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Page added on July 19, 2013
Engage consortium completes a million man-hours on ITER nuclear fusion project
The Engage consortium, of which Atkins is a lead member, has completed one million man-hours of work on the ITER nuclear fusion reactor project underway in Cadarache, France. The first phase of work is now almost complete and all major construction contracts are due to be awarded before the end of the year. Engage is retained as ITER’s Architect Engineer and is charged with delivering all on-site structures up to 2018.
ITER is the world’s biggest experimental fusion facility which aims to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power. Fusion is the process which powers the sun and the stars. The Engage consortium members, Atkins, Assystem, Egis and Empresarios Agrupados, are amongst Europe’s leading engineering consultancies and their collaborative efforts have already delivered over 3,000 technical documents for the 39 buildings and areas, since they began work in April 2010.
The ITER buildings include the Tokamak complex which will house the reactor that is being designed to harness the energy produced by the fusion of atoms to help meet mankind’s future energy needs. ITER, which means the “the way” in Latin, is the next step in bringing together the world’s largest nations in a quest for sustainable energy.
The European contribution is being delivered through Fusion for Energy (F4E), the EU organisation managing Europe’s contribution to ITER, which is overseeing the design and construction of the ITER buildings.
http://home.nestor.minsk.by/build/news/2013/07/1901.html
7 Comments on "Engage consortium completes a million man-hours on ITER nuclear fusion project"
BillT on Sat, 20th Jul 2013 1:27 am
Perhaps best summed up by J.M.Greer:
“…Scientists in the US and something like a dozen other countries have been busy at that quest since the 1950s. In the process, they’ve discovered something well worth knowing about fusion power: if it can be done at all, on any scale smaller than a star—and the jury’s still out on that one—it can’t be done at a price that any nation on Earth can possibly afford. The dream of limitless cheap fusion power that filled the pages of gosh-wow newspaper articles and science fiction stories in the 1950s and 1960s is thus as dead as a sack full of doornails. Has this stopped the continuing flow of billions of dollars of grant money into round after futile round of gargantuan fusion-power projects? Surely you jest…
…Fusion researchers by and large see themselves as figures standing at the cutting edge of one important branch of techological progress. Given their training, their history, and the cultural pressures that surround them and define their work, it’s all but impossible for them to do anything else. That’s what has them boxed into a dead end with no easy exits, because the way progress is conceptualized in contemporary culture is fatally out of step with the facts on the ground. …”
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/
rollin on Sat, 20th Jul 2013 3:36 am
People think practical fusion energy is impossible.
And people thought we would never fly.
And people thought you would not be able to breath if you went over 25 mph.
And people thought the world was the center of the universe.
And people thought the world was flat.
And people still think men never landed on the moon.
ad nauseum … They all thought wrong.
BillT on Sat, 20th Jul 2013 8:13 am
rollin, we fly with the energy of oil. When oil is gone, we will no longer fly.
These people are boxed into a rarefied specialty field that means, if the money stops, they will be flipping hamburgers as they have no other useful skills or experience. THAT is why the fantasy is kept alive. Not because it is possible and especially not possible in any practical quantity.
You can go to your shrine and worship your techie god, but, just like the other gods, he will not answer.
rollin on Sat, 20th Jul 2013 5:09 pm
BillT, oil won’t be gone for a long time. Also liquid fuels can be made from many things so if people want powered flight, then it will still happen. In fact I say powered flight combined with rail will eventually
eliminate those very expensive and energy intensive highway systems.
Of course I used to fly for hours with no fuel use at all.
Not only are jets being made now that use about half the fuel of conventional engines, new fuselage designs are being made that reduce fuel usage even further. If one does not want to fly near the speed of sound in the stratosphere, then it opens up a huge number of possibilities for very fuel efficient designs that can land on simple grass and dirt fields. I used grass fields for many years.
Sure, the personal car will take a downturn, but rail, air and ships will provide transport for a long time. They don’t depend on intensive infrastructure like giant highway systems and therefor are much more efficient overall.
BillT on Sun, 21st Jul 2013 2:16 am
rollin, personal flight is already in jeopardy. Haven’t you noticed that airlines are always going broke? The ones that survive do so because they are owned by governments or heavily subsidized. That will soon end as most governments are also broke and failing financially.
Why? Cost of energy is too high to support the industry. When there are few or no customers, they will end. A few million wealthy people will NOT support an airline or even a manufacturing industry. At any given moment there are a million air passengers in flight around he world. That will come to a quick halt at some point.
Just because something is possible does not mean that it will happen or continue. The world is about to fail and reset to a world you have never experienced. One without airlines or many of today’s ‘conveniences’.
GregT on Sun, 21st Jul 2013 5:13 am
Anyone that has followed the airline industry, understands that it has been a failure right from the get go. Government subsidies, corporate acquisitions, mergers, and cutthroat competition have been the name of the game for over 40 years.
The airline industry has been a failure since its inception, and as fuel prices continue to soar, it will end, for most of us.
I happen to be a private pilot, and my expenses have tripled over the last 5 years. We are very close to the point that civil aviation will become a thing of the past. Unless, of course, you happen to be in the top 1/10th of one percent. If you happen to be one of those people, your security costs are also about to soar.
DC on Sun, 21st Jul 2013 7:42 pm
Q/rollin, we fly with the energy of oil. When oil is gone, we will no longer fly.
Exactly, rollin seems to think maintaining positive lift in a aircraft in earths atmosphere, a totally trivial affair compared to whats being attempted, has some equivalence to creating pressures and temperatures of a star in a space of less than a cubic meter AND then, somehow withdrawing power from it to boot. Even so, I don’t think controlled fusion is ‘impossible’ and I certainly don’t invoke the old ‘man will never fly trope’, just that its extremely unlikely. And even less likely that anyone could ever afford it. Even the combined economies of the EU, even if they weren’t being actively sabotaged by the US for other reasons, could not afford a prototype commercial reactor(if ITER pans out that is).
By the way rollin, most of the people that thought those things were christian ignoramuses. You know, the group that made a habit of burning scientists alive at the stake for suggesting the earth was round, back when they could get away with such things?
In any event, many of the folks suggestions fusion is never going to pan out-are highly educated in relevant fields themselves. Its not a bunch of bible-thumpers dissing fusion these days.
Its not just the airlines that will suffer once the fuel becomes too expensive for $99 flights to disneyland. Fusion research itself will flounder on the rocks of high energy costs just like airlines.
No oil, no fusion either.