Fusion Reactor Project Largest After ISS

Maktoo writes "All proper geeks know Fusion is the Way of the Future. Dec 16th is the date set for selection of the site of the new International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter). A collaboration between the EU, Japan, the U.S., Canada, China, South Korea and Russia, 'ITER would be the world's largest international cooperative research and development project after the International Space Station.' Their goal over the next decade? '[T]o produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for 500 seconds or longer during each individual fusion experiment and in doing so demonstrate essential technologies for a commercial reactor.'"

Comments

eep

[NanoGator]

"Fusion Reactor Project Largest After IIS"

I'd say the odds are pretty good that somebody's going to make a Microsoft joke here.

IIS?

[swdunlop]

I know that some people consider IIS to be the greatest web server around, but I don't think it really compares with the complexity of the ISS (International Space Station)

Re:IIS?

[DDumitru]

Although the Russians don't like it, I though it was "unoficially" names Space Station Alpha (although wasn't Alpha used in the Space 1999 brit-import sci-fi series).

Re:IIS?

[MarkusH]

I prefer Isis.

Re:IIS?

[chl]

largest thermonuclear disaster

From a disaster point of view, fusion devices are extremely boring. If the reactor vessel was breached, the inrushing air would be to the plasma as the inrushing ocean on a candle flame. A magnetically confined plasma is about a factor one million less dense than normal air. It is also about one million times hotter than normal air, so you actually have a plasma pressure of one atmosphere.

This means that the energy content of the plasma and the confining magnetic field is just enough to wreck the experiment, but not much else. The radiological risk is also negligible, because the radioactive inventory of a fusion reactor is of the order of tens of kilogrammes, enough for less than a second of operation (compared to hundreds of tons for fission reactors, which have enough for years of operation). Also, the tritium, even if it escaped the reactor building, would be gone after 120 years through decay, which is a pretty short time compared to other radionuclides.

And yes, IAAPP (I am a plasma physicist).

chl

IIS?

[dmayle]

Fusion Reactor Project Largest After IIS

Don't you mean the largest thermonuclear disaster, second only to IIS? Oh... you meant ISS...

ITER Website

[displague]

http://www.iter.org/ is the ITER Project web site. The ITER U.S. is not really in production.

Cold Fusion

[AtariAmarok]

I sure hope it is cold fusion; I need a place to put my beer.

awesome stuff!

[Leroy_Brown242]

I am all for more huge international projects, that aren't war!

The more countries work together, the more it gets set into society that people from other countries are okay, and working with them is NOT like working with the enemy.

Re:awesome stuff!

[RobertB-DC]

The more countries work together, the more it gets set into society that people from other countries are okay, and working with them is NOT like working with the enemy.

You're very much right. Before the election of 2000, the US was on its way to becoming a cooperative international power. We were involved in negotiations on the Kyoto treaty, we weren't developing "Star Wars" ABM weapons, and we were even showing signs of getting with the program on such no-brainers as land mines.

It was looking for a while like people could get along. What a difference a blown election can make. Or more specifically -- and echoing comments in other threads -- what a difference a small group of xenophobic warmongers can make in a formerly peaceful society.

By the way, I lay the blame for this mess squarely at the feet of Mr. Al Gore. The election was his to lose, and he did so in craptacular fashion. Blaming the Supreme Court is like blaming the umpire -- if you'd really played better than the other team, you'd have won.

(And this message is now officially 100% -1, Offtopic. Karma to burn, baby!)

Re:awesome stuff!

[Wyatt Earp]

"Before the election of 2000, the US was on its way to becoming a cooperative international power. We were involved in negotiations on the Kyoto treaty, we weren't developing "Star Wars" ABM weapons, and we were even showing signs of getting with the program on such no-brainers as land mines."

In the spirit of the holidays I say...horseshit.

The Senate voted 97-0 against Kyoto, not voting on the Treaty, but voting to show Clinton they were not interested in the least in the form Kyoto was taking.

The US started devloping ABM systems in the 1950s, so did the Soviets, and while the names and forms changes the ABM systems were always being developed. In 1972 the ABM tready banned them for all but 1 location in a respective country, in the USSR that was Moscow, in the US it was Grand Forks ND. Then the US decommed the Sprint site in 1974 and we didn't have anything. In the 1980s they revived work on an ASAT system and a combination of energy and explosive and nuclear ABM systems under the catch-all "Star Wars". The ASAT missile worked, but was decommed, everything else trickled down through the late 80s and 90s, eventually ending up in today's ABM system of Patriots, Standards, phased-array radars and the new Interceptors atop old Minuteman missiles.

Don't for a second think that the current systems in testing were pulled out of George W. Bush's ass or something, all that was being worked on during the Clinton administration too.

As for the ban on land-mines, that wasn't ever going to happen as long as the Anti-Mine folks wouldn't give the US the exclusion for the Korean DMZ. The US has about 2.5-3 million mines there, all nicely mapped and organized and wanted either an extension to move them or an exclusion for them, nope ain't going to happen.

From 1998
"The Clinton administration is asking Congress for
relief from a moratorium on using anti-personnel land mines, saying the halt would needlessly endanger U.S. service members.

The only alternative to land mines now is to use greater force. "If we were to do that in Korea, we would have to deploy 17,000 additional troops, 350 additional tanks, 410 additional Bradley fighting vehicles, 24additional helicopters and 144 other aircraft," Bacon said. "So it would mean a very substantial increase in our forces in a very short period of time, because we assume that in Korea our warning would be very, very short."

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/May1998 n05111998_9805119.html

Re:awesome stuff!

[SEE]

Oh, yes.

The Kyoto Treaty, which the U.S. Senate unanimously declared it would not ratify.

The "Star Wars" ABM weapons we weren't developing, except for through the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, which is the name under which Clinton continued to fund the Reagan-established Strategic Defense Initiative Organization.

The land mine treaty, which Clinton refused to sign because it didn't include the Korea exemption.

Meanwhile, those of us back here on planet Earth note that the difference between the Clinton and Bush foreign policies are a few stylistic flourishes and a few minor details around the edges. Heck, even Clinton invaded a country, bypassing a recalitrant UNSC, with a coalition of the willing -- Kosovo.

(Of course, since European lives are valuable, unlike those of Kurds or Marsh Arabs, Kosovo was justified despite the fact that it was an illegal war of agression, unjustified by any threat Serbia posed to any of the invading nations, and of no straegic consequence.)

Re:awesome stuff!

[bill_mcgonigle]

I am all for more huge international projects, that aren't war!

But if we called it "The War on Fossil Fuels" Congress would fund it better. They're particularly fond of that metaphor.

Great Scott!

[NanoGator]

"[T]o produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for 500 seconds or longer during each individual fusion experiment and in doing so demonstrate essential technologies for a commercial reactor"

500 megawatts? Wow, that's almost in the gigawatt range. If anybody's curious, I found a mockup of what the commercial product will look like.

Re:Great Scott!

[Randolpho]

Wow, that's almost in the gigawatt range.

Yes, and all they need is 1.21 to time travel!

Re:Great Scott!

[neocon]

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.

If someone else screws your girlfriend so much that you don't get to, you stay a virgin. If brave US soldiers go fight terrorists overseas so you don't have to fight them here, you get to live in peace.

Any questions?

Re:Great Scott!

[/dev/trash]

500 MW is good but you need 1.21 Gigawatts for that to work

Re:Great Scott!

[jlehtira]

Indeed. The fighters will never know peace, but I sure am grateful that USA is making itself THE target for all those nutty terrorists.

Then again, Hussein's not my girlfriend..

Seriously; it's only a matter of time that everybody gets nuclear weapons, so quarreling with half the world seems a bit.. Overconfident?

Re:Great Scott!

[Bearpaw]

Seriously; it's only a matter of time that everybody gets nuclear weapons, so quarreling with half the world seems a bit.. Overconfident?

Confident is the attitude that they're trying to project. My impression is that it's really a bizarre combination of arrogant and desperate. I'm afraid that what the US Admin is really doing is the political equivalent of artificially inflating the stock price. The collapse is gonna be really ugly.

Website

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd go and learn all about this project if their website wasn't on drugs.

Neon-gradient backgrounds? What is this, 1995?

Neutron Source

[tchdab1]

Does this project get the funding it does because a fusion reactor is also a neutron source?

And what can be done with a high flux of neutrons?

An excercise for the reader.

Re:Neutron Source

[deglr6328]

High flux neutron beams are commonly available from plain old fission reactors. I doubt they'd go through the trouble.

Re:Neutron Source

[gl4ss]

penetrate your tinfoil hat perhaps?

it's not like it's a good way to get them even is it? the reason to do them is to 'unleash the power of the atom' so to speak.. or rather not unleash it but put it on a leash so we can use it.

cheap electricity is worth investing for.

Re:Neutron Source

[confused one]

The neutrons are going to be (eventually) absorbed in a liquid lithium metal jacket. The lithium absorbs the neutrons to create tritium and or deuterium which can be extracted and recycled back into the reactor as fuel

Re:Neutron Source

[RobertB-DC]

The lithium absorbs the neutrons to create tritium and or deuterium

I'm not a nuclear physicist, but I'm always curious about the processes involved. Wikipedia says that Li has two natural isotopes (6-Li and 7-Li), and that 8-Li (with the added neutron) has a half-life of less than a second.

The extra neutron in 8-Li gets converted to a proton plus a high-energy electron (a Beta Particle). That leaves you with 4 protons and 4 neutrons, which could simply remain 8-Be. Apparently, though, it's more likely to fly apart into a pair of Alpha particles -- which are just 4-He without any electrons.

But I don't see where we get the Deuterium and Tritium you mentioned. Do the Alpha particles interact with the Lithium to generate even more cool nucleotides?

Re:Neutron Source

[krysith]

It is the Li-6 that generates the additional tritium when it is hit by neutrons. A useful reference. The tritium must be regenerated because it is rather expensive. Deuterium on the other hand is cheap and plentiful, and thus does not require regeneration.

Re:Neutron Source

[chl]

The tritium must be regenerated because it is rather expensive.

Tritium also has a half life of about 12 years, so that even if it did grow on trees, it would be practically gone after 120 years, so it does not accumulate in nature the way coal, oil etc. do. Breeding tritium on a JIT basis therefore is the best way.

chl

Re:Neutron Source

[chl]

And what can be done with a high flux of neutrons?

Breed fissionable reactor fuel from thorium to keep the fission plants running until we can switch to all fusion? Although I doubt the ITER team can afford to waste money and effort on this. Also, the earth's uranium resources are not going to run out until long after the ITER timeframe.

Then, there are the neutron diagnostics for the solid state physicists, but they can usually make do with conventional fission-based neutron sources.

chl

Another possibility...

[deglr6328]

As someone who works in the laser fusion camp(though just as a lowly technician), I feel obligated to point out that there may be something of a dark horse in the race to fusion power currently in the running... Besides the obvious method of magnetic confinement in Tokamaks and Stellarators, which do still have the best chance at becoming true fusion reactors of the future attaining ignition and breakeven; there is another way that inertial confinement fusion using lasers may still hold promise. There are 2 new beams (will be called "Omega EP")currently being built which will be added to the 60 beam 60 Terawatt Omega Laser in the next few years. What is special about these new lasers is they are over 1,000 TIMES more powerful than the old Omega beams at over 1 Petawatt each! The new lasers will be used to ignite a Hydrogen fuel capsule at exactly the moment of highest compression by the old Omega laser, sort of acting like a spark plug effect. The GekkoXII laser in Japan which has a (much weaker) Petawatt laser attached to it's also less powerful compressing laser recently verified this method as increasing fusion yield by a couple orders of magnitude, this puts the Omega laser as having a very high likelihood of igniting it's fusion capsules by using the new laser in conjunction with the old 60 beam Omega. If someone can then figure out how to ramp the laser up to a high pulse repetition rate (burning many capsules/second) possibly using a diode pumped Nd:glass system then you have a real contender for a fusion power plant.

Re:Another possibility...

[Councilor Hart]

Most fusion-research in the EU is with tokomaks and stellerators, indeed.
A lott of the research into ICF (inertial confinement fusion, meaning with lasers) happens in the United States.

I guess it's no coincident that fusion through tokomaks can only be used as a power source, but ICF also as a weapon.

Re:Another possibility...

[deglr6328]

I suppose then it should also come as no surprise to you that France is building a new megajoule class laser (right on par with the US's NIF project) to test its nuclear weapon simulations.

Re:Another possibility...

[Councilor Hart]

Well, France is part of the european union. It's not the european union.
The policy of EFDA, if I am not mistaking (could be euratom as well) is that research in fusion can only be for peaceful-puposes.
I was referring to that, not to projects undertaken by a specific country.

Re:Another possibility...

[Councilor Hart]

They are PART of the EU.
As Texas or Florida is part of the USA.
Or is California = USA
So perhaps Schwarzenegger = president of the USA?

Finally!

[NegativeK]

It's good to see the US back on big-science again. After the Super-Collider in Texas fell through.. What was it, half the budget spent, and they dropped a project that could open up amazing new areas in particle physics?
Then there's JET, which America pulled out of.. From what I understand, most of the new grounds in fusion research occured there.
Oh, and who can forget - the moon. We dropped that like a bad habit. When it comes to big science, this country seems to have the attention span of a goldfish. Sure, we'll make great strides, but then we'll just.. Drop it if it doesn't push votes for the politicians anymore. Argh.

Let's just hope that we stick to this project.

Re:Finally!

[bill_mcgonigle]

It's good to see the US back on big-science again. [SSC,JET,etc.]

And curious which administration killed the projects and which is getting on board. Not what one might expect.

Re:It doesn't work that way

[Leroy_Brown242]

I was thinking about it on a more personal level.

For years I grew up around some of the lowest cast of hispanic people. The poor, undereducated, whatever. basicly, hispanic white trash.
When I moved out into the tech sector though, I found out how wrong I was. Spending time with a broader range of hispanics made me realise exactly how wrong I was. Now, I hate everyone based on how dumb they are, and not the colour of thier skin.

My hope is, that with countries working on a personal level, they will grow friends with people from other nations. If thier attitude changes, and they pass that on to friends, family, and children, then good will have been done.

missing countries

[theMerovingian]

A collaboration between the EU, Japan, the U.S., Canada, China, South Korea and Russia

What about Iran and North Korea? Surely they have nuclear experience to bring to the table...

Re:missing countries

[kippy]

I think they will have more to offer on the fission side of things. Fission we've got. This new project is fussion.

Re:missing countries

[chl]

This new project is fussion.

Great, I'm all confussed now.

chl

Re:It doesn't work that way

[Daniel Dvorkin]

It doesn't work that way, as familiarity does not erase contempt. The Serbs have lived alongside the Bosnians and others for centuries, and still they have tried to exterminate them at different times. Same with Germans and Jews, or Muslims and Jews.

For many, it is just a change to get closer to their enemy.

The thing is, that in all the cases you cited, these groups lived together for centuries and didn't try to exterminate each other -- until small groups of fanatics whipped up ancient hatreds to further their own political ends. Hatred of "The Other" may be a natural human emotion, but it's not inevitable. When you get right down to it, most people, in most times and places, really just want to live in peace so they can get on with their business. Look at almost any example of internecine war in history, and you'll find a few whackos and a bunch of sheep, not genuine mass movements.

Still another possibility

[wfbush]

General Fusion

Similar to inertial confinement, but without all the expensive lasers and without said lasers using up huge amounts of power themselves making breakeven pretty tenuous.

Re:Still another possibility

[deglr6328]

I can't help but think that organization is BS. The initial acoustic cavitation fusion experiment which was said to have produced neutrons was never sucessfully repeated. The method described in that website of using Lithium as the cavitation "pusher" has, to my knowledge, not even been attempted or if it has, has never been published. As to their claim that "It is the goal of General Fusion to develop this reactor and generate clean, safe and economical fusion energy by the end of 2004."...well... that's just insane.

Re:What really happened.

[RobertB-DC]

The anonymous one wrote:
What happened after 2000 was that the U.S. decided to behave more responsibly.

Actually, after 2000, Bush tried to pretend that the rest of the world didn't exist. Once he got reminded otherwise on September 11, he still didn't have a clue, so Cheney, Rumsfeld & co got free rein.

I won't get into a further discussion with an AC except to say this: I pray for my cousin, a Captain with the 4th ID in Iraq, every time I hear of another attack on our (undermanned) forces. And that's several times a day, now.

Re:It doesn't work that way, still

[Leroy_Brown242]

Well, cheers, Here's to hoping.

Maybe what the world needs is a better attitude. I know you're being real, I know you are being truthfull. I know that you've not told any lies, I know you have not stretched any truths.

People are hatefull
People are stubburn
People inherit predjudices from thier parents
People learn hate, they aren't born with it.

Dammit, I strayed from the point again.

Vortex Plasma Containment

[plainvanilla]

There is a theoretical physicist in the UK supporting himself as a tutor while working on getting a plasma to contain itself with the electric/magnetic fields that arise from it's own vortex. He's experiencing some technical difficulties at this time jump-starting the vortex, but hey, if it was easy everyone would do it. So far, he has managed to create a tornado in a petri dish No, I am not making this up. Take a look: http://www.peter-thomson.co.uk/tornado/fusion/Intr oduction_to_the_charge_sheath_vortex.html

Or we could all stop acting like children...

[windside]

Yet another cheap shot to join the thousands that are fired from within Europe toward the "Wild West" on a daily basis. I'm a Canadian living in Japan so I have two degrees of outsider-ness; let me tell you, it's starting to get ridiculous.

Seriously, grow up.