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ITER Fusion Reactor Enters Existential Crisis
deglr6328 writes "The long beleaguered experimental magnetic confinement fusion reactor ITER is currently in what some are calling the worst crisis of its 25 year history. Still existing only on the paper of thousands of proposed design documents, the latest cost estimates for the superconducting behemoth are soaring to nearly 20 billion USD — roughly twice the estimates from as recently as a few years ago. Anti-nuclear environmentalist organizations have seized upon the moment as an opportunity to use the current global economic crisis as a means to push for permanently killing the project. If ITER is not built, the prospect of magnetic confinement fusion as a technique to reach thermonuclear breakeven and ignition in the laboratory would be in serious question. Meanwhile, the largest laser-driven inertial confinement fusion project, the National Ignition Facility, has demonstrated the ability to use self-generated plasma optical gratings to control capsule implosion symmetry with high finesse, and is on schedule to achieve ignition and potentially high gain before the end of the year."
Anti-nuclear environmentalist organizations
The above statement appears to be ad-hominem nonsense. Quoth TFA:
green parliamentarians who believe that ITER is too costly and too speculative to warrant support. Rather than spending money on nuclear fusion, the greens would like to see ITER's funding spent on near-term renewable energy sources.
ITER is terribly expensive. Combined with a substantial risk that the project could fail to produce valuable results, it seems that asking hard questions and investigating alternatives for that investment is a wise move.
Well, Brett, I see you didn't even bother to read the articles. The summary blatantly misrepresents the environmentalist groups.
Based on the quotes in the articles, they're clearly not anti-nuclear. They're just asking for proper government regulation of any installations that are in fact built. Now, it's debatable whether the US government is capable of offering such regulation, especially after the BP disaster. But nevertheless, asking for regulation does not make them "anti-nuclear".
Don't be fooled it is frightening.
Nuclear fusion is pretty much a potential infinite source of clean electrical energy and we have 2 options to try to master plasma confinement long enough to harvest that energy. One is investigated with ITER and the other is the inertial confinement. I don't think anyone has the authority to tell whether one or the other is more likely to be successful because it's very new and to test it you actually have to build huge tokamak reactors that cost billions and it has not been done before.
So as Pascal I'll assume it's a 50/50 draw.
Now put that piece of news back in context : humanity is maybe about to give up on half its chances to secure a clean source of energy for the forseable future.
Does that make you scared ?
Maybe they just like burning coal and oil? Or perhaps they think it's fun to dramatically alter a region's environment with dams and reservoirs for hydroelectric.
Solar and wind is great but the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day, and the wind doesn't blow every day. And I bet if you look hard enough you can find an environmentalist that is against geothermal power.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Not really. Energy unity is a big challenge, but fuel-in fuel-out is a bigger one.
If we wanted to, we could start operating a bunch more of those fission reactors; they don't necessarily make economic sense given current market prices, but those markets probably don't accurately capture the consequences of other forms of energy production, and fission is certainly still energy positive (and it is probably energy positive to pull uranium out the sea).
We have millions of hours of operational experience on fail-crazy plant designs resulting in 2 major safety incidents, 1 of which was a medium sized disaster and 1 of which was successfully contained, and we can move on to building actual fail-safe designs.
The waste is certainly a significant issue, but it is entirely manageable, at least from a technical perspective.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Or, of more immediate concern, how we're going to survive as a civilization when we run out of drinkable water.
Huh. Where I live the stuff falls from the sky, quite regularly. If I really had to I could pretty easily collect the stuff and store it. Do you not have rain where you live?
Also, if I'm not mistaken, I believe when the water goes down the drain, it's not actually destroyed. I've heard from good sources that it winds up somewhere downstream, and not as some people believe sucked into a black hole and destroyed. I'm not quite sure about the water that goes on the lawn... some people say that's not destroyed either, but I don't believe them.
AccountKiller
It's not waste that is perfectly good fuel in most cases. Build the right reactors people.
It's the "blame the smelly hippies" thing all over again, and once again the people you are blaming do not have the political power to do anything but make a mostly ignored noise as they complain.
Some would like to do exactly what you say, but that doesn't matter - how the hell are they going to?
They are insignificant and politically weak, so blaming them is just kicking a cat.
So now we have a mysterious un-named evil anti-intellectual, anti-rational, anti-scientific pressure group. How much power do these evil mysterious trouble makers have? Are they completely in control of whatever organization that they are in? Are there any other people in these groups that are in favor of fusion research? Is there any debate about the relative merits of fusion vs. other non-fossil energy sources among the "anti-fusion environmentalist organizations"?
The article referred to is in Nature, the prestigious British science journal. Do you think that they have any self interest in this debate? What are the chances that they would support the ending of a major scientific research effort in Europe in any circumstances? It's not that they are corrupt, but there is no question what side of the issue they will support.
And look how the Slashdot hoards start barking like a bunch of dogs who just caught a cat when they have a chance to trash "environmentalists". Some quotes:
Yes, according to the Slashdot Pundits, all environmentalists are the same: irrational anti-scientific scum who want to drive the planet into a new dark ages because of their ill founded personal vendetta against rational thought. No shades of gray here. No possibility that environmentalists can have various opinions. No possibility that there might be people in the environmental movement who are pro-fusion.
For all the pretense that Slashdot readers are rationalist who use there intellect to examine all sides of an issue, all I see here is a bunch of prejudiced morons who are more interested in thumping their chests and screaming insults at a perceived enemy then actually thinking about issues. You are exactly the same as the people who you construe as your opposition: irrational pigheads who cling to their preconceived notions and would rather make baseless charges then engage in meaningful discussion.
Why is Snark Required?
I highly suggest you remove 1 human right away. Practice what you preach.
Well, I tried. :\ Thanks.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It's also 8 light-minutes away and has an average power density on the order of 1 kW/m2. Who wants to cover the land in PV cells as far as the eye can see when you can build a few miniature stars with a few tonnes of superconducter and a vacuum chamber and have done with it?*
*Go Polywell! It'd be nice if Dr. B. turned out to be right.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
All the brilliant engineering in the world won't fix laziness, apathy, or corruption.
Blowout Preventors of the type installed on the DeepWater rig are proven fail safe when properly tested and installed. However, when the company testing and installing the fail-safe equipment doesn't bother to finish all the tests or properly install the fail-safe and the Federal agency responsible for ensuring that all equipment was properly tested and installed signs off on the equipment even though the tests have not been completed and the installations haven't been verified, well, it's just a matter of time before a disaster happens. What's worse is there is no telling how many other BOP's are in exactly the same shape as the ones on the DeepWater rig.
The GoM spill is 100% the fault of TransOcean (the rig operator) and Haliburton (who installed the BOP), and BP and Anadarko (the two owners) are ultimately responsible, but if the MMS had been doing its job instead of whatever the hell they were doing there would not have been a spill at all. In fact, more than likely the 11 people who died would not have, and the rig would still be operational - there would simply be a cut pipe at that particular well and a small slick of residual oil.
I'll say that again in clearer terms: the Federal government was in a position to completely prevent the Gulf spill in its entirety, but due to laziness, apathy, corruption, or all three they failed to do so. The required tests were not completed, yet the equipment was signed off on by the Federal agency responsible. All of the corporations were also in a position to prevent this spill, don't mistake me, but it required laziness, apathy, and/or corruption from all parties involved to create the spill.
The technology itself is foolproof when properly installed.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller