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U.S. and China Join Fusion Project

Posted by michael on from the real-soon-now dept.

Garp writes "According to the BBC News website, the U.S. has finally decided to join the international Fusion project, Iter, along with China, with the aim of building the worlds first commercially viable Fusion reactor. Fusion is one of the cleanest forms of energy conversion, excluding renewable natural sources, like wind farms, tidal generators, and solar cells."

1 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Before you condemn it, understand it by fuzzykitty · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While it is true that the result from Iter will be a lot of radioactive waste, this project must continue because it is vital to fusion research. The radioactive waste will result because of the plan to use stainless steel in the reactor construction. Stainless steel is easy to activate (because of the nickle and other elements in it) however it is one of the few materials that can take the reactor wall loading that we know how to work with (Vanadium would be an excellent replacement and have a very short halflife (on the order of decades) except for the fact nobody really knows how to roll it, weld it, make it into a pipe etc...). Don't forget that the vast majority of our industrial complex is built on the understaning of steel.

    As with any prototype, there are issues. Fusion by itself is clean and if low activation materials can be used, such a silicon carbide and vanadium, which will result in very little radioactive waste with short halflifes.

    The other aspect of ITER, which is a boon for fusion research, is that it is the first comercial "scale up" of a fusion reactor. Current research reactors are small and thus too small to generate enough fusion power to be useful on a grid. Fusion does occur, but it is not at a "density" (I am taking a bit of liberty with the nomenclature for a simplified explanation) that is sufficient to offset the power put into the system (ie other lossy effects are not overcome until there are more fusion reactions per unit time in a given volume)

    In short future reactors will be a LOT cleaner after ITER. It's sort of like the early days of fission. A crude graphite pile lead to intrinsically safe and efficient boiling water reactors. It seems to me that a little bit of pain to jumpstart the research is worthwhile.