than we think, technology that exists today wasn’t suppose to be happening so soon. And also, my question to these countries, politicians, scientists etc involved in this project is, where are they getting all these deuterium and tritium atoms to fuse together and release energy?
LT on Thu, 8th Aug 2013 6:16 pm
There are too much “(humans are)smarter” already in our modern civilization. And many of the species and environments already got extincted and damaged beyond repair. And what we have too little is loving kindness and moderation. Humans live on Earth. What do we (human beings) do to protect or respect Her (Earth)?
We may be very smart (at looting the Earth), but very unwise (ignorant) at the same time! Look around, there are plenty of examples.
If we know human life is too short, then why not spend the time to master it (understand our own nature, our own mind), instead of being preoccupied with fantasies.
Stilgar on Thu, 8th Aug 2013 8:50 pm
Well written LT. Seven billion people and growing is probably not good for us or the planet at this level of consciousness. Shut down and retool and come back with a better attitude.
As an example of this, we live in an area with lots of trees and wildlife and a view of a lake. Some people moved in next door last month and clear-cut their property of every oak, manzanita and pine tree. The deer use to sit in the shade of the manzanita grove in the afternoons which my wife could see from her art studio in the back yard. It’s now devoid of trees and fauna. No birds, deer, squirrels anything at all on their property.
I tried so hard to get it stopped and all I got for it was being referred to by them, the tree cutters and their friends as “Crazy!” And almost arrested by the Sheriff for their false claim I had cussed out the owner. It was 100% lie but it served them well to get rid of my complaint and continue cutting and chipping it all away. So I’m the crazy one for trying in vain to stop some madness and now we look out from our deck next door over a vacant lot? Where’s the consciousness?
Nicole Foss’ website’s current article talks about this very problem.
LT on Thu, 8th Aug 2013 9:15 pm
@Stilgar,
Thank you for your support on my comment.
As for your new neighbors who just clear-cut down all the trees, you gave him good advice, but unfortunately they didn’t listen. Oh, well, nothing you or me can do about it. But one thing is certain:
Good deeds produce good karma, and vice versa.
And, once good/bad deeds are committed, it can’t be undone. One will have to bear it one day.
By the way, you sound like you have a good place for mind-reflection. Spend sometime and look into the mind and see how it works. 🙂
Remember: Human life is just one of several forms of existence. But in order to experience it, one must master one own mind.
Again, thank you for your complement.
🙂