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US Joins ITER Tokamak Fusion Project
WannabePhysicist writes "Energy secretary Spencer Abraham
announced at the Princeton Plasma Fusion
Laboratory
that the U.S. will join ITER
, the international plasma fusion reactor effort. They're currently
planning a tokamak (doughnut) design, and have some pretty optimistic energy
production predictions for 2014. As many of us in science know, estimated
times are usually off by a factor of two, and then sometimes and order of
magnitude -- but hopefully they'll get it to work.
Many people push this as the cleanest form of energy, but fusion reactors
will most likely contain deuterium, tritium, and lithium (tritium's not exactly
water) The deuterium and tritium fuse, giving off an alpha (4He nucleus),
a neutron, and some energy. This energy causes more reactions (the controlled
fusion part). The neutrons hit a 6Li blanket (surrounding the chamber)
which then produces more tritium for burning."
Mmmmmm tokamak..... *homer simpsons drool*
Tastes crunchy in beer!
It's not exactly water, but it's not exactly plutonium either.
Its a pity that fusion based electricity generation will take so long to arrive. With fossil fuels being used at ever more larger rates, its THE technology that humanity needs to replace the current systems of electricity generation. The environmental benefits of using clean fusion to generate say, hydrogen for fuel cell powered cars as well as normal electricity use would be astounding. Unfortunately commercial greed would stiffle any hopes of that.
I do hope USA will eventually make a power source that makes them completely abandon petrol. All these stupid wars in middle east are being done just for the sake of oil, not for dictators, that's crap, plain and simple, everyone wants that oil.
At this point, there are very few major research tokamaks out there. In the US, there is only really one that is flexible enough to do a wide range of experiments on (at GA).
This isn't going to necessarily lead directly to a commercial design, it's still a research reactor, but there are a LOT of big questions in fusion that can be answered by this device, and it would be irresponsible of the US to not be a part of it (that is, as long as we want to at least look like we're trying to find clean energy). At the rate different things are going, fusion might not be the energy source of the future, but you never know, it's always worth trying. It's only through programs like this that we'll get there.
When the US first left the project it was because it was billed as a demo commercial reactor, which just wouldn't have worked. It might be able to get more energy out than you put in, but the cost of construction and upkeep is still too high for such large reactors. A major part of fusion research now is making the reactors more efficient, require less repair and have a smaller size. Oddly enough, we can't do that unless we build a larger research reactor.
Of course not. Tritium's a form of hydrogen. You'd need oxygen to make water (assuming those two extra neutrons don't get in the way, IANA-Nuclear-Physicist).
But then again, I could be wrong.
Anyone know where this thing is going to be realized. I remember reading (maybe newscientist ?) that they want to built this test plant in Spain or France near the Atlantic, so they could easy get supplies and cooling from the ocean.
I'm glad that the US finally decided to go along since the project was not funded completely yet.
As for the prospects of energy supply, I read that they also think a postive effiency could be realized somewere around 2008, but would then just go out the drain......
withput an obious reason I can remember
seems like a waste
I admittedly don't know anything about nuclear physics, but why does everyone seem to concentrate entirely on cold fusion? What about hot fusion?
Sure, it'd produce some waste, but it'd be more environmentally friendly than a purely fission-based system, right? Is it uncontrollable? Is it really that much harder to figure out how to make a controllable, sustainable, hot fusion reactor than it is to chase the cold fusion pipe dream?
Why is anything anything?
and then sometimes and order of magnitude
you do mean 'an order of magnitude more' don't you?
I wonder what happened to the Joint European Torus project that was so much hyped, but couldnt produce sustained energy after many trials across years. Instead of doing everything America vs Europe vs Japan, they could so join the europeans for reduced costs and better maintenance across years, unless theres weapons technology involved of course.
I also wonder if its at all possible to locate the reactor close to other Big Science labs and create larger science community centres, maybe at BNL or LANL or Fermilab. Sharing ground and resources with other Big Science labs will help cut costs, and considering the fact that alot of construction/computer/other materials used for accelerators can also be used for the torus so uniting the location will make sense. Am I wrong?
At least in one state they should build large multiple torii if this succeeds. The abundance of energy will allow the government to enforce a clean-fuel-only vehicles law, which will really make a practical difference.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Deuterium and lithium are not exactly water either. They are not water at all.
I'm still pondering what this quote means. My best guess is they are saying that tritium is pretty rare in water vs deuterium which isn't to hard to get from water and lithium with is everywhere.
Yes, isn't it amazing that the US rejoins a project which they left in 1998, delaying it in the process?
Heh heh, so much on the "not water" part. I guess I wrote this kinda fast -- all I was thinkin was that tritium is not the SAFEST material in the world (I get that tritium != water), though I don't know enough to comment more than that.
What ?
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
Something good: Brought to you be the Bush Administration.
No one dares mention that its a decision by the Bush administration when its something good. Why is that ?
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni