Where to Build a Power Station to Save the World? Let’s Toss for It

WHEN THE going gets tough, the tough toss coins. Or draw lots. These unscientific methods have been suggested as possible resolutions of a stand off that is delaying the building of the world’s biggest fusion reactor. This is nothing to do with bombs: plasma scientists think that fusion — in which two nuclei fuse into a single, bigger nucleus, releasing vast amounts of energy — might be the perfect fuel of the future. It’s clean, efficient and, because it will use isotopes abundant in seawater, promises to be extremely cheap.

Times Online
WHEN THE going gets tough, the tough toss coins. Or draw lots. These unscientific methods have been suggested as possible resolutions of a stand off that is delaying the building of the world’s biggest fusion reactor. This is nothing to do with bombs: plasma scientists think that fusion — in which two nuclei fuse into a single, bigger nucleus, releasing vast amounts of energy — might be the perfect fuel of the future. It’s clean, efficient and, because it will use isotopes abundant in seawater, promises to be extremely cheap.

The principle of using fusion to generate energy has been proved in the laboratory, but scientists are anxious to test it on a massive scale. Now six partners — the EU, America, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia — have joined to build the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a prototype fusion power station, re-creating the furnace like that inside stars such as the Sun, and pushing engineering to its limits.

But the €4 billion project has stalled because nobody agrees where to build it. The EU insists it should be located at Cadarache in France; Japan wants it on home turf, in Rokkasho. To complicate matters, the Japanese position is backed by America and South Korea. With 10,000 jobs, national prestige and the potential to become a global destination for hi-tech industry at stake, nobody is budging.

Satoru Ohtake, the director for fusion energy in Japan, said that if the wrangle persisted “tossing a coin or drawing lots might seriously be the most peaceful, best and only way to solve this”.

Actually, the EU has an unpopular alternative to coin-tossing — it plans to start building ITER at Cadarache in the summer, even if it upsets the Japanese. Insiders think that the US and South Korea might be persuaded privately to accept this last resort, backing off from the project temporarily to avoid offending Japan but coming back on board later.

“Japan desperately needs fusion because it imports 90 per cent of its energy,” explains Chris Carpenter, from the Culham Science Centre in Oxfordshire, the home of Britain’s JET fusion programme. “But the most important thing is to build ITER. We’ve got a golden opportunity here to see whether it works.” From the minute that the first brick is laid, it will take around 30 years to see whether fusion power lives up to the hype. A speedy start raises the possibility of fusion power within the present generation.

“I don’t think it will really be decided by tossing coins,” Carpenter adds. “I’ve suggested a duel at dawn with samurai swords.”