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."

Comments

Still kinda dumb

[Chris Burke]

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".

Okay, but the problem is that if you think you need successful regulation to prevent a BP spill-like disaster, then you still kinda don't understand fusion power.

The problem with the BP spill is that once a problem occurred and oil leaked, the oil does what it naturally does and continues to be pushed out by the pressure underground. The problem with fission reactors is that when the control rods fail, the enriched uranium does what it naturally does and continues to release neutrons in a chain reaction.

When a fusion reactor fails, the fusion stops on a timescale that to human eyes would be called "instantly". The whole reason nuclear fusion is such a hard thing to make into a power source is that it takes so much damn effort to make the source material actually fuse because that is not it's natural state until you get enough of it in one place that you call it a star. It's inherent in the nature of the power source that it can't go out of control. "Out of control" means "stopped".

I'm an environmentalist, but also pro-fission. Yet I do think concerns about regulation of fission reactors are valid. How worried am I about regulation of fusion reactors? None worried.

Re:Fusion Reactor... Crisis?!

[maxume]

You have out-obtused me, I have little idea what your localities share in common.

Do you mean to insist that they lack the money or stability to operate nuclear plants? That isn't exactly entirely attributable to fission itself. And Toshiba wants to sell them safe, small scale, self contained nuclear generation. The U.S. could be tasked with providing the islands with power, the U.S. Navy has long experience safely operating floating reactors (money is an issue there, but if we want to 'continue living in a civilization', we might have to stop worrying about it so much).

I'm about evenly split on governments spending $20 billion on new fission generation vs fusion research, but I'm not very optimistic about fusion, mostly based on the numbers in a recent Scientific American article:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fusions-false-dawn

The engineering requirements for the jacket on a tritium consuming fusion reactor are 'hilarious'. There is no better word. The targets for laser ignition also present 'interesting' production challenges. Meanwhile, uranium reactors 'fucking work', with political problems preventing them from being built, not fundamental technical challenges.

Re:Actually read the articles next time, Brett.

[hey!]

Citations?

I think it's very likely you've never worked in an environmental organization. I have. Let me tell you what the single thing they spend the most time obsessing about: the impact of degraded environmental quality on the quality of human life.

Yes, it is true environmentalists value the environment for itself more than the general population does. There's a simple explanation for that. If you study something, you care more about it. Birders care more about bird conservation. Hunters care more about game conservation. Wildflower photographers care more about plant conservation. It's as simple as that. Of course, to outsiders, birders, hunters and nature photographers seem a little like crackpots.

Caring about things is not a zero sum game. Just because you care *more* about the forests, or the bottom of the ocean, doesn't mean you care less about people. In fact it works the other way around. Caring isn't a resource, it's a habit of thought. The more you practice it, the better you get at it.

I'll just leave you with a few quotes from a report I participated in developing:

*A sustainable economy should provide for basic material requirements and a healthy quality of life.

* Economic "progress" must be encouraged, measured and gauged in terms of quality of life and development of human potential...

* The behavior of economic systems today should not diminish the potential enjoyment of life for future generations.

* Appropriate market incentives (e.g., full cost accounting) are essential to achieve biophysical and economic sustainability, and subsidies for unsustainable practices should be eliminated.

* The natural and physical environment is the platform which supports all communities and institutions.

In my personal experience, this is mainstream consensus opinion in the environmental movement, although how such ideas apply to specific policies such as trading pollution credits is often a matter of debate. That's because details matter. It might seem like a minority position among environmentalists to you if your knowledge of environmentalists is second hand, through sources that are interested in playing up controversy or equating environmentalism with extremism.