Electricity-generating fusion power plants — one of the biggest inventions in history — might be safe, efficient, reliable and environmentally responsible.
But, how far are we from turning science fiction into reality — meaning a world where nuclear fusion energy will be powering our day-to-day lives? Some 60 years.
The upcoming International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the world’s largest fusion reaction research facility in Saint-Paul-les-Durance, some 35 km north of Aix-en-Provence in southern France, aims to develop fusion technology to make commercially-viable fusion energy, the world’s clean energy, a reality by the second half of this century
So, what is fusion energy?
With its high-energy yields and low carbon primary energy source, fusion, the same source that powers stars, could provide an alternative to conventional energy sources like coal-fired power plants.
Scientists say the ITER facility aims to fuse two isotopes of hydrogen — tritium and deuterium — to deliver a powerful, clean source of electricity. This requires the containment of plasma at temperatures 10 times higher than the sun’s core.
In a power plant, conventional steam generators, turbines and alternators transform the heat into energy.
An image of ITER’s construction site in Cadarache, France. Image: ITER
India is among the six nations and one grouping, which represent more than 50 per cent of the world’s population and about 85 per cent of global GDP, pursuing the construction of the world’s largest tokamak fusion device, a donut-shaped configuration designed to produce 500 ME of thermal fusion energy.
The other partners are Russia, the US, Japan, China and South Korea, as also the European Union.
At a cost of over $24 billion, the ITER facility could be the answer to the world’s clean energy needs — but that won’t be possible till 2035.
“The ITER project is very much on track. By the second half of this century this fusion technology will be available,” ITER Director General Bernard Bigot told this visiting IANS correspondent.
“Fossil fuel will not be so easy to use any more. We will have a competitive fusion technology which will be available for the whole world,” he said.
Bigot, who believes a global challenge needs a global response, said the first plasma would be achieved by 2025.
This means the reactor in the Cadarache facility is able to generate a molten mass of electrically-charged gas — plasma — inside a core.
In the ITER, the Latin word for ‘the way’, burning plasma is expected to reach 150 million degrees Celsius.
How will it be confined?
According to Fusion for Energy — the European Union’s joint undertaking for ITER — 18 powerful superconducting magnets, known as toroidal field coils, will be powered to generate a magnetic field of 11.8 tesla — approximately one million times stronger than the earth’s magnetic fields.
In this “cage” they will entrap the energy of a small sun.
Europe will manufacture 10 of the toroidal field coils, which will confine the super-hot plasma, and Japan will produce eight plus one spare. They will be the biggest niobium-tin magnets ever produced.
At the cryostat workshop, managed by ITER India, the massive shell is progressing. The European tanks of the cryoplant and cold boxes are also fully installed.
India contributes through the Gujarat-based Institute for Plasma Research by manufacturing major components of the plasma chamber where the fusion reactions are going to take place for the first time in 2025.
Illustration of the ITER core facility and its components. Image courtesy: ITER
Europe’s poloidal field coils are also manufactured on-site at a facility exclusively set up for their production.
The ITER components, their weight and size are truly impressive!
The biggest fusion machine in history, counting at least one million pieces of equipment, will weigh approximately 23,000 tonnes and will be housed in a 60 metre high building, scientists say.
According to them, the end of this year promises to be a turning point with the completion of some key civil engineering works and the arrival of more components.
Fusion energy has a long history.
The breakthrough in the peaceful use of fusion as an energy source began in Russia in 1968 when a magnetic confinement device was tested with an unseen capacity for containing high-temperature plasma.
“We need an energy source that will last millions of years. Fusion offers a massive and continuous power supply. It poses no concerns related to long-lived radioactive waste. And it is sustainable, with abundant natural fuel resources,” an optimistic and elated Bigot added.
After achieving the milestone mark of 50 per cent to first plasma in November 2017, ITER project implementation progresses by 0.7 percent per month.
How will the ITER facility benefit society?
Developing fusion science, engineering and technology to a point where fusion energy can be supplied to the grid is one of the most exciting challenges of the 21st century, and potentially one of the most rewarding.
A full-scale demonstration power plant will built on the lessons learned from ITER in 2045. The industrial fusion power plants connected to the grid and operating on a competitive energy market — but that won’t be for another 57 years.
Critics are not very optimistic that just throwing money at fusion will result in a commercially viable source of electricity.
“There is an even more difficult challenge — to make all of this economical. I don’t think we are going to see fusion reactors supplying safe, clean energy for the world — certainly not in our lifetimes,” M V Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security Liu Institute for Global Issues, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, told IANS.
Dredd on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 7:09 am
We will just have to stick with Oil-Qaeda (Oilah Akbar, Oilah Akbar) until we die.
Like we did when we did not use oil (Civilizations Like Our Own Without Oil).
How could anyone be a decent law-abiding citizen who loves their friends, family, and fellow citizens exist without oil?
“Oilah Akbar, Oilah Akbar” is the scream of despots.
makati1 on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 7:34 am
“How far are we from nuclear fusion?”
How far is infinity? LOL
Antius on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 7:49 am
How far are we from nuclear fusion?
1) If by that they mean a fusion reactor that achieves fusion reactions, then we are already there and have been for a long time.
2) If they mean a fusion reactor that achieves breakeven, in terms of balancing the energy in against energy out, we probably aren’t far away in principle.
3) If they mean a fusion reactor that will produce electric power at a cost that is competitive with coal or uranium, then the likelihood is that we may never get there.
Tokamak fusion attempts to draw power from very diffuse magnetically confined plasmas. Power density is inherently poor, as the density of a plasma at 100million K and pressure ~2bar, is measured in milligrams per cubic metre; Technological complexity is high; converting neutron energy into electric power whilst simultaneously breeding new tritium is difficult and involves using molten lithium coolant to absorb intensive neutron radiation. The radiation will destroy any metals exposed to it within a few years, which will be difficult to replace as they will be intense gamma emitters.
I could go on, but I think everyone gets the point. Even a technologically successful tokamak fusion reactor would be a permanent economic failure.
Rattus on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 8:57 am
I am disappointed..
After reading the title, I was expecting a clever article simply stating that we are 149.6 million km away from nuclear fusion.
Why so serious?
Go Speed Racer on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 10:28 am
Nicely said, Ants On Us,
My answer is simpler.
How far away is fusion power?
30 years.
It’s a constant value of science,
like Boltzmann’s constant.
It will always be 30 years from results.
diemos on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 11:25 am
93 million miles.
onlooker on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 12:00 pm
As far or near as our illusions of grandeur tell us.
Sissyfuss on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 12:15 pm
We would have been better off spendinpg all that fusion money on giant orbiting solar panels beeming all the collected energy back to Earth ala Teslas method.
Chrome Mags on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 12:37 pm
One thing you can say is; it’s one heck of a huge, expensive science experiment. I’ve never had trouble with money being spent on space travel or other endeavors to push the limits of science, however I keep wondering if this is the correct fusion design, i.e. has it been completely thought out as the ultimate, most efficient design, and if so, then why did they have to build it so big? Isn’t it a case in which once a design works to its highest and best use, it can be made smaller?
If tokamak’s have to be that size, is it economically viable? I suppose that depends on net output x number of years in service, but those numbers would have to justify this level of expense and time to build?!
Loner on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 4:59 pm
I just have one question: who is going to pay for this? The taxpayer?
Anontarded1 on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 5:04 pm
loner the untard, yes the scientific elites have no respect for supremetard so they cover for muzzie by labeling everything spirital as “religion” when in fact the crusade ended 700 years ago. all the problems associated with fanaticism has been caused by muzzies.
and also the religion of science requires the jizya to be paid by tax paying people for the furtherance of scientific tards, sometimes for promotion of white supremacy.
we had a tard who sits inside 4 walls and claimed to travel to cosmos while considering time a fundamental quantity of nature. this’s funny because i haven’t seen an experiment that measures time. his funeral has provision for attendance of a time traveler (did not make this up)
Meridian_Sky on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 5:51 pm
The fusion reactor will miraculously available only after the oil, coal and gas are exhausted, atmosphere severely damaged and they stopped profiting from it. And when that happens, they will automatically switch to fusion energy business like everything’s fine and dandy.
Besides, isn’t 57 years the predicted timeline for when the fossil fuels finally depleted?
makati1 on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 7:10 pm
A fusion reactor, even if it proved feasible is again, too late to the party. Not going to be built anywhere before the economic system crashes or there is a major war, which will prevent such a waste of money/resources to happen again. This is a techie wet dream that is only an advantage to those getting a paycheck for working on it. Better the money was spent to rebuild the countries the West has destroyed.
Outcast_Searcher on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 11:05 pm
Well, Mak, if your track record on predictions were better than perhaps 10%, maybe you’d have a point worth listening to.
Meanwhile, the main error re tech. is that the doomers routinely pretend like tech. never makes things better over time — and thus the constant false near-term doom predictions.
But thanks for playing.
BTW, I’m NOT an optimist re practical fusion power (aside from stars) within 4 decades, as 4 decades seems to be about how far away from success we supposedly are.
Outcast_Searcher on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 11:06 pm
Should have ended last post with: we supposedly always are.
makati1 on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 11:25 pm
Outcast, prove me wrong. 10%? By who’s delusion? The US economy is already collapsing and gaining speed daily. The chaos in the US is only going to get worse. The chance of a major war grows daily as the US gets more and more desperate for distraction. The globe is warming. And on and on.
Just because it does not happen suddenly does not mean it is not happening. The US has been in collapse mode since at least 1999, and some say 1971.
As for tech, I have watched “tech” grow from vacuum tubes thru transistors to chips, but it has reached its peak. Nothing new in the last 50 years or so. Not new breakthroughs. Only “improvements” in old tech. The internet (1962), the computer (1942), jet planes (1928), rockets (10th century China), etc. Nothing new.
Davy on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 1:24 am
“Well, Mak, if your track record on predictions were better than perhaps 10%, maybe you’d have a point worth listening to.”
Exactly, OS, billy predicts fantasy related to his anti-Americanism and Asiaphile agenda. He could give a shit about reality. He is trying to prove how smart he was moving out of the US to a 3rd world shack.
Davy on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 1:27 am
“Outcast, prove me wrong. 10%? By who’s delusion? The US economy is already collapsing and gaining speed daily. The chaos in the US is only going to get worse. The chance of a major war grows daily as the US gets more and more desperate for distraction. The globe is warming. And on and on.”
Same shit another day, billy. The only problem is Asia is falling apart quicker than the US. This could change but it looks like you made a bad move.
“Just because it does not happen suddenly does not mean it is not happening. The US has been in collapse mode since at least 1999, and some say 1971.”
Sure Billy if that makes you feel better.
“As for tech, I have watched “tech” grow from vacuum tubes thru transistors to chips, but it has reached its peak. Nothing new in the last 50 years or so. Not new breakthroughs. Only “improvements” in old tech.”
Word of advice billy, stick to what you know not what you think
makati1 on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 1:39 am
Are all those demons keeping you awake Davy? Insomnia? Drug problem? 1:30 AM in Missouri and you will be back in a few hours to spew more bullshit. Insanity isn’t fun is it? Get a life Davy! LMAO
Davy on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 1:44 am
“Are all those demons keeping you awake Davy? Insomnia? Drug problem? 1:30 AM in Missouri and you will be back in a few hours to spew more bullshit. Insanity isn’t fun is it? Get a life Davy! LMAO”
Ah, let me see billy, I am supposed to sleep on your schedule? I sleep when I want. I work when I want. What is the problem? I think you are upset because you are being moderated.
Davy on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 2:02 am
“New Materials Could Make Concentrated Solar Power Cheaper Than Battery Storage”
https://tinyurl.com/y8r7a82t
“Concentrated solar power plants convert solar energy into electricity by using mirrors or lenses to concentrate a lot of light onto a small area, which generates heat that is transferred to a molten salt. Heat from the molten salt is then transferred to a “working” fluid, supercritical carbon dioxide, that expands and works to spin a turbine for generating electricity.”
“The critical elements in that process are the heat exchangers used to transfer the heat stored in the molten salt to the carbon dioxide working fluid. If the whole process could be made to operate at even higher temperatures, CSP systems could make more electricity from a given amount of sunlight. “Storing solar energy as heat can already be cheaper than storing energy via batteries”
“The scientists looked at the materials used to make nozzles for solid fuel rocket engines and created new heat exchangers made from zirconium carbide and tungsten that can withstand the high temperature, high pressure supercritical carbon dioxide needed for generating electricity more efficiently.”
“Ultimately, with continued development, this technology would allow for large scale penetration of renewable solar energy into the electricity grid,”
makati1 on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 3:24 am
Davy, words of advice. Stick to what YOU know not what you think.
I know what I think and I know that I am correct in my assertions. I can always prove them with refs and usually do. You ignore them anyway. Ignorance on your part, not mine.
You KNOW shit. You are nothing but an arrogant bully and stalker. I KNOW that, do you? You are delusional and deny anything that you do not THINK is correct or is contrary to your BELIEFS. You seldom produce real facts for your assertions. Just putdowns and name calling. Nine year olds do that before they grow up. You never did. Too much family coddling? Silver spoon turning to lead? Reality is going to really hurt you when it hits you in the face, but you deserve it.
BTW: I rarely read your bullshit, but I was bored today. LOL
makati1 on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 3:28 am
BTW Davy, I don’t give a fuck what you do. It it is just strange that an adult, and a supposed “farmer” and father, is up in the middle of the night on the internet. Is that the only life you have? Maybe you don’t want your supposed family to see you watching porn? LOL
Cloggie on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 4:02 am
“As for tech, I have watched “tech” grow from vacuum tubes thru transistors to chips, but it has reached its peak. Nothing new in the last 50 years or so.“
Meanwhile in my native Eindhoven…
https://www.deingenieur.nl/artikel/first-commercial-asml-euv-chip-in-production
Our only limiting factor is sufficient brains.
Antius, how about packing your bags and earn some serious money? We have more than enough Indians by know and desperately need brains like yours.
https://youtu.be/lJq-3FCPqRM
This the new Silicon Valley and #1 center of global IT hardware. Samsung, Apple, Intel, AMD are merely offshoots of this technology.
http://ab-mediacommunication.com/2018/02/01/why-the-netherlands-is-the-new-silicon-valley-eindhoven/
makati1 on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 4:52 am
Cloggie, it is just another way to make the dame old thing. Nothing new in decades. Just tweaking original thoughts from the last century. Now if they come up with practical nuclear fusion… LMAO
Cloggie on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 5:57 am
Makati, you are too much in love with your collapse vision. Collapse is so 2010. Centers in Europe, Asia and the US are bustling with innovative activities. But perhaps this is not immediately obvious in evolutionary dead-enders like the Ps or Ozarks.lol
I AM THE MOB on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 6:20 am
Mak
Humans can not live without illusions. For the men and woman of today, an irrational faith in progress may be the only antidote to nihilism. Without the hope that the future will be better than the past they could not go on.
-John N Gray
That quote sums up CLogg..He is just a low IQ moron..
Don’t worry when the oil starts to run out he will likely kill himself..
Davy on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 7:19 am
“I know what I think and I know that I am correct in my assertions. I can always prove them with refs and usually do. You ignore them anyway. Ignorance on your part, not mine.”
Sure billy, like right now. Where are your assertions so we can see if you are correct? I give references as needed and I speak my mind as needed. If you see something you don’t like than debate me. If I am wrong then I lose. I almost never lose with you billy because you are an extremist who makes comments that are distorted and exaggerated.
“You KNOW shit. You are nothing but an arrogant bully and stalker.”
Ah, says the asswipe who has been on the attack lately even as I try to ignore you. I have tried to ignore you not because of any problem with me but for the health of our forum. Of course you like conflict so any time it gets too quite you jab we with some stupidity. Here you go now whining because you have been moderated. What do you want stupid old man?
“I KNOW that, do you? You are delusional and deny anything that you do not THINK is correct or is contrary to your BELIEFS.”
There you go hypocrite calling me delusional.
“You seldom produce real facts for your assertions. Just putdowns and name calling. Nine year olds do that before they grow up. You never did. Too much family coddling? Silver spoon turning to lead? Reality is going to really hurt you when it hits you in the face, but you deserve it.”
There you go again attacking you hypocritical liar. Obviously you have been well moderated lately and your feelings have been hurt. Word of advice quit being an extremist narcissist.
“BTW: I rarely read your bullshit, but I was bored today. LOL”
LOL, you always say that billy and always read what I say. You are a friggin hoot. You talk like a little kid but you are approaching 80.
Davy on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 7:27 am
“BTW Davy, I don’t give a fuck what you do. It it is just strange that an adult, and a supposed “farmer” and father, is up in the middle of the night on the internet.”
LOL, who says? Billy, is on the internet 24/7 because he has nothing to do. He has a fantasy farm in his head he is never at. I work all day every day. I rarely take off. If I am here a lot it is because I take my work here seriously and I enjoy it. I have a laptop and a cell phone I use. Show me where I don’t work. You can’t you stupid idiot. I don’t do the radio and TV just a little with the wife before bed. We watch a good movie occasionally. I read the occasional book but I am always following current events because I believe we are on the knife edge of change and I am here to witness it. My time here on this forum is part of it. I want to get the truth out and I battle extremist like you when the truth is being butchered.
“Is that the only life you have? Maybe you don’t want your supposed family to see you watching porn? LOL”
LOL, I am the one with a wife and you are the stupid old man without anybody not even a dog. No wonder you and the nedernazi have so much in common being white racist narcissistic pigs.
Davy on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 7:31 am
“But perhaps this is not immediately obvious in evolutionary dead-enders like the Ps or Ozarks.lol”
LOL, just because there are innovative technologies does not ensure growth or even human survival. Tech is the problem and it is part of the solution. It is not the solution alone. The solution is human wisdom something you have next to nothing of.
Cephalotus on Sat, 20th Oct 2018 4:39 pm
Fusion is already here, but not power generation from fusion.
There is more than just ITER:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a21945982/german-nuclear-fusion-experiment-sets-records-for-stellarator-reactor/
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