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EU Intent on Hosting International Fusion Reactor
Raunch writes "The BBC says that EU is determined to be one of the sites that host the multi-billion-dollar International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor Even if they have to do so less-than-internationally: 'If there is no agreement at six we are determined to do it with fewer.' Not only that, but 'The EU wants an agreement on the project before the end of the year'"
No, it's not the US putting up a fight. No, it's not the US that would probably be shut out in the cold. This is a threat against Japan and to a lesser extent China. Can we please keep the US vs. Europe flamewar out of this thread?
A deadline? Wait .. I thought the purpose of government was to prevent things from getting done. Couldn't have happened anywhere else but the US^H^H^H EU!
Steal This Sig
There is certainly a big fat chunk of change to wind up in the host country. With costs spread across 6 contributing countries, and even if the host country has to pay a larger share, that is all money going into:
- local construction companies (high end ones)
- local infrastructure (data, transport, etc)
- ongoing salaries being spent in the local villages
- pride for the news bylines containing $GLORIOUS_MOTHERLAND
I understand the US is pretty agnostic to location (realizing that the one thing all the other 5 could agree that it would absolutely not be the US)-- but with recent developments where Paris is not so much the US friend, and Tokyo is ever more loyal, I wouldn't be surprised if the US starts to put its thumb on the scales...
davejenkins.com |
This is something so important to the people of the world, and all the politicians can think of is to fight about where it will be placed.
I just wish, for once, these people would get out of their petty mindsets and realize that the more important issue here is NOT where it's going to be, but what it is going to do.
Er, go ahead with the flaming about the evil terrorists who will destroy the reactor or take over the worlds energy sources now.
StrayByte.Net
A significat new energy source is going to be huge, especially with world demand for oil (due to the growth in Chinese industry) rising to the point where its pushing supply to the limits...
Supposedly this reactor would represent the last major step required before, hopefully, fusion power stations could become a reality. The EU very naturally wants t locate it in Europe, thus giving Europe a stronger edge and focus in alternative energy research.
Interestingly the alternate site is not in the US, but rather in Japan. And that is certainly what the EU is worried about - the Japanese economy, afte a decade and more of recession is finally starting to crawl back. And the Japanese are very good at small and efficient, and are already leading the world (jointly with Korea I guess) in alternative power transport (hybrids, and hydrogen fuel cell cars).
It will be interesting to see how the fight finally plays out.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
I guess it's to speed up the filming of Terminator 4.
delay the fusion project. Reason: oil industry. I attended a presentation about the technical background of Fusion(tokamak) reactors in Hungary last year. Probably 2036 is the time when the first feasible fusion reactor could have started working, that was the plan a year ago. It happens to be at the same time when oil supplies run out. If these kind of reactors make it before that time, oil companies lose money. And thats a thing the USA wont let.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I'm tired of the Euros and their damned 'go it alone' attitude! The world just became a more dangerous place.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
EU Intent on Hosting International Fusion Reactor
No. I should read 'France Intent on Hosting International Fusion Reactor'. France and Japan have been battling over the reactor since the project was announced. It looks like the consortium will splinter. That is not a bad thing. It might inject some real high stakes competition into nuclear fusion reaseach.
an ill wind that blows no good
I hope they get this wrangling over the site over with soonish and get down to building something. We need some abundant energy source pretty soon to avoid either global anarchy when the fossil fuels run out or global catastrophe when we gas the planet with CO2. ITER is the best chance yet. I bet there'll be cool science/technology spin-offs too.
The world is everything that is the case
This is all wrong. Its not a nuclear reactor. Its a fusion reactor. It has million and million C hot plasma in it(4th state of materials). The shape of the reactor is called tokamak (at least in hungarian, not sure about the correct english writing of it). The really good thing about this reactor that its not dangerous. While in nuclear reactors, some events can lead into a chain reaction. No such thing can happen in a fusion reactor, since If the reaction gets more input(materials, heat, etc) its just shuts itself down, on the contrary to the exponential reaction observed in nuclear reactions. The fusion reactor is one of the cleanest if not the cleanest known way to produce energy.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Sorry to reply to my own post, but here are some interesting things: There is already a working fusion reactor in the UK. This one though, not generates but consumes power. It's because the reactor is too small, it needs to have a big enough size for the reaction inside to be self-sustaining, and its not big enough for that. The first reactor which would actually produce power, is what the debate about atm.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Well, we already off load most of our CO2 production to third world countries and china, the decline in manufacturing and farming (yes farting cows) is significantly helping to reduce our CO2 levels.
The outsourcing of work to other countries is also keeping our inflation low, cheep imports=low inflation, we hardly produce any food in this country.
So don't be greedy, let a heavily polluting country like China or a country with next to no resources like Japan have the pride in have a fusion research faculty.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
um yeah that's right, France has a really big problem with "terrorists" and people disliking them don't they? Unlike, say the US.
I can only think of one country that actually dislikes the French at the moment and that's the US.
Can't help thinking that the word "Experimental" in the name is going to frighten people unnecessarily.
I've had the theme tune to Quantum Leap going through my head all day... Now you have, too!
But who will pay the electric bill
Philip
Signatures are broken
If our supplies of coal and oil even get close to drying up before we can mass produce electricity from fusion generators then the world is in big trouble. Not only do we rely on oil for our light and heat but for transport of *all* goods, food and clothes. Our economies and lives would be thown into turmoil and you can bet that the powerful countries won't object to war to solve these problems (maybe they are doing so already?) Our civilisation hinges upon our supplies of energy (see Last and First Men :) and this makes research into fusion power the most important endevour of our time.
With regards the EU making the world a more dangerous place comment, I can only assume that was a joke.
You are so ignorant.
This is a fusion reactor, not a fission reactor. When things go wrong in a fission reactor there is the possibility of a meltdown, etc. This possibility does not exist in a fusion reactor. If something goes wrong, the reaction stops and in a worst case scenario, there's a fire. Nothing worse than your average coal plant, except for the fact that it's not emitting tonnes of carbon dioxide.
You say that as a joke, but for the most part, it's true. There is very little turmoil within the limits of the EU at the moment.
while true;do echo -e -n "\033[s\n\033[u\134_\033[B";done
With the cost of Iraq war draining at about $1.5B per week, it roughly takes 1 month of war for 1 reactor, in monetary terms.
With having 2 seperate projects. One US/Japan and an intra EU project? OK - it increases costs but a few billion is hardly significant in governmental terms. Hopefully they would engage in knowledge sharing and figure out who did what best and how TOGETHER their creations are greater than the sum of its parts...
Or maybe I'm just hoping for some rational, reasonable thinking and not politics.... Hmmm... That'll be the day....
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Ya, too bad we've had cold fusion up and running at area51 since the 70's. We just like to laugh at everyone else throw their money into dead-ends.
QUOTE: "If I were a fusion scientist going to work on ITER, I'd much prefer to live in beautiful France than in the sparsely populated bit of North Japan where ITER would be built."
Yeaahhh... but that's not the point!
1. Which location will make a better video game when it all goes sour and opens a spiraling portal to Dark Aether?
2. You don't want the scientists to be distracted by the svelte natives.
3. Don't do that!
With all the writing this guy does, on physics, the stock market and on other stuff, you wonder where he finds the time to do any actual research. Reading his 'proof' about the limits on output of a fusion reactor, I can draw only one conclusion: he's a crackpot.
Oh and in between cracking the secrets to the stockmarkets and proving wrong all the eminent scientists who believe fusion power can work, he also solved the problem of the Grand Unified Theory of Physics, according to his website.
This is not intended as a flame; but I have some serious problems taking this guy seriously.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Hey, mod this up! +10 insightful! Never seen a more witty or erudite reply in all my years on Slashdot!
Back on topic, it'd strike me as odd to put our last resort for our energy future in a country renowned for its earthquakes. What if it got destroyed before it could be fully tested? It would be a disaster of epic proportions.
I understand it's a hard concept to grasp for people living in areas that are never struck by earthquakes, so let me explain. Little quakes are a mere nuissance. There's hardly ANY structural damage. Also, even within Japan, there are areas that are never affected by earthquakes. This is where the majority of fission (yes, I said fission!! Not Fusion! RTFA!) reactors are placed in remote areas of Japan, which are never affected. Places like Fukushima and Niigata. Woops! Niigata was just hit by an earthquake. However, the reactors were fine. They're build to withstand severe quakes. (Honestly, it isn't that hard. It does, however, cost a lot of money.)
If there's something to worry about nuclear reactors (fission, fusion, what not) in Japan, it's NOT the earthquakes. The Japanese (specifically the electricity companies) have, over the course of the last 5 years, demonstrated how they are unable to properly run one of these. They have the tech to build them, and run them, but the internal bureaucracy of the electric companies results in dangerous practice. IF they had properly followed the manuals, none of the accidents that have occured over the last 5 years would have ever occured. (Google it, there are a few to freak out over.)
This brings me to the reason why I don't like nukes. Nukes are safe, when properly handled. They can be contained. However the keyword is "when properly handled", and even though people understand HOW to do this, they just don't. Human error is the reason for almost all nuclear accidents. And as long as people run these things (including computer programs that PEOPLE write), nukes will never truly be safe.
As an interesting side note, Japan has constantly been telling it's people that Japan HAS TO use nuclear reactors, because there aren't enough natural resources, oil and coal polute, yada yada yada. Most people believed this. Until last year.
Last year, the gov't was able to prevent eventual disaster at the Fukushima nuke plants, because they found out about forged inspection results. There were several cracks in some of the pipes, and so on. So much came out, that they ordered ALL the plants be shut down there, and everything be completely re-inspected and fixed. These plants in Fukushima supposedly supplied the majority of electricity to Tokyo, so Tokyo had about 50% of it's supposed electricity sources cut off. Since Tokyo gets WAY hot and humid in the summer time, there were suppose to be rolling black outs, brown outs, and what not. It never happened, even though most of the nukes were shut down. (Some electricity was purchased from Osaka, but due to infrastructure limitations, the ammount was minimal.)
So, what happened? Everyone changed the settings on their air conditioners just 1 or 2 degrees higher than usual. Tokyo never exceeded 85% energy consumption of max available electricity, at the peak moments in the year of the most electricity consumption. Tokyo never needed nuclear plants. (For the sceptics, I should note that Japan does not have any coal burning reactors, and the majority of fire powered reactors use natural gas, not oil.)
As an interesting side note, some people in Japan claim that electric cars and trains don't reduce pollution, because they rely on electricity generated by either fire power (a term loosely used in Japan, which really means natural gas and not oil, but in this instance is suppose to create the image that it's oil) or nukes (again, nuclear contamination). However, another interesting thing happened. Niigata got earthquakes, and as a result, there was some damage to HYDRO plants that the train companies owned, which supplied anywhere from 25% to 50% of the electrical power to Tokyo trains. Mind you ,
Why are people suggesting that this will in any way affect the US's dependancy on oil. We use oil primarily for our vehicles. Unless everyone is going to get a fusion reactor in their car or someone miraculously solves all of the problems associated with electric cars, this will have very little affect on our dependency on oil. It will have a very large affect on our coal and fission consumption.
He also seems to have proved that gravity is caused by sound waves. The EU might be better advised to ignore him on the grounds that he is a nutter.
the other iter members went ahead and cleared the blockade that has been laid since bush reentered iter.
The first post is completely wrong about it being a "threat" to China or anyone else. China *wants* the reactor to be built in the EU instead of Japan. So does the other ITER member, Russia. If the US hadn't opposed the french location and induced Japan to resist it more strongly despite the odds, the project would have went ahead some time ago.
Unlike nuclear fission power, fusion power has enough fuel available that it could potentially supply all of the world's energy demand for thousands and even millions of years and it doesn't produce nearly as much dangerous nuclear waste nor can fusion power be used as a disguise for a nuclear weapons program. The amount of deuterium for fusion is practically unlimited - 1 kg of ordinary water contains about 1 gram of heavy water which contains deuterium instead of common hydrogen. It seems that, unlike in the past decades where the researchers said "Fusion Power will be ready soon, there are just some issues which we expect to have resolved soon if we get more money." it now is "We have the issues resolved and could build a reactor that can sustain a fusion reaction and give a net output of energy. Now we just need the money to build a reactor sufficiently large so we can prove and make sure that it works like we think it does."
Of course with such a pretty-much-as-cheap-as-coal technology available as the solar tower that is so simple in its function, provides steady uninterrupted power, and about which relevant laws of nature are so well understood that it is guaranteed to work, it may be questionable if we actually have a reasonable need for fusion power on earth. Of course, solar towers need a sunny place to build them in order to be efficient and they don't need any high-tech to build either, which may well be the reason why the west has mostly stopped supporting the technology. Solar tower for large scale electricity production can be build with just basic construction materials like mostly cement, steel and glass(which is sand) and with labor. Ideal if you want to help many poor countries, but inadequate if you want them to stay poor and dependent to keep exploiting them.
Actually, the French in Ivory Coast aren't acting as an imperial power, they are acting as peacekeepers to end the civil war there. With a UN mandata, unlike certain other people... Of course the fact that they are actually taking action against the government when it violates the terms of the ceasefire doesn't make them popular there, but it is effective.
As for principles and opposition to the war: The war had nothing to do with principles in the first place. Get over it. You might also have to accept the idea that just because someone is your ally in important matters doesn't mean they have to ask "How high?" every time you say "Jump".
no taxation without representation!
You do know what the EU is don't you? It's (roughly) 30, sovereign, nations that all agree to co-operate. When it comes to co-operation I think Europe can teach the US an awful lot.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Um.. have you been following the news lately? As we speak (or read), there are anti-french riots in the Ivory Coast because France is still acting like an Imperial power in Africa. The French are actually engaged in a shooting war with Ivory Coast nationalists who want the French to stop interfering in their country's internal affairs. Throughout its "former" colonies in Africa, France does not hesitate to intervene and play kingmaker.
Wrong ; we're there on the behalf of the UN. With a mandate. We've been brutally attacked, and we shot back and made sure Ivory army had no more helicopetrs to do that again. Full stop.
How about Corsica and the resistance to French colonialism there? The Corsican resistance periodically explodes bombs to try to drive the French out.
Trouble is the so-called corsican nationalists top at 9% in the democratic elections. I understand you're suggesting to let that fanatical minority have control over the 91% who feel they're as French as I am ? Or perhaps we should send the army down there to settle democracy the US way ? Same apply in New Caledonia btw. And to finish the picture, you should know there's no poll made public recently as to know wether mainland french wish to keep Corsica. For what I hear, I'm damn sure that most of us are ready to dump Corsica and give money to anybody willing to get them. But that would really be injust to the majority of perfectly normal citizens who happen to have a bunch of murderers for neighbours in their island.
France's opposition to the US war in Iraq had *nothing* to do with priciple and everything to do with * French national interests in Saddam's Oil industry - The French were willing to let a brutal dictator continue to make mass graves as long as the oil contracts flowed to french companies - blood for oil ;
USA got more than half the total money flow made through this program. Go wash your hands.
You know, HighOrbit, we've got a saying down there : "the day when idiots will fly, there will be an endless night". Hopefully, you're showing that they'll actually fly much to high to hide the sun.
Call me flamebait.
Clinton pulled out because the US wanted to experiment on fusion in a whole other are, namely firing lasers at tritium-pellets.
If you read the articles liked to the main page, you can clearly see that after 3 years the USA came back around the table, but oposed France as an area where Iter could be build, because of France's oposition to the war.
Which is really silly and childish. The USA should grow up and respect the wishes of other countries not to support an illegal war, and not try to link an international scientific endeavour with their foreign politics and their scewed worldview that the US should rule everything, blessed as it is by God Himself.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Come on! How do you think the rest of the world does business? Do you think the US or Japan, or any other country behaves differently? See Microsoft or Boeing, for example!
When I first read this I was thinking but isn't fusion currently incapable of producing more electricity than it consumes? Well, it turns out it is capable of producing more electricity than it consumes, but just barely. Not enough to sustain regular power generation. The record Power Amplification Factor (Q) is 1.25 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_nuclear_ fusion). This project is expected to push that factor up to 10, which is "proof of principle" but still below what is desirable for "good overall plant efficiency" (http://www.iter.org/ITERPublic/ITER/fr7.html). So that's why it's an "experimental" reactor. Based on the timeline of this project (and assuming it's successful) it looks like usable fusion reactors could be less than 50 years away.
One of the results of fusion is free neutrons, going off into whatever material surrounds the fusion process. In the case of the tokamak, neutrons can't be confined by magnetic fields because they are electrically neutral. The neutrons make the tokamak itself become highly radioactive over time, and will cause it to eventually be decommissioned because it is too dangerous to work around.
Now, granted, the tokamak can be stored unused for a hundred years or so and then recommissioned (it is a hell of a lot better than the thousand-years half-lives of fission wasteproducts), but it is still a problem that needs to be addressed.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
It's good that the US is trying to set a better example then.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9901/08/olympic.bribes.03/
Big international business is corrupt. Who would've guessed?
Japan ? .. That whole country has bad memories associated with anything Nuklear (for the whole world too).
Do you have any idea how many fisson reactors Japan operates?
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!