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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."
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 ?
ITER is terribly expensive.
Compared to what? The LHC cost around 9 billion and isn't expected to have any real tangible benefit to anyone other than the knowledge. The cost of a couple nuclear reactors is about 10-14 billion.
Compared to that, this thing sounds CHEAP. These "anti-nuclear activists" need to start asking themselves what we're going to replace base-load power generation with. Sorry, but wind just isn't going to do it since the wind doesn't blow all the time. Unless they like fission, coal, or natural gas, I don't see what else is going to substitute for generating a base load power. This is really a long term investment, and even though it's not guaranteed, we need to pursue multiple different strategies. Betting on one horse is just stupid.
AccountKiller
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.
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.