EU Fusion Experiment's Financial Woes Get More Concrete

fiannaFailMan writes "An international plan to build a nuclear fusion reactor is being threatened by rising costs, delays and technical challenges. 'Emails leaked to the BBC indicate that construction costs for the experimental fusion project called Iter have more than doubled. Some scientists also believe that the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome and that the development of fusion as a commercial power source is still at least 100 years away. At a meeting in Japan on Wednesday, members of the governing Iter council will review the plans and may agree to scale back the project.' Iter will be a Tokamak device, a successor to the Joint European Torus (JET) in England. Meanwhile, an experiment in fusion by laser doesn't seem to be running into the same high profile funding problems just yet."

Comments

Posting

[c00rdb]

posting to undo accidental mod

Re:Posting

[Anonymous Coward]

I must admit this is a unique first post.

Useless? Of course. But at least its not a copy/paste troll.

Re:Posting

[CecilPL]

Nope, he posted the same thing two days ago. I wonder how long he can keep getting modded Funny?

Re:Posting

[Hurricane78]

I wonder when he will notice that Funny does not give karma...

Re:Posting

[beav007]

posting to undo accidental mod

This was very careless of you...

Re:Posting

[fractoid]

I wonder when you will notice that karma is not his aim...

To heck with Fusion.

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

I want Anti-Mater power.

Re:To heck with Fusion.

[Samalie]

You're posting on Shashdot. Thats enough of an anti-mater for any girl out there.

Now anti-matter energy....that would be cool :)

Re:To heck with Fusion.

[superdave80]

Is Anti-mater like an evil mirror universe version of Tow-mater from "Cars"?

Re:To heck with Fusion.

[MaskedSlacker]

You hate your mother that much?

Re:To heck with Fusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're posting on Shashdot. Thats enough of an anti-mater for any girl out there.

Where is this Shashdot you speak of?

Re:To heck with Fusion.

[lennier]

It's like Slashdot, but on hash.

News for stoners. Stuff that... wow.

Better get cracking!

[cashman73]

We're supposed to have Mr. Fusion by 2015, you know,... Of course, we were supposed to have flying cars 9 years ago, too,... ;-)

Re:Better get cracking!

[CarpetShark]

I'm guessing you've never seen Space 1999.

Re:Better get cracking!

[Afforess]

No, Fusion power isn't unlocked until 2050.

Re:Better get cracking!

[Sausage Nibblets]

We're supposed to have Mr. Fusion by 2015, you know,... Of course, we were supposed to have flying cars 9 years ago, too,... ;-)

According to TFA you linked to:

vehicles seen in Back to the Future Part II don't have a Mr. Fusion, and the Texaco service station in 2015 is still in operation.

Re:Better get cracking!

[Tweenk]

+1 Sim City reference

I am impressed

[spyfrog]

The saying has always been that "fusion is still 50 years away", for fifty years ago and recent.
Now EU has managed to make it 100 years away - it's an impressive achievement: they have managed to double the time we have to wait. Great use of money. Since fusion was only "50 years away" when we started we where actually better off before we started to build that reactor (or the scientists where to optimistic, but whats the fun in that?).

Re:I am impressed

[roc97007]

Or is it possible that since governments fund research, not solutions, that's what they're getting -- research, not solutions. Practical fusion will always be 50 years ahead, because that's what we are (inadvertently) paying scientists to say.

Re:I am impressed

[somersault]

Better off than when we started indeed:

Some scientists also believe that the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome

Somehow we have changed the universe to make fusion more difficult. We'd better be careful just how much research we do into it - if we do too much, the sun will stop working!

Re:I am impressed

[EvanED]

Bah, I'm not impressed. SimCity 2000 taught me that fusion reactors will be available in about 2050 to 2060. If reality fails to live up to Will Wright, I will be sorely disappointed.

Re:I am impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Practical fusion will always be 50 years ahead, because that's what we are (inadvertently) paying scientists to say.

Scientist in lab: "Ha! Another positive energy run! Well, we'll just fudge the numbers so it looks like it took more energy to start the fusion than we got back. Can't jeopardize our funding..."

Nope, I don't buy it. Once fusion hits positive returns, there will be more money spent on it, to develop it to practical status. And the lab that first hits positive return will go down in history, famous forever.

Scientists working on fusion would love to succeed.

since governments fund research, not solutions, that's what they're getting -- research, not solutions.

I don't know how you can skip the research and go straight to the solution. If you know how, then please go do it for fusion, and make yourself fabulously wealthy as you solve all our long-term energy problems.

And if you don't know how, then stop bad-mouthing the fusion scientists. Kthxbye.

Re:I am impressed

[CodeBuster]

Even if there is a breakthrough it is likely that some or all of the scientists will immediately quit the project and attempt to jump on board with "investor" companies as they rush to patent the fruits of what was formerly publicly funded research. It would become yet another classic case of privatization of profits and socialization of costs, losses, and risks.

Re:I am impressed

[ThePlague]

They did better than that. When I was in physics grad school in the late 80's, early 90's, commercial fusion was "20 years away" and had been that way for over 40 years.

Re:I am impressed

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

... Which would still be of massive benefit to everyone. I mean the internet is a very good example of what you just described. I daresay nothing came of it while govt. controlled it. Only when private sector got involved did things get interesting. The same will be true of fusion power.

And ... of course if the government pays everyone gets to steal. Think about it this way : what prospects do scientists who don't do this have if they stay in government service ? The very top of the reward curve is a pad on the back.

Private sector will gladly pay heaps of money for even minor advancements, and even if you're motivated by research : ever compare the pitiful university labs with a private company's equipment ? The first time I did some research for a company I asked "when do I have to return these sensors ?", thinking it'd be like university, where you can use anything costing over 10$ for perhaps a day or two unless you're a professor, and even then. They just looked and said "never, this was budgeted for you, take it home afterwards".

I should say the difference is heaven and earth. But it isn't. The difference is heaven and hell.

Re:I am impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

This argument is getting old...

Yeah, there's an untold number of scientist who would turn down a Nobel prize and tenure in favor of... tenure if not cancelled.

Right.

Idiot.

Re:I am impressed

[Chris Burke]

Nope, I don't buy it. Once fusion hits positive returns, there will be more money spent on it, to develop it to practical status. And the lab that first hits positive return will go down in history, famous forever.

And the researchers could get a Nobel Prize and could name their price for a job with a company building commercial fusion plants, and...

Yeah, score one for common sense there. Mod the AC up.

Re:I am impressed

[RsG]

And the researchers could get a Nobel Prize and could name their price for a job with a company building commercial fusion plants, and...

Yeah, score one for common sense there. Mod the AC up.

Forget the Nobel Prize, they'd be looking at their names in the history books. Nobel winners come and go, but technological breakthroughs of this magnitude happen a couple times a century, max. Do you know what most researchers in science and engineering would do for that kind of legacy?

The problem is not foot dragging (except on the part of the bean counters). Simply put, the problems associated with building a working fusion power plant, while not insurmountable, are still very difficult. Net energy output is only the beginning; you need a way to exchange fuel for waste from the working plasma, you need to be able to keep the containment running without an hiccups (or the whole thing stops working), you need to maintain superconductivity in the magnets...

It isn't enough to break even, you need to break even and keep going before you can hook up to the grid and supply power. This is why they say it'll be decades instead of years; we aren't that far from the break-even point, but then there's all the other steps after that.

Re:I am impressed

[tenZygzak]

Commercial fusion will be "20 years away" after normal fusion. As always.

Re:I am impressed

[adavies42]

Now EU has managed to make it 100 years away - it's an impressive achievement

they must be trying to one-up nasa

Re:I am impressed

[Goldsmith]

I don't know whether to find this comment funny or depressing...

For ITER specifically, one of the reasons the US wasn't involved early on was that ITER was promoting itself as a test for a commercial reactor. The US science community and the DOE didn't buy it, but were willing to fund a research focused reactor.

Re:I am impressed

[bertoelcon]

Somehow we have changed the universe to make fusion more difficult.

I don't think we did it, must be entropy.

Re:I am impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, I don't buy it. Once fusion hits positive returns, there will be more money spent on it, to develop it to practical status. And the lab that first hits positive return will go down in history, famous forever.

Your reasoning assumes that fusion power is practical when it very well may not be. If they discover that economic positive return is impossible, do you think they'll all just go home? There's plenty of academic researchers out there who will continue to request and spend money fully knowing their research is a dead end. The re-justification of NIF is proof of this.

Re:I am impressed

[ultranova]

Commercial fusion will be "20 years away" after normal fusion. As always.

Commercial fusion - the merging of two small corporations into a single large one - is already commonplace. The problem is making it profit-positive; that is, how do you make the profits from that large corporation minus the sum of profits from the small ones be larger than the money spent on the fusion?

Commercial fission, on the other hand, is regularly used to energize in the marketplace, and is usually catalyzed by neutral parties, such as anti-trust committees. Spontaneous decay does occur, however one would be wise to avoid the particle companies thus emitted, as they tend to be irradiated with poisonous debt.

Both of these commercial power generation forms are somewhat controversial amongst some religious and philosophical groups, such as libertarians, who argue that the Limited Liability Force that governs large corporate interactions is contrary to their beliefs and thus an evil perversion of nature. Said groups would rather we'd stick with less efficient but more straightforward interactions between indivisible (except with a chainsaw) businessmen particles. Some also argue that the supply of Corporate Spin, which is a vital element of all interactions, is of limited supply and will be exhausted unless we deploy Astroturf Generators which, unfortunately, also produce and release weapon-grade bullshit into the environment. There is no known way to contain this contaminant.

Re:I am impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

something tells me there is in existence, something called a "Contract" and it might have "since we are compensating you, you will agree to these terms" ... just a hunch that you weren't the first person to think of this particular possibility.

Re:I am impressed

[Marcika]

The saying has always been that "fusion is still 50 years away", for fifty years ago and recent. Now EU has managed to make it 100 years away

You make the mistake of believing the summaries of Slashdot editors. ITER is not an "EU" experiment, but as international as can be (the seven parties participating in the ITER program: the EU, India, Japan, PR China, Russia, South Korea, USA).

(And of course fusion is not 50 years away, it was already achieved 50 years ago in Operation Ivy... Commercially viable fusion - now that's an engineering problem ;-) )

Re:I am impressed

[aulou05]

I mean the internet is a very good example of what you just described. I daresay nothing came of it while govt. controlled it. Only when private sector got involved did things get interesting.

You're right. That's when we got um...err...Internet Explorer! And, uhh...Flash!

Hey wait a second! Get off my lawn!! ;)

Re:I am impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

If they discover that economic positive return is impossible, do you think they'll all just go home?

They will never discover any such thing, because there is always the hope that new discoveries or new technology will make a difference. But I'll actually agree with you: some, perhaps even most, scientists would keep working even if they privately believed their quest was futile.

But that's irrelevant, because the GP point was that scientists will never solve the problem because they are being paid for research rather than results. This is a stupid point, easily refuted. The scientists are trying to get results from their research, and demonstrating positive energy return would ensure funding for years to come, if not decades to come.

Re:I am impressed

[byromca]

Yes, it's incredibly difficult to achieve practical energy generation from fusion.

Yes, there are lots of potential hurdles to overcome - and only some of these (timescales being the obvious one) can be immediately resolved by improved funding .

Yes, there is no guarantee that fusion will ever be a useful source of energy.

No, in the grand scheme of things, the amount of money we are currently spending on fusion is insignificant.

No, without fusion, we have no real prospects for a long term, clean, scalable power source to meet our current and predicted future energy demands.

If we actually focussed our attentions properly on achieving fusion - effectively scaling up the ITER project as the international collaboration it is supposed to be (there has been a lot of petty squabbling internally due to funding disagreements) - we could unite on a goal that would truly stand as the pinaccle of man's achievements.

Having worked (and subsequently left) the field, I was depressed by the lack of ambition of most of the established scientists I work worked with. This was a natural effect, I guess, of watching their research grants gradually being eroded from the 60's onwards. And the erosion of these grants is understandable from the political context that it was initially thought it would be easy to achieve fusion, since fission was so easy to get working. Unfortunately, the opposite has proved to be true: the more research that has been done, the more complex the situation has been revealed to be. I like the (admittedly loose) analogy:

fission = pushing a vase off a table
fusion = putting it back together so that it's indistinguishable to its original form.

If we try and fail, we will still have developed a vast amount of new technology on the way. And we will have spent a tiny fraction of what is currently wasted every year on unconstructive areas such as, say, military budgets.

Bussard

[Garrett Fox]

I'm interested in the work of Robert Bussard's research team, which continued after his death. Last I heard was sometime late last year, when the US military announced a continued grant to that team for their "Polywell" system. The grant suggests that the military saw something it liked in the interesting, but questionable data from Bussard's last experiments. Is there any new info on this?

Re: fusion research in general, how much of a priority do you think it should be? Is the best way to think of it, "It'll be nice if it ever works, but don't plan on it ever being closer than "40 years away"? (Or 100, now?) There is that one experiment that's been reported on lately with breathless claims that it'll achieve better than break-even energy within "a few years," right? One story from May says that the new California facility will be the one to achieve net energy gain, but suggests that it might take till 2040.

Re:Bussard

[LWATCDR]

The Navy is still funding it. Last I heard they are under a publishing embargo again.
Maybe it is working really well but we will see I hope.

Re:Bussard

[Jerf]

The latest Bussard fusion news, from yesterday. Fairly encouraging; it's hard to estimate exactly how successful the tests were but we can rule out total failure, I think.

I would currently place Bussard's success probability as much higher than ITER's.

Re:Bussard

[khellendros1984]

How about his collectors? How are those coming? I think we need them by 2151 or so...

Re:Bussard

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC as far as time frame and cost goes, the EMC2 team (Bussard's team) expects that an energy positive full scale system will take 6 years and somewhere in the $100 - 200 million range. The team is mostly funded by the Navy which is interested in the research as a future power source for ships.

For those that don't know, the Polywell design is a rethinking of the old "Fusor" design which has been successfully performing fusion for decades, even in garage settings, but at an energy loss. The Polywell design works on the idea that instead of trying to crush atoms together with magnets like a tokomak (hard to do) you confine electrons with magnets (easy to do) and release ionized atoms into the device which are accelerated towards the confined electrons and smack into each other.

Typical "Fusors" and the current prototype Polywell devices use Deuterium and Tritium, which when fused result in Helium plus an extra neutron. The extra neutron can stick to components inside the device causing them to become radioactive over time (much of the radioactive waste associated with existing nuclear power is caused by equipment being bombarded with neutrons). The ultimate goal of the EMC2 group is to perform Hydrogen/Boron-11reactions instead, which only result in Helium, however this reaction requires significantly stronger magnetic fields, higher currents, and a larger area.

Re:Bussard

[Chris Burke]

Personally I'm gunning for Sandia Lab's Z-Pinch device, though mostly because the original looked so unbelievably fucking cool.

The last I'd heard from them, they had built a small module that could do inertial fusion, and could fire rapidly and for many cycles. They could be stacked to increase power, and in theory all they had to do (simplifying of course) was stack a bunch of these modules to make practical power generation, and a test product was supposed to be done in a few years.

Sadly, being small self-contained boxes and not a research toy they don't look nearly as awesome as the original.

But yeah. Bussard could work too. In any case, ITER seems like the real long shot.

Re:Bussard

[KliX]

Please, please, please tell me you're not a scientist of any sort! I really hope the late Bussard's ideas come to fruition, but the data from their previous experiments is awful (check those error bars people), and the physics dubious (the consensus is mainly on the "it's not going to work" side, but it's not clear cut). ITER on the other hand is an engineering problem; we've done plasma containment. We don't know if a full scale polywell can work, and things look bad - we know tokamak fusion systems will work (better than break even), but we've no idea if we can engineer a reactor/generator system that's provides cheaper energy than say fission, with workable maintenance (how many times a decade will we have the reactor shield/energy recovery system destroyed by the neutron flux etc).

ITER will "work", but may not be a practical mass energy source. The polywell, is pretty much a yes/no experiment that nobody has done yet. I just wish someone would throw $200 million at EMC2 to build a full scale prototype so we can see if the physics is good or not.

Re:Bussard

[Jerf]

You obviously didn't follow the link. The experiments are being done. It's military funded and they're not telling us everything, but clearly the results were good enough to continue ramping up. (Total failure would either cancel the project or move it in some other direction. Probably the former.)

and the physics dubious (the consensus is mainly on the "it's not going to work" side, but it's not clear cut)

The only such "consensus" that I know about is from a guy who used assumptions about how electrons behave based on equations based on preconditions that do not hold; I find Bussard's response compelling. I do not trust that analysis. Bussard fusion may yet not work, but not for that reason.

Besides, the time for posturing and insulting people for examining data and coming to their own conclusions is coming to a close; experimental data is at hand. It doesn't matter what theories say will or won't work when the experiment is done.

Re:Bussard

[NP-Incomplete]

I have much more faith in NIF than ITER.

Re:Bussard

[im_thatoneguy]

Total failure would either cancel the project or move it in some other direction. Probably the former.

You must not work in the defense industry.

Re:Bussard

[im_thatoneguy]

The current effort will build on what has been completed under these previous contracts as well as requirements to provide the Navy with data for potential applications of AGEE with a delivered item, wiffleball 8 (WB8) and options for a modified wiffleball 8 (WB8.1) and modified ion gun.

God I hope they fail. I don't think humanity could ever overcome the shame of having something called a wiffleball be the ultimate source of our power.

Re:Bussard

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone on the Talk-Polywell forums pulled up some interesting documents regarding the status of the project only a few days ago: An inventory manifest and contracts for further work.

There's much discussion about it at the moment - initial analysis as follows (please correct me if I've got something wrong here!): it seems that their last tests met with some success and they are going to run a larger test in 2009-2010 (the so-called WB-8 stage) the first test with liquid nitrogen cooled magnets, looking at running for longer pulses and with the harder to fuse proton-boron11 fuel (This gives off no neutrons during fusion, greatly reducing the need to design the machine to survive neutron bombardment).

Some funding has also been earmarked for development of a WB-8.1 device and WB-9, which is supposed to be a full greater-than-unity demonstration. I think the development of this may also be happening in parallel, as most of the remaining hurdles following WB-8 will be engineering and design issues.

Re:Bussard

[CraftyJack]

The grant suggests that the military saw something it liked in the interesting, but questionable data from Bussard's last experiments.

In "Sun in a Bottle", Charles Seife claims that the interest lies in keeping scientists and engineers sharp on the subject matter without violating any test bans.

Re:Bussard

[Anonymous Coward]

EMC2 is far from the old boy establishment we know as "defense industry". It's research that already got the funding totally nixed (before Bussard's death). Then somebody else looked at the results and opened the gubmint checkbook again.

Re:Bussard

[TheRaven64]

It's also worth pointing out that there may be more in the fusor design than previously thought. A couple of places have recently rerun the old (debunked) cold fusion experiments with more sensitive measuring equipment. It turns out that the neutron output is slightly higher than the current models would tend to indicate. This doesn't mean cold fusion works, but it means that there is some stuff that physics doesn't fully explain in an area we thought was relatively well understood, which may be exploitable for energy generation.

Re:Bussard

[arkarumba]

Not sure about the exact device naming but thats a pretty good summary.
.
Its worth pointing out that the funding for the project has apparently always been 10% of what was required, in order to keep it below the radar of the DOE - with the perception that the DOE career politics would have killed it off to protect their "investment" in ITER. Bussard has been slogging away at it for 20 years. The project was apparently killed only due to money being cut off to fund the Iraq war.
.
Off the top of my head I think it was WB6 that finally cracked it, with the result that "The physics has been proven, its now just an engineering problem." However the synchronicity of success at the last minute before the lights were turned off, that wasn't noticed until the data was analysed months later, was perhaps a bit suspect. Then Bussard died.
.
It has been the task of the well respected Dr Rick Nebel on sabatical from Los Almos Nataional Laboratory to confirm the WB6 results with WB7. With a news blackout back in force Dr Nebel has been very low key about the results but has said that "Results from WB7 have been positive and in line with expectations. There is nothing to indicate this wont work." This has been peer reviewed - but privately within the DoD. The DoD has provided continuing funding for the next round of experiments.
.
I find it interesting that Bussard as Assistant Director of the Atomic Energy Commission in the 1970s apaprently founded the Tokamak research project only as a means skimming some money to investigate a number of non-mainline nuclear ideas - of which the Polywell seems to have born fruit. http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery/BussardsLetter.html
.
This google tech talk http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606 is quite interesting and was my introduction to the concept. The hopeful pundit in me finds it VERY INTERESTING that interest in ITER has seemed to wain as awareness of the Polywell results has increased - but perhaps thats just wishful thinking.
.
Whoops that turned out longer than I meant
.
Disclaimer: I'm just an interested bystander. All this is hear-say.

How do you know until you succeed?

[clarkn0va]

the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome

Really? Have they really become more difficult? Like jumping off the high board becomes more difficult after you've climbed up there? Or truly more difficult, like trying to sell tickets to the hockey pool after the playoffs have ended?

Re:How do you know until you succeed?

[Kiliani]

Really? Have they really become more difficult? Like jumping off the high board becomes more difficult after you've climbed up there? Or truly more difficult, like trying to sell tickets to the hockey pool after the playoffs have ended?

About 15 years ago I sat in a very interesting seminar where one of the lead scientists on the fusion front admitted that the "easy" part of fusion was the physics (try that for "easy"), and that the really hard part of the engineering was yet to come.

Looks like back then they already knew they were going to be in for a ride, but they simply didn't know how hard it would be. So I am not surprised.

If you climb up the high board and only then find that it is all cracked and creaky: yes, your Olympic dive may just have become harder.

Re:How do you know until you succeed?

[somersault]

In both of those scenarios the difficulty stays constant - only perceptions change. Nothing has become harder, they've just realised that they're not as easy as they initially suspected.

It's the same as people in the 60s who thought that we'd have intelligent robot house servants and flying cars by now..

Re:How do you know until you succeed?

[RsG]

In both of those scenarios the difficulty stays constant - only perceptions change. Nothing has become harder, they've just realised that they're not as easy as they initially suspected.

It's the same as people in the 60s who thought that we'd have intelligent robot house servants and flying cars by now..

As has been pointed out before, the "flying cars" business isn't about technology, so much as safety and efficiency. We've got helicopters after all, and some models aren't much bigger than a car. Now try to imagine what a city full of DMV certified copter pilots, each in a machine more vulnerable and fragile than a car, all bumping into each other, would be like.

Back on topic, I think it's less about perceptions and more about easy problems versus hard ones. The easy problems of fusion have been solved. Simply causing fusion to happen artificially came first, with the hydrogen bomb. Causing it to happen without prior fission came next. Now we're up to sustaining it, and getting net power out of it, which are harder than the previous problems. Still solvable, but the R&D needed is more complex.

Re:How do you know until you succeed?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Now we're up to sustaining it, and getting net power out of it, which are harder than the previous problems.

Or even getting net power out WITHOUT sustaining it.

You can get power from a fueled heat engine with continuous combustion. (Steam engines - both mobile and power plants - for example.) But repeated pulses of power work fine too (diesel cycle, otto cycle, ...) and may have engineering advantages in some situations (i.e. trading efficiency for light weight, high power-to-weight ratio, and broad torque curve to make engines practical for vehicles). Fusion also might be practical on a putt-putt rather than long continuous burn basis.

Re:How do you know until you succeed?

[RsG]

That's very much true for inertial confinement fusion, which uses the pulse model you describe. In those systems, ignition is akin to spark plugs for an IC engine - one spark, one mass of fuel ignited, repeat.

Magnetic fusion systems like ITER however are meant to use the heat of fusion to sustain ignition. This is probably going to be the more efficient approach, since it means not having to scrape together the energy for ignition repeatedly - start it up, and it'll keep going as long as you put fuel in and retain confinement (neither of which is easy yet). Given the current energy needed for ignition, the magnetic model will likely become net-positive sooner than the inertial model, though I'd obviously invest in research for both were I in charge of such matters.

Also, outside of naval vessels, I'm not sure any vehicle is going to use fusion directly, at least not in any near-future time span, so power-to-weight isn't going to be a concern. For futuristic spacecraft propulsion, inertial confinement would be my pick, particularly if it works for nuclear pulse propulsion.

Re:How do you know until you succeed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like back then they already knew they were going to be in for a ride, but they simply didn't know how hard it would be.

Or how long the ride could last, even in their wildest dreams. :P

Re:How do you know until you succeed?

[Chris Burke]

In both of those scenarios the difficulty stays constant - only perceptions change.

Which, as anyone who isn't a slashdot poster already knew, was exactly what they meant.

Re:How do you know until you succeed?

[somersault]

Good thing that we pointed it out to them then.. just because you know what someone means doesn't mean that the original wording wasn't stupid. Yes, I'm a pedant.

Re:How do you know until you succeed?

[Chris Burke]

Pointed out what to who -- everyone who understood perfectly without your help? Or the slashdotters with the same problems understanding plain English? No, the original wording was fine. It is the inappropriate and overzealous use of pedantry that is stupid.

Re:How do you know until you succeed?

[somersault]

Some scientists also believe that the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome

No matter how many times I read it, I can't picture it being fine. Without massaging the meaning in your head, it is like saying "some people also believe that it is getting more difficult to solve a Rubik's Cube" just because those people have never actually tried to solve one before. It's stupid.

If they said "some people believe that the remaining technical hurdles to fusion are more difficult to overcome" it would have been better, but without some input from a genius or a serious stroke of luck, that's what you'd expect anyway!

Re:How do you know until you succeed?

[Chris Burke]

No matter how many times I read it, I can't picture it being fine. Without massaging the meaning in your head, it is like saying "some people also believe that it is getting more difficult to solve a Rubik's Cube" just because those people have never actually tried to solve one before. It's stupid.

You mean because nobody had solved a Rubik's Cube before, and their previous estimation of the difficulty was shown to be an underestimate as they got further along in the process and learned more about the steps involved.

See, this is exactly my point. "Massaging the meaning in your head" is what a pedant calls any form of reading comprehension that isn't bull-headed thoughtless literalism with no regard to context or the imprecision of the English language, as if it's a bad thing. Pedantry is for when you are dealing with precise terms, like correcting someone's usage of energy vs power when talking about a laser beam. Using pedantry to evaluate that sentence is stupid, like most of the overzealous pedantry around here is. First you assume that English words have precise and implication free definitions, then you assume that one particular definition out of many applies, then you assume no additional meaning could be implied by context or the tone of the sentence ("what's tone?"), and then you act like the result of this process is the only reasonable interpretation of the sentence. Each of those steps is stupid, but taken deliberately by the pedant in order to sound smart. Well, it doesn't work.

Re:How do you know until you succeed?

[somersault]

In that case, what does that say about a pedant of pedants? ;)

I'm assuming I have hit a nerve, and it probably was you who picked up on me for being a pedant last time. It does seem a little strange to me that you are berating me for apparently trying to make myself seem smarter by pointing out others' errors, but I digress..

I haven't assumed that no extra meaning is possible. I have looked for the extra meaning and obviously figured the correct meaning probably within a tenth of a second as everyone else will have, buuuuut the sentence is quite simply wrong from a logical standpoint no matter how fuzzy you make the meaning of individual words. You would have to change or add words to have it make true sense. I just found it funny at first and assumed that all other slashdotters would too, but when someone was actually trying to defend it with a rather poor example I couldn't help but get involved. People shouldn't put so much effort into defending poor reporting.

Note that I don't take issue with poor communication to make myself feel smarter, not on a conscious level at least, perhaps I do have a need for that though (I certainly enjoy when my comments are modded up). I already know roughly how smart (and dumb) I am in most areas of my life. I don't correct most of my friends when they make grammatical or spelling errors. I know that most of them don't consider it important, and that some of them have problems with dyslexia or whatever. I'm not trying to be a dick and rub their faces in it.

I know that a couple of my friends actually appreciate me pointing out spelling mistakes, and others who I wouldn't usually correct directly ask me for spelling help because they know I'm a geek. I am one of those who prefers to have my spelling and grammar corrected if I am doing things wrong, especially if I'm getting them wrong consistently and it wasn't just an obvious typo or whatever. I like to do things properly where I can. Yes, I probably do have mental problems that sometimes result in me being overly picky. Yes, I probably have made mistakes in this post because I edit and re-edit sentences far too many times in my very poor attempts to keep things brief (hah).

Europe + Fusion

[swanzilla]

= the plot of The Saint. Be on the lookout for horrible accents.

NIF cost overruns

[Super_Z]

Meanwhile, an experiment in fusion by laser doesn't seem to be running into the same high profile funding problems just yet."

According to this article, NIF has cost $4 billion so far - almost four times the original estimate. What saved the NIF from cancellation was that its backers persuaded politicians that it was vital for Americas nuclear programme.

Science at this level is neither easy nor cheap.

Re:NIF cost overruns

[bitt3n]

What saved the NIF from cancellation was that its backers persuaded politicians that it was vital for Americas nuclear programme.

Science at this level is neither easy nor cheap.

this is why I fully support North Korea's nuke program. Just think of all the new science we'll get to do on our end as a result (at least in the short term)

Re:NIF cost overruns

[Anonymous Coward]

Science at this level is neither easy nor cheap.

That "huge" $4,000,000,000 budget is what the United States spends in Iraq every 10 days. Could it be that the relatively insignificant cost of the project saved it from cancellation?

Re:NIF cost overruns

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. The laser fusion is vital in modeling fusion implosion devices. This is one area that is not well known. ITER, on the other hand, has no significant military applications.

This is actually very, very sad. If anything, ITER should receive more funding because of the science (material, plasma, etc.) that needs to be learned to make it work. Laser fusion, on the other hand, is just there so the Dept. of Energy can make better simulation of nukes in their supercomputers.

I hope the world doesn't need another episode of Dark Ages before people realize that funding science is more important than immediate gratification.

Re:NIF cost overruns

[lennier]

"Laser fusion, on the other hand, is just there so the Dept. of Energy can make better simulation of nukes in their supercomputers."

And that's what pays the bills in the military-industrial complex, as it always has.

Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[Jeng]

We have two working examples of fusion generation, the Hydrogen Bomb that uses a fission device to jump start it and the Sun which is hugely radioactive.

So our two working examples of fusion generation require fission.

I would think that the future of fusion generation would be a component of fission generation.

You can have fission on its own, you can have fission and fusion together, but you can't have fusion on its own in any way that's economical.

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[LWATCDR]

"So our two working examples of fusion generation require fission."
Um no. The sun doesn't use fission. So not at ll.

"I would think that the future of fusion generation would be a component of fission generation."
How? What? Huh?

"You can have fission on its own, you can have fission and fusion together, but you can't have fusion on its own in any way that's economical."

Nope not really and wow... I mean really wow.....
 

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[logicnazi]

>We have two working examples of fusion generation, the Hydrogen Bomb that uses a fission device to jump start it and the Sun which is hugely radioactive.

Uhh, what? It's actually pretty damn easy to create fusion reactions in the labratory merely using ions and electric fields. Of course they are hugely energy negative but it's not like these are our only two examples of fusion. Also the response about the sun indicates a complete lack of understanding about the different types of radioactivity and the relation between this and fission.

It's not like we don't have a detailed understanding of how fusion works. We know there is no fundamental law barring fusion power, the issue is all about practical generation.

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[selven]

Now, we just need to move the solar panels 149.59999 million kilometers closer and we'll all be fine.

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[Fallen Seraph]

Ummm, here's one example that's pure fusion and economical: THE SUN.

As one of the previous posters said, you have a remarkably poor understanding of stellar fusion. The fusion reaction within a star is triggered by the massive gravitational force exerted by the star's mass. The force is so great that the mass collapses in on itself until the tremendous pressure and heat of the collapse ignites a fusion process within the core. Once ignited, the fusion reaction's force pushes the mass outward, holding back gravitational collapse.

The life of a star is this continual struggle between gravity threatening to collapse the star in on itself, and fusion, threatening the make it explode. Nova and supernova form when the star reaches an age at which it has burned off the majority of it's fuel (converting it into heavier elements in the process). This makes the fusion process less efficient, as elements above Iron on the periodic table yield a negative energy return in this scenario. As such, the gravitational force overcomes the fusion force and collapses the star further, causing the heavier elements which have formed to begin fusing, and releasing a massive amount of energy in the process, which in turn, causes the stellar shell to burst. After this, the star's death depends on the amount of mass remaining, but that's the general idea.

Fission has nothing to do with it because fission requires super heavy elements, such as Uranium and Plutonium, to occur. Stars have very little of these elements during their lifecycle, and indeed, they CREATE these elements through heavy fusion at the very end of their life, which is how these elements arrived on Earth: through the heavy elemental fusion in long dead stars, and being blasted into space by the star's death.

The problem for humans is not economy in this technique, but scale. We need the fusion to occur on a much smaller scale, or else it's of little use to us.

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[newcastlejon]

"I would think that the future of fusion generation would be a component of fission generation." How? What? Huh?

Burning and breeding. Powerful neutron sources can be quite handy, but I doubt that's what the OP meant.

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[KonoWatakushi]

This reminds me of something Dr. Bussard said during his google talk:

"countless billions of stars in the universe all doing nuclear fusion...and not a single one of them is shaped like a donut!â

There are other promising possibilities for fusion; maybe we should be funding those, instead of the Tokamaks which cost billions upon billions, and are now 100 years away. Furthermore, even if they do work, they will never be economically viable.

Dr. Bussard's Polywell is one such approach, which thankfully, continues to be funded by the navy. If funding weren't so minimal, perhaps he would have lived long enough to see commercial fusion reactors using this concept. Even so, it looks like we should finally know whether it works within the next 1.5-2 years. Commercial reactors would follow shortly thereafter.

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[The Archon V2.0]

We have two working examples of fusion generation, the Hydrogen Bomb that uses a fission device to jump start it and the Sun which is hugely radioactive.

So our two working examples of fusion generation require fission.

It is with great dishonor that I present you with the "you fail physics forever" diploma. I wish you the best of luck on your new career as a Hollywood action and sci-fi movie writer.

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[Chris Burke]

"countless billions of stars in the universe all doing nuclear fusion...and not a single one of them is shaped like a donut!â

Bah! Hadn't he ever heard of Bagelgeuse?!

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's not like we don't have a detailed understanding of how fusion works. We know there is no fundamental law barring fusion power, the issue is all about practical generation."

In other words: in theory, it's voila. In practice, WTF?!

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[jo_ham]

I believe he was head script writer on "The Core", which would explain a lot.

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hydrogen Bomb that uses a fission device to jump start it" does not imply "the future of fusion generation would be a component of fission generation".

The reason that hydrogen bombs have fission bombs around them is because fusion requires compression and heat. Fission, on the other hand, requires a chain reaction--so the two use completely different mechanisms.

When the fission bombs go off, they provide they compression and heat for the fusion to start. All you would need is sometime to replicate that compression and heat, and there are several ways to do that.

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sun is economical? That statement makes no sense whatsoever. Most of the Sun's energy is sent into interstellar space.

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of something Dr. Bussard said during his google talk:

"countless billions of stars in the universe all doing nuclear fusion...and not a single one of them is shaped like a donut!"

Yeah, and look at, say, forest fires! Do they look like an internal combustion engine? Surely it is self-evident that technology that utilises a natural phenomenon must at least look like the natural phenomenon!

Re:Pure Fusion power generation is a pipe dream

[Anonymous Coward]

I picture something similar to a Tokamak, but with the plasma flow going a different way. Tokamak has the plasma shaped like a donut and then forces it narrower and narrower while still keeping it going around like a single ring. The way I picture doing the plasma flow is like having the path resemble a slinky toy that's brought around so the ends meet. Perhaps it still resembles a donut, but a different kind of donut. (Maybe the plasma equivalent of a vortex ring?) I would then make the containment apparatus in such a way that there is nothing physical in the way of where the hole in the donut is. (But a magnetic field may go through there to help initially shape the plasma.) It would be different when it's forced narrower and narrower by powering up. The donut hole pinches shut (where all the streams meet would be where most of the reaction takes place) and the plasma flow is allowed to twist up somewhat until it resembles a sphere. I suspect if this idea were considered, the reactor construction would resemble a Polywell more than a Tokamak, but likely with only two main coils instead of six.
I picture the reason why scientists may not like approaching this reactor design is that it's likely to be a more chaotic system and harder to do calculations on with the plasma being allowed to fold over itself. (Magnetic fields will probably pop and snap with random power spikes and such when the current flow shorts out with itself every now and then.) But nature itself doesn't seem to mind chaotic systems too much when it does stuff like this.

Inflation

[Lars T.]

The number of Slashdot stories on this has also just doubled. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/29/0511233

They need to bring in more talent

[Anonymous Coward]

There's impressive research on Tokamak style reactors being done by the scientists over at Stark Industries. The bigwigs complained about the damn research being done to placate the hippies... If only they could miniaturize it using off the shelf missile parts and third world engineering tools!

Re:They need to bring in more talent

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly Robert Downey Jr. is wasting his talent in Hollywood.

What ever happened to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

nuclear google

Re:What ever happened to this?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The Navy picked up the option to fund the next step.

Now it's funded the step after that, and included a request for a proposal for it to fund the third and final step.

At the end of that step (if it all works) we have a practical first demo power plant - about 100 megawatts of fusion power out from cheap and very abundant fuel. Proof of concept, a practical design good enough to displace fossil fuel and fission power plants (and perhaps aircraft carrier and battleship engines) that can be replicated, and probably enough engineering data to design something much better.

100 years now

[Perp Atuitie]

In the middle of the 70s, controlled fusion was just around the corner. Many times. 100 years is some corner. Far as I know there's been no progress, even in the lab, since then.

Re:100 years now

[RsG]

Far as I know there's been no progress, even in the lab, since then.

Then perhaps it is time to expand your knowledge?

We have built working toroid reactors since the 1970s. Just such a reactor, JET, is mentioned in TFA. The problem is no longer whether such a design will work. Nor is ignition the problem; we've achieved that years ago. Controlled fusion exists, here, now, in the present. This wasn't the case in the 1970s (well, there were Farnsworth fusors and H-bombs, but those are both significantly different cases).

The problem now lies in getting net energy out of it, and keeping the reaction going over long enough durations to generate useful amounts of electricity. This is indeed physically possible (see for instance the centre of the sun), it's just very challenging from a practical standpoint. The engineering hasn't caught up, in part because the number of testbeds for new designs is sharply limited. ITER is supposed to be the next such testing ground for new engineering solutions, but as you can see, it's having trouble getting political and financial backing.

Also, this "fusion has been 50 years away for the past 30 years" meme gets on my nerves. It's selective perception, and utter bullshit. People remember the promise of fusion, but forget that we were politically and financially unwilling to pay for it. The research wasn't going to just happen magically, someone needed to underwrite it.

Had we done the needed R&D decades ago, we would be decades ahead of where we are now. We didn't. You get what you put in, and in this case we put in nowhere near what we ought to have. Result is that we're behind.

Re:100 years now

[locster]

For the record there are other Tokamak's, I believe the most advanced to date is KSTAR, which uses superconducting electromagnets, which are a critical part of ITERs design.

Re:100 years now

[Perp Atuitie]

Getting net energy production was right around the corner in the '70s and apparently still is, except now the corner is a century away. There were tokamaks, magnetic bottles, laser inertial confinement systems, and other efforts in the 70s. The primary commercial fusion power developer, General Atomic, said fusion would account for significant amounts of commercial energy production by the year 2000. The milestone everyone was waiting for then, as now, was net energy production. It may well get on your nerves, but so far there's no good reason to think that more research would have made any difference. There's no proof that the concept is workable now, any more than there was 40 years ago. Is it worth funding some research? Yeah. But is it a bigger longshot as the years go by? Yeah.

Re:100 years now

[iggymanz]

it's a fallacy to think that pissing away money on a problem will solve it. We don't have the materials to make an energy positive Tokamak, nor the knowledge if confinement over such a long time period is possible in a toroid bottle. We don't need a solution for 100 years out, we need one now and the fusion reactor in the sky puts out more energy than a thousand earth civilizations could use.

The real problem is....

[Anonymous Coward]

Once they get it working the funding will cease.

Re:The real problem is....

[ultranova]

Once they get it working every energy company on the planet will compete to hire them to build fusion plants, as well as invest heavily into further research to make said plants cheaper to build and operate.

Fixed that for you.

Re:The real problem is....

[thijsh]

Once they get it working every energy company on the planet will stall full-scale deployment of fusion (probably by scare-mongering and 'lobbying' a.k.a. bribes) until their current cow is milked dry... and even then they'll first try to get government subsidies (like coal plants already get right now!).

Fixed that for you.

Re:The real problem is....

[MJMullinII]

Once they get it working every energy company on the planet will stall full-scale deployment of fusion (probably by scare-mongering and 'lobbying' a.k.a. bribes) until their current cow is milked dry... and even then they'll first try to get government subsidies (like coal plants already get right now!).

Baloney. If this works (I'm speaking of the Polywell, since even as a long shot it's a lot closer to being proven true or false than the Tokamak), you'll have everyone and their brother lined up to build these things.

I don't think people realize just how valuable an inexhaustible source of cheap, clean energy would be.

Don't think about powering your house, that's small potatoes for what we're talking about.

Imagine being able to build one of these things in Oregon on the coast, drawing the necessary fuel for the reaction directly from the Ocean. With your new source of almost infinite electricity, you now can afford to electrolyze seawater into hydrogen and oxygen.

With a source of infinite cheap hydrogen (again, now made possible because you have a virtually infinite supply of cheap electricity), it suddenly becomes feasible to manufacture -synthetic- automobile and aviation fuels (gasoline, diesel,jet fuel, take your pick of petroleum based fuels).

Even now, electricity is dirt cheap compared to petroleum fuels, even when oil is relatively cheap (Oil has to get *below* about $20 a barrel before it begins to approach the cost of Coal/Nuclear generated electricity).

What you've basically done is built a facility to transform the cheapest source of energy on the planet into the most expensive (environmentally clean electricity -> environmentally neutral synthetic fuels) energy.

You could charge $2.25 a gallon and *still* be cheaper than petroleum based gasoline and, more importantly, be able to guarantee supply.

All the pessimism and "bribes" in the world won't stop that money train from leaving the station at full throttle, my friend.

Re:The real problem is....

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is: 'the established oil industry currently making billions of dollars will be surpassed by a new technology and will lose that aforementioned billion dollar income... and they will be OK with that'.

When history teaches us anything it is that change will be fought by the established powers that stand to lose money by said change. I'm sure that fusion is the power of the future, it will be used and it will change our society, but big-oil won't die so easily.

Re:The real problem is....

[MJMullinII]

So what you're saying is: 'the established oil industry currently making billions of dollars will be surpassed by a new technology and will lose that aforementioned billion dollar income... and they will be OK with that'.

See, cue the Conspiracy Theory yet again.

"Big Oil" isn't going anywhere because "Big Oil" doesn't really exist. What does exist are several very large companies who *currently* make their money from procuring and processing petroleum into product and fuels.

These companies will simply stop using Petroleum as a feedstock (for fuels at least, the petrochemical industry will still require petroleum but that is *tiny* compared to the fuels business and could probably be supplied from domestic sources) and begin building Fusion Plants to fuel synthetic fuel production.

Among other things, they finally can cut loose of people like Hugo Chavez (who stole *BILLIONS* of their assets through his nationalization schemes) and the OPEC countries (who are just about the only one's left who can guarantee supply, though for how much longer is in serious doubt).

This type of technology would be what allows companies like Exxon-Mobile and Conoco-Philips to thrive in the 21st Century (and most likely beyond) as they did in the 20th.

Again, these round-robin Conspiracy Theories really leave a lot to be desired when you actually look at the facts on the ground.

Tokamak

[HTH NE1]

Iter will be a Tokamak device

Good choice, since attempts with Zat'nik'tel and Tacuchnatagamuntoron devices failed.

One Hundred Whats???

[Nom du Keyboard]

that the development of fusion as a commercial power source is still at least 100 years away.

That's like saying it's never going to happen at all. If we can't solve it in far less time than that, I don't think we'll ever solve it.

Re:I am impressed-Proof Of Time Travel Finally

[Nom du Keyboard]

Since fusion was only "50 years away" when we started we where actually better off before we started to build that reactor

Congratulations, you have just proven that time travelers coming back from the future are clearly meddling in our affairs in an ongoing basis. I can only hope that it's a better future than Skynet - unless it's full of those hot Terminator babes!

100 Years, My Ass

[logicnazi]

I mean just consider the state of technology one hundred years ago. Advances in computational power alone should allow useful solutions of the diffeqs governing plasma containment. One might be able to make a case for 40 years but trying to push predictions about the future past that point doesn't seem particularly useful.

Also I have to wonder how useful it is to learn that some scientists think that iter is going in the wrong direction. Of course some scientists do, otherwise why would we build an *experimental* reactor. The question shouldn't be whether some people are skeptical but whether ITER is the most efficient way to advance our understanding of these issues.

Re:100 Years, My Ass

[hbr]

To me 100 years sounds like a precursor argument to cutting funding.

As fusion seems to be the only single approach that is capable of solving the energy/climate/etc crisis by itself, we should be doubling the funding.

For the promised benefits, nuclear fusion research funding seems disproportionately small to me.

Re:100 Years, My Ass

[Cedric Tsui]

Hey. I'm doing my doctorate in the field. (thus the late comment)

As for the computers solving the diffeqs. You may be right and you may be wrong.
The sad thing is, we do not have a set of differential equations that can accurately predict how plasmas will behave across strong magnetic fields. You may have heard that when fluid models are used in turbulent situations, they spit out 'correct' solutions which do not even closely resemble what's actually observed and until recently, the best fluid models predicted that lady bugs should be incapable of flight. (anecdotal stuff I know. I don't have a citation.)

Sadly, things are even more complicated for plasmas. Tokamak plasmas are turbulent. There are multiple species involved. Particles interact by collisions (short range) and by electromagnetic fields (long range). They radiate, they conduct, and currents make magnetic field pertubations that mess with the magnetic field you're using to hold them still in the first place. What's more. The temperature and pressure gradients we are working with are not seen anywhere else that I know of. That is ofcourse how you get a core plasma of 100 million degrees a few meters away from a solid wall that isn't evaporating.

Currently, every plasma model used in fusion is semi-empirical and very limited in application. Even with unlimited computing power, there aren't enough assumptions we can waive to make the ideal model.


However. The problems ITER faces are not so much in plasma physics as they are in engineering. They're struggling to maintain a balance between confinement and stability (the harder you squeeze a balloon, the harder it tries to bulge out between your fingers). They're trying to select their wall materials. One candidate (carbon reinforced composites) can take the heat fluxes, but tends to soak up tritium like a sponge. Tungsten should (hopefully) soak up less tritium, but can poison the plasma if too much of it gets vaporized. What happens to your superconducting magnets when they get bombarded by neutrons? How do you watercool such a large hot surface without risking a steam explosion?

I am saddened by these cost overruns. Sometimes I can't blame people for not wanting to fund it. That doesn't mean the fringe scientists are doing any better of a job.

Re:100 Years, My Ass

[Cedric Tsui]

I want to agree with you. But the Manhattan project cost ~$24 billion in today's USD according to wikipedia, and at the end they had 2 working bombs. When ITER has spent it's 20 billion, we'll hopefully have the knowledge we need to build a working power reactor.
Now. You might say that fusion energy is worth more than an atom bomb or two. But I doubt you would convince someone living in 1944 of that.

Re:100 Years, My Ass

[logicnazi]

Just to be pedantic it's not that we lack diffeqs to describe the system just that we can't solve them preciscely enough.

I mean we are pretty damn sure of the fundamental physics here. There is no quantum field theory weirdness that is needed to do this right (some quantum maybe) and there is enough material that the discrete size of atoms shouldn't make a difference so there MUST be a diffeq that will model it correctly.

----

Seeing as I do computability theory I will tell you with ENOUGH computing power we can do whatever the fuck we want. Sit the thing down with our best low energy theory of fundamental particles and just search through all possible configurations occupying a 50x50x50m space with less than such and such total energy. Eventually it will hit on the best design by exhaustion.

ITER Implementation Plan - Current Estimates

[Anonymous Coward]

ITER Implementation Plan - Current Estimates

June 2009

Audience: Forward Estimates Committee - ITER

Plan dates and schedules have moved this month in line with indicators discussed earlier. Please note that current estimates (based upon this month's economic data and technical risk assessment) indicate a 2-fold increase in time available prior to go-live.

The technical team and political working-group are please to announce the largest single increase experienced during the life of the project to-date. Expectations have been exceeded and regional vendors have re-affirmed their commitment to the project in light of this positive result.

Whist further increases can be expected in the next quarter, the chief project manager will amortise the recent time increase with those projected over the next 400 quarters, resulting in a rolling-averaged, smoothed expenditure curve that will provide additional contributor value by offering schedulable valuation events that may be timed to mesh with the various contributorsâ(TM) disparate election timetables.

P.S. Send cash.

100 Years?

[divisionbyzero]

Wow, in the 50's it was any day now; 70's real soon now; 90's became 50 years; now 2010 we're at 100. That's a heck of a curve. In 100 years we'll be at only 200 years away!

Have become more difficult to overcome?

[feepness]

Some scientists also believe that the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome...

I was climbing the mountain and then it became three thousand feet higher!

Re:Have become more difficult to overcome?

[pimpimpim]

Hi feepness!

Thanks! You've given the best description of science I've ever read. Disclaimer: I am a scientist.

Seriously. A lot of the fancy topics are interesting because they are like a foggy mountain top, you know that there must be a mountain top, but you don't know the way, and you don't know what you will find up there, and which equipment you need to take along. This makes science different from engineering, where you at least would have a map of the mountain roads and altitudes etc.

As far as funding issues goes: what did the giant banking bailout of 2009 brought us for the future? That has cost us a multi-multitude of the ITER project and that money just disappeared into oblivion. With the ITER, even if it wouldn't work out eventually, we'd still end up with the new technologies and materials that were developed to build it.

Re:Have become more difficult to overcome?

[feepness]

That may be the case with science in general, but when you are planning a multi-billion dollar campus you need to have your plans in place before you break ground.

Similarly, you change your hypothesis between experiments, not during.

Some perspective please...

[johannesg]

The EU spends way more than that on agricultural subsidies every single year. I'm probably a cultural barbarian, but I happen to think that developing fusion, even if it will take a while, is more important than subsidising French wine.

As for all those "fusion will always be 50 years away" remarks: that's what happens if you never start. ITER could have started a decade ago, if everyone hadn't been fighting over where to build it. Fusion would be ten years closer if we had somehow managed to select a piece of ground somewhere in a reasonable amount of time.

Re:Some perspective please...

[sidyan]

You can (somewhat) blame the Japanese for holding up the start of the project; It wasn't until they were bought off with a separate research facility that they dropped their claim on the reactor location.

Oh, and by the way, ITER is not just an EU project. It's about as international as the International Space Station (minus Canada, plus China).

Re:Some perspective please...

[mtremsal]

Wine is the real fuel of French research.

No wine no fusion.

Re:Some perspective please...

[Anonymous Coward]

If fusion is fifty years away they can stop the research right now, as far as I'm concerned. I won't be alive to reap the benefits so I really don't see why I should have to pay for it.

Stop all subsidies right now. If something isn't economically viable it shouldn't be part of the economy.

Re:Some perspective please...

[lordholm]

Well firstly, the ITER reactor will be cheaper than ISS. So it is not really that expensive. Secondly, it is 50 years in the future because the lack of public support. The only country that really supports it is the EU and to some extent Japan. The rest of the world is horribly backwards when it comes to fusion research.

Thirdly, many things have not been economically viable for the generation that developed it. Many mathematicians have been funded by the public, only to see the real use of their work some 100 years later.

I would understand you if the reactor was payed by a company, but the governments have a duty to ensure the longterm survivability and progress of humankind. Around 1915 the first ideas of nuclear fission was discovered through public grants, it took until 1951 to develop this into commercial power. Do you think that was a waste of money?

Around 1750, ideas on electricity existed, but it would take until 1880 until real power plants where constructed. Obviously, all that research that was funded by public grants was a complete waste of money and time. I mean, who in 1750 was alive to see the fruits of their investments in 1880. Do you think this was a waste of money?

Nothing of this was economically viable in the short term, but that is where the public comes in. In order to build civilizations, one need a grander picture than short term profits and gains.

The world has been working like this since the invention of the scientific method:

1. Scientists think, and prove things, payed by the public (or in rare cases by some altruistic rich guy), they develop ideas that grow into ideas for applications.
2. Engineers take the science and build real working things (first prototypes, then a demo version and then a real thing)
3. People reap the new possibilities

The fusion research programme is currently in early stage 2. That is, it is no longer about only science, it is about engineering issues (not that there is no longer any science in it, in this case there are some material science issues that need to be solved).

You may think that if you cannot solve a problem or see any use for a technology within your lifetime or that it is useless if any profits are 30 years in the future, that the projects and explorations of those questions should be stopped.

For me, I am glad that our predecessors did not think like this, since we got into the current technological state of our civilization thanks to those people who did not bother whether there would be any economical viability in their research and engineering experiments within their lifetime.

The Tokamak is a jobs program...

[Anonymous Coward]

For physicists at this point, that should be apparent.

And in the interest of continuing scientific progress in fusion, funding for it should be scaled back considerably and instead the money that would have gone into it should go into the Polywell device, which has a much higher probability of success.

seriously

[dwarfenhoschi]

They dont mean those 100 years seriously right ? i mean look at it, 100 years ago we were happy to even have Power and just in the last 10 years much has developed. Science these days is exponential so i expect that in 100 years we have either blown ourselves up somehow or we will have really cool stuff...fusion power will be old by then ^^

Re:seriously

[Kesch]

What if we blow our selves up with some really cool stuff? I'm thinking lots of last words along the lines of "Damn! That's awesome!"

Re:seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Science these days is exponential so i expect that in 100 years we have either blown ourselves up somehow or we will have really cool stuff...fusion power will be old by then ^^

Close. Actually, hype is exponential. Science is hard to predict. Engineering is hard.

How to make simple fusion reactor

[laughingskeptic]

A back of the envelope calculation says that a paraffin sphere with a 200m radius can absorb the energy of a 2 megaton hydrogen bomb by melting. So we build ourselves a nice strong containment vessel out of a granite mountain, fill the hole with paraffin and set off a bomb, melt paraffin, boil water for a couple of months and then repeat. There is probably a better material than paraffin, but the basic idea is the same. Just a few minor engineering issues to work out and we could have one of these suckers in production in a couple of years. Or we could just start making better use of the monster fusion reactor that is already in the neighborhood.

Re:How to make simple fusion reactor

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a plan !

Re:How to make simple fusion reactor

[RsG]

Believe it or not, that's been suggested, perhaps unsurprisingly in the USSR during the cold war.

It isn't all that practical a power source. There's no benefit to it over a conventional fission reactor, and several drawbacks. Notably, bombs are more expensive and challenging to make than fuel pellets, the security risk is much greater if somebody hijacks your fuel, radioactive material released in this manner has an annoying tendency to find it's way into the atmosphere or water table, and finally, whatever you build the blast chamber under is going to get hammered every time you light it up. Your granite mountain might become an irradiated gravel heap, given enough time.

Re:How to make simple fusion reactor

[tobiah]

Or we could just start making better use of the monster fusion reactor that is already in the neighborhood.

Totally, the energy source is already there, and being exploited rather efficiently by many organisms. I feel like we've hit a limit of the centralized power source model, and the practical future of energy is in collecting on the small scale and exploiting local sources. For example, here in San Diego I know several people who produce a net surplus of electricity from their solar panels, without any real effort at conserving use. Big, dirty power supplies with massive infrastructure issues are so very dated. The future is small, local and clean. Not because it's ethical, but because it's practical.

Re:How to make simple fusion reactor

[NP-Incomplete]

I believe this has been suggested using existing salt mines.

Re:How to make simple fusion reactor

[Tweenk]

Big, dirty power supplies with massive infrastructure issues are so very dated.

This microgeneration bullshit keeps popping up but it's still bullshit. For example, look at a report about microgeneration in UK: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/04/microgeneration_report/

Now my own ideas:
1. There is no practical technology to store large amounts of energy, except building a very big artificial lake above the ground level and pumping water there.
2. Power generated locally from renewables has a large seasonal variation in output, and is intermittent (except geothermal, but this is an immobile resource). Due to 1 it is impossible to correct this with storage.

That's why local sources can only act as secondary source of power, and are unlikely to ever displace centralized power generation. The microgeneration myth is fueled by people who can get a positive balance with solar panels on their roof, but is this balance really positive even during the night? The answer is usually no.

Re:How to make simple fusion reactor

[cheesybagel]

That sounds a bit like PACER.

Re:How to make simple fusion reactor

[laughingskeptic]

The topic is fusion, not fission and the point is we are failing misserably at making a fusion reactor. The only current way we have of creating a net power producing fusion reaction is with a bomb. What is your source for the Russian reactor? Did they use paraffin or another material? The point of the enourmous amount of paraffin is to absorb the energy. There would be little pressure on the granite, but the thermal changes would take their toll over time. You would produce a fair amount of deuterium, tritium and some carbon-13 this way, so containment would be very important.

Re:How to make simple fusion reactor

[laughingskeptic]

You are right, thanks for the link. I had not heard of this proposal.

Re:100 Years?

[Jesus_666]

Obviously that means we already had it in the Thirties but apparently someone lost the blueprints.

ITERation?

[maroberts]

I was under the impression that ITER was effectively the prelude to full scale fusion, and it was effectively just a scale up from previous designs to see if sustainable fusion was possible. This article makes it look as though fundamental problems remain unresolved; hardly reassuring when you're building a full scale unit with such major issues like what you're going to build the damn thing out of.

Re:ITERation?

[RsG]

I was under the impression that ITER was effectively the prelude to full scale fusion, and it was effectively just a scale up from previous designs to see if sustainable fusion was possible. This article makes it look as though fundamental problems remain unresolved; hardly reassuring when you're building a full scale unit with such major issues like what you're going to build the damn thing out of.

Where did you get that idea?

ITER is going to be the testbed for the technology needed to make a commercial fusion reactor possible. The unsolved problems each have potential solutions to them, each of which will need to be tested. After ITER, the next step is a prototype reactor, one which incorporates the technology developed during the testing process. The step after that is commercial power generators.

The problems with fusion are not really "fundamental". They're just difficult. None are deal-breakers, and for each of them several possible solutions exist.

Imagine the hurdles that remain as being akin to the hurdles that faced us during the space race. Everything that we needed, we knew we could make. The science was long since done, the work fell to the engineers. We knew we could go into space as early as the turn of the twentieth century. It took 50 years to get there, and that's with three wars that spurred the requisite R&D (the first brought a boon to the aeronautics field, the second brought us rocketry and the cold war gave us a competitive environment for the space race).

Re:ITERation?

[careysub]

ITER is going to be the testbed for the technology needed to make a commercial fusion reactor possible. The unsolved problems each have potential solutions to them, each of which will need to be tested. After ITER, the next step is a prototype reactor, one which incorporates the technology developed during the testing process. The step after that is commercial power generators.

This correct, but I wanted to point out the crucial difference between ITER and the NIF. The NIF is not anything close to a testbed for commercial fusion, it is simply an attempt to achieve a break-even plasma condition and produce an energy output in the 10-100 megajoule range. Tokamak type magnetic fusion systems achieved these milestones 12-15 years ago, using technologies directly relevant to commercial scale systems (i.e. superconducting magnets, plasma heating techniques etc.).

NIF will, once it is actually operating and has reached its operating goals (which can take many years to work up to), will simply be a physics experiment (or lab-scale nuclear explosion generator). The technology used to create the implosion (glass laser) is a dead end for producing power. A system using some time of particle beam driver will be needed to create a useful testbed that has some hope of eventual commercialization, but this type of system is just at the "vu-graph" stage. No equivalent system has yet been planned using particle beam technology. Given the 15 year construction time these facilities appear to require, it would appear that an ICF (inertial confinement fusion) system equivalent to what MCF (magnetic confinement fusion) achieved 12-15 years ago (10-100 megajoules with commercializable technologies) won't be available for 15-20 more years. ICF is more than a (human) generation behind MCF.

Fusion Power is always 20 years away

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow, fusion power is always 20 years away. It's been that way the last 50 years.

Materials, materials, materials

[mako1138]

Fusion is not 100 years away. It's already been achieved in JET, for example. What's 50-100 years away is a practical commercial fusion power plant with a lifetime measured in years.

In order to be practical, a fusion plant has to produce net power. ITER is expected to do that.

However, the materials issue remains. The interior of a tokamak, the "first wall", has to be able to withstand an intense neutron flux without degrading. ITER is going to be made out of stainless steel, which is fine for research; it wouldn't hold up very long in a 24x365 environment. For a commercial reactor, we don't have an ideal first wall material yet.

These cost overruns and delays over the history of the ITER program have been ridiculous. I'm not sure whether canning ITER is a good idea. Scaling it back might be, but the problem is, a new reactor needs to be significantly larger than existing ones, in order to explore a different part of the parameter space. Large = still expensive.

At this point, the most important part of the ITER program, IMO, is the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility. We need better materials.

Re:Materials, materials, materials

[flyingfsck]

...or repair, repair, repair.

One could make a production line to churn out stainless steel liners for the reactor at low cost.

TIMTOWTDI

Re:Materials, materials, materials

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the inner wall would be become highly radioactive (with a _very_ short half-life though). So replacing the inner wall regularly would be a problem.

(IANANP: I Am Not A Nuclear Physicist)

Re:Materials, materials, materials

[TheTurtlesMoves]

For a commercial reactor, we don't have an ideal first wall material yet.

There are some really good ideas in fact. However we do not have the ability to test these ideas.

These cost overruns and delays over the history of the ITER program have been ridiculous

They have been ridiculous, and are 100% political, not scientific. The science of fusion has improved dramatically, confinement has improve many orders of magnitude. And ITER is a logical next step. But its not the only step. We could do smaller experiment on ELM or upgrade JET yet again, or ....

We don't seem to be very good at "organizing" science at this kind of size, so smaller seems better with more specific R&D goals.

Re:Materials, materials, materials

[mako1138]

Yes, there would be neutron activation in the stainless steel, creating cobalt-60 which is pretty nasty.

100 Years for fusion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks a lot 'Smart Science Type Guys'. You couldn't fuse two pieces of bread, a slice of cheese, and a slice of ham into a sandwich -let alone two Hydrogen atoms into one Helium atom- in a hundred years. Swell.

Re:100 Years?

[The_mad_linguist]

Estimates for polywell put mass production at 20 years, assuming the test results keep coming in the way they are now.

I guess they had to hit the fuse box on fusion

[youn]

They wanted to fuse... the're confused instead... some body got pissed and blew a fuse, decided it was time to hit the fuse box and stop fusion

Is that what they really want?

[shish]

EU Fusion Experiment's Financial Woes Get More Concrete

From the sounds of things, what they want is more money...

Cold Fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Cold fusion has already been proven and the method is called deuterium loading. Look it up.

More wasted money

[Anonymous Coward]

You can drill a stupid hole in the ground, about 1 Km deep, use conventional (20 year old technology) directional drilling technology to make it a circle 1 Km in diameter, and then drill a second hole back up to the surface. You can then pump water (regular, every day ordinary garden-variety water) into the ground, and have it come up hot (steam). This can then be used to turn a turbine, and the water sent back down to do it all again. Such a system can be used to generate between 10MW-100MW. Repeat. 100 of these can be built for the cost of 1 tokamak. The difference is that 100 of these can produce between 1000MW-10000MW, whereas a tokamak produces 0MW. At least the scientists are not yelping 'oh, just 15 more years' anymore. I think research is really wonderful, but it had better be something tangible. They have said "only 15 years out" for about 60 years now. Except now they are saying 100 years. Between now and 100 years from now, we need something. A tokamak reactor won't. Geothermal will. Oh, and while we're at it, build about 2 or 3 dozen new nuclear plants. Create a mine about 10560 feet down (2 miles deep), and store waste down there. Use concrete and steel for support, and store at least 1000 tons of high-level waste down there, then seal it all up. Make sure there is no possible way it can get to the surface, and put a geothermal station above it with cooling lines 1 mile deep. If it starts to react and give off a lot of heat, you just let it react and get real hot. Siphon off all the heat, and remember to turn it into electricity. If you don't think 2 miles is deep enough, go 3 miles. This isn't that hard, is it?

This is why the IFR should be restart ASAP

[WindBourne]

Anytime you have a large number of countries who are building something in which each is trying to gain control of it, there will be costs overrun. In addition, the IFR is capable of burning the WASTE nuke supplies. If advanced countries put these in, then the world will have but a fraction of the waste. 3rd world countries (developing nations; whatever) can put in older reactors that use simple reaction. And the argument about plutonium going to bomb making is a total fraud. As it is, we have Iran and North Korea creating bombs.

Not making it any easier...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment.

Morons, idiots, fucktards, pick any name and it applies to luddite son-of-bitches like these.

J.Hansen wants to prosecute GW "Deniers". He should first go after brainless shit-for-brains like these people who, along with more mainstream leftists KILLED NUCLEAR POWER and made us MORE RELIANT ON FOSSIL FUELS.

Fucking assholes, the lot of them. Fucking environmentalists got us into this mess with their scare mongering...Bitch Fonda, are you listening? Global Warming is YOUR FAULT along with all the other dumb as a sack of brick enviro-whackos.

More Concrete?

[JuzzFunky]

I'm confused. What does concrete have to do with financial woes?

Tokamak?

[FungusCannon]

Why tokamak? Why don't they try out polywell or inertial confinement (LASERS!) fusion?

The way it works

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like with any cost efficient technology, it'll be 50-100 years away until one day people will realize "OMG it works", those people will be the previous energy barons when they suddenly realize their business is kaput and they don't have anything else to go to.

First solar, then fusion, then monkey batteries.

bailout

[Anonymous Coward]

its still a fraction of the money that we just gave to the banks and car industry.

Re:100 Years?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Geraldo Rivera found them in Al Capone's Vault during the late 80's.

China built East fusion reactor for $37 mil

[Anonymous Coward]

How come China can build a prototype fusion reactor for $37 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EAST)?

More expensive to cut back?

[Jeppe Salvesen]

The longer it takes us to find a clean, abundant, relatively inexpensive power source, the more expensive combating climate change becomes.

So 800 million annually on translating docs is ok

[Kartu]

EU spends about 800 million euros annually on translating legislative docs. Yet they are reluctant to spend less than that on a fusion project that could solve looming grave energy problems. (The times, when we run out of oil aren't that far away.)

Where's the money?

[jonaskoelker]

We're supposed to have Mr. Fusion by 2015

That won't happen as long as the EU gives the experimenters more concrete instead of financing.

Inverse Moore's law?

[jonaskoelker]

Now EU has managed to make it 100 years away

I propose erooM's law: the time until we have a fusion reactor doubles every 18 months.

News story template #115

[Zoxed]

Plan to build a < insert any large, hi-tech project > is being threatened by rising costs, delays and technical challenges.

Failure is the only option

[Drakkenmensch]

"The walls of the box, which need to be leak tight, are bombarded by these neutrons which can make stainless steel boil. Some people say it is just a question of inventing a stainless steel which is porous to let these particles through; personally I would have started by inventing this material."

Maybe, just maybe, they should have checked if the technology was even developped before they started allocating funds and setting deadlines? Then again, I've always been pragmatic.

Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the funding isn't a problem for NIF because the conversations must go somewhat like this -
"Please explain this idea."
"We're going to shoot things with a laser until they explode."
"Funds granted!"

Whereas with ITER, it's a bit more complex.
"Please explain this idea."
"We need to build a bunch of superconducting magnets into a torus so that we can attempt to contain a plasma within strong magnetic fields."
" . . . could you draw me a picture, please?"

I don't think that is correct...

[gbutler69]

I'm fairly certain that the fusion reaction in a Tokamak occurs inside the hole of the donut, not within ring of the donut. Here is a 2-D side view: ____ ____ ( ) (Reaction Here) ( ) ____ ____

ITER is not EU

[Anonymous Coward]

The ITER project www.iter.org is not and EU project, but an International project. The USA, Japan, China, India, Russia and Korea (South presumably!) are all involved! The last time I checked, the USA was not in the EU. Could be wrong there.... However, the ITER "machine" does happen to be in France. France is in the EU.

Re:ITER is not EU

[TangoCharlie]

Does anyone ever read TFA at slashdot, or do any research before posting a comment. Oh... sorry, this is slashdot, of course they don't! The iter website actually lists the consortium as "China, EU, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the USA". Indeed if you want to get a job there, you need to be citizen of one of those areas. I'm British, which is (just about!) part of the EU, so I'm eligible. As it happens, they also include Switzerland with "EU", even though it isn't. The ITER project builds on the developments at JET and other fusion projects..... which have been looking for a way to get fusion working for along time already. Considering the potential benefit, the time and effort is worth it. Actually, I think it will take us that long to get to grips with the potential outcome. Imagine the disasterous consequences to the global economy if oil and gas were suddenly made worthless! Has anyone thought of doing the financial modelling of the possibility that ITER is successful?!

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] hot Terminator babes!

I appreciate your compliment!

-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R)

Problems with funding?

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple more anti-trust suits against Microsoft should get them through the rest of the project.