Slashdot Mirror
ITER Fusion Project Struggles To Put the Pieces Together
ananyo writes "The world's largest scientific project is threatened with further delays, as agencies struggle to complete the design and sign contracts worth hundred of millions of euros with industrial partners. Sources familiar with the project warn that the complex system for buying ITER's many pieces could put the fusion reactor project even further behind schedule. Rather than providing cash, ITER's partners have pledged 'in kind' contributions of pieces of the machine. Magnets, instruments and reactor sections will arrive from around the world to be cobbled together at the central site in St-Paul-lès-Durance in southern France. Because no one body holds the purse strings, designs for the machine's components face a tortuous back-and-forth between the central ITER Organization and national 'domestic agencies', which ensure that local companies secure contracts for ITER's components. Managers say the project remains on schedule. But it would hardly be the first time that ITER had been delayed or faced budgetary difficulties."
The ITER project has an overly complex management for purely political reasons, and that causes complexities, delays and increased costs. However the managers think everything is fine.
TLDR is its a "pot luck" fusion reactor and its a hell of a lot of coordination work to make sure they don't end up with 25 bags of doritos and nothing else, and theres always some cheap bastard who wants to eat at the buffet but doesn't bring anything, and half the attendants have conflicting food allergies and religious food prohibitions.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Wouldn't it be great if just one company controlled everything so that... no wait.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
The euro crisis must be deep indeed if government projects have to rely on barter.
This assumes that there is such a path. I'll bet no private funders are rich enough to take a bet on whether it is possible or not. Wasting billions once to find out it isn't technically possible currently is one thing. Wasting the billions twice is just, well, a waste.
Korma: Good
I'll bet that a small focused team, privately funded, will figure out a path to safe and large scale fusion before ITER does.
There are certainly many problems with the way ITER is planned - the way they've distributed the manufacturing to keep all of the member countries happy is a recipe for inefficiency - but I think you underestimate how difficult projects like this actually are. Keep in mind that ITER is actually a scaled down version of what they originally wanted to build, and an actual commercial plant would be even more massive. One article I read mentioned that ITER required 150,000 km of superconducting wire; this isn't exactly commodity hardware. There's simply no way this wasn't going to cost many billions of euros, and require the full-time efforts of thousands of people.
Perhaps Bill Gates will lead the charge.
I would love to see private investors step up to the plate, but Bill Gates' net worth is about $66 billion, and ITER is currently projected to cost around 20 billion euros, so he'd have to drop a huge chunk of his fortune on what is still only a proof-of-concept machine (actually commercializing fusion power would require many billions more). Funding biomedical research as he's been doing is relatively cheap by comparison.
The only way a small, privately financed team will figure out commercially viable fusion power is if any of the proposed "LENR"/"cold fusion" schemes turns out to be successful. Obviously it would be great if this were to happen, but I'm not holding my breath.
The world's largest scientific project
In what sense is that? Number of people directly working on it? Number of countries collaborating?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
That would probably be the host country, so France.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
So, you want to find a private investor that forks out over 15 bn EUR in order to do an experiment... yeah right. For a commercial reactor when the technology is proven, this would be viable but ITER will not generate any profit, and as the technology will literally save the planet it is done through international collaboration.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Even when fusion is up and running, it won't be some magical free source of power like fission power was sold to be. It will still involve really advanced technologies that need to be balanced just so. One might get more energy than what was put in, but operating costs are going to be rather extreme.
It might be better for the environment and cheaper to operate than a uranium nuclear reactor, but the operating costs will not compare favorably against thorium reactors.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
For sixty years fusion scientists have been saying "We've almost got it." They're promising that if we keep throwing them billions, they might have something feasible in another fifty.
The highest power levels obtained even after half a decade's research was 65% of the input power and lasted for half a second. The power levels needed to keep the reaction self-sustaining are an order of magnitude higher, and to generate useful power is yet another order of magnitude *or two* higher than that.
There are no known materials that can withstand the radiation and temperatures anywhere nearly long enough; even a second's operation permanently damages and contaminates huge parts of the reactor vessel.
I can think of no technology which has comparable levels of continued failure. It's time to put large scale fusion research to bed until other necessary technologies have caught up, and put the money saved into solar/wind/hydro generation and grid improvements.
Please help metamoderate.
So ITER is an international version of the Space Shuttle which was an intentionally lousy design that "succeeded" by maximizing the number of contractors in different congressional districts that got government $$$. The difference is that there was still enough residual talent left at NASA for the Space Shuttle to at least take flight. Not so much for ITER.
If Bill Gates really wanted to help the world, he'd take $30 Billion and make it a prize for whoever can get an operation fusion reactor running. No awards go to maximizing sub-contractor payouts in this scenario. Instead, success would actually be the objective of the project instead of failure + guaranteed taxpayer funded payouts for the next 40+ years.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Cost?
Why can't one country step forward and just do it?
When it comes to the olympics, they're fighting over who gets to have the honour of spending a shitload of money for something nobody will really need at any time in the future. Here's something that would have an impact for everyone living on this planet for centuries to come and everybody claims it's way too expensive for a single country to do.
THIS IS STUPID!
No!!!
It be great if lenr could get federal funds to do the research needed... In a sense some federal funds do go to it but only because the scientists at spawar have done it on the side. We now have a method to easily replicate the original p and f experiment using co-deposition of palladium ( no longer have to wait for the palladium to absorb enough deutrium to trigger the reaction ). The Italians, specifically celani, have progressed work done with nickel and hydrogen. The most interesting experiment that I know of is palladium loaded zeolite with hydrogen gas, you can find the video in coldfusionnow.org ... The nanor MIT device is also of interest.
I realize ITER is based in established science, but there is now a theory which requires no new physics and explains the effects seen from the many repeatable experiments, widom-Larson theory.
We also know that lenr experiments can be done for a fraction of a fraction of the ITER cost, why should we limit our energy research horizon especially with such promise and the increasing number of repeated experiments by MIT, spawar, and even NASA.
It might be better for the environment and cheaper to operate than a uranium nuclear reactor,
This is very questionable. Fusion produces enormous amounts of neutrons (a factor of a hundred more than a typical fission reactor) that irradiate and weaken the reactor structure. You could work around that by surrounding the whole thing in liquid lithium to capture the neutrons and breed more fuel, but molten lithium is very nasty stuff, and the tritium bubbling out of it will be very hard to contain completely. Some people have proposed using He3 as a fuel, but that is utterly unrealistic (we don't have hardly any, it produces less energy when fused, and it is much harder to fuse He3 than D-T (which we still haven't done after 60 years of trying)).
Even if ITER is a success, and we achieve self-sustaining fusion, we are still a long and difficult way from commercialization. It is very likely we will decide it just isn't worth it.
MIT - NANOR reactor...http://cdn.coldfusionnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/HagelsteinPdemonstra.pdf SPaWAR - co-deposition of palladium ... http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sti/publications/pubs/tr/1696/tr1696.pdf
Dr. Iraj Parchamazad, Chairman of the Chemistry Department at the University of LaVerne, in LaVerne, California - http://coldfusionnow.org/iraj-parchamazad-lenr-with-zeolites/
Let's continue work on ITER, but not ignore the progress in the lenr/lanr field by opening up federal funding and the us patent office to researchers in this field... The very least this will attract private investors under the protection of patents in which case the scientific establishment can keep denying lenr public funding.
I don't see why the operating costs have to be high. Fuel costs will be negligible, so you must be assuming that there are significant wear-and-tear costs, requiring replacement of damaged reactor parts etc. It appears that you are making direct extrapolation from current technology, and assuming that none of the problems they are trying to solve are actually solved. As well as the main ITER site in France, there is a materials research establishment in Japan working to solve the materials problems which would be the main contributors to operating costs, I am not saying that they are certain to succeed, but your assumption seems to be that they are certain to fail.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
And the assumption that it is a scientific project, when it is actually an engineering project.
The output of a scientific project is a paper. With photographs, maybe, diagrams etc. But mainly, a paper that says "we have discovered something new about the universe".
The output of an engineering project is something useful. Civil engineers build useful roads, aeronautical engineers build useful planes, and so on.
The intention of ITER is to build a useful fusion reactor - eventually. There may be a lot of science done on the way there, and there may be a lot of people with science PhDs working on the project. But it is fundamentally an engineering project.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
It just doesn't add up.
With magnetic containment you end up using too much electricity to contain the reaction for it to be worthwhile and it isn't sensible to contain the reaction with a solid material due to the pressures and energies involved.
Until we can start using artificial gravity to compress and contain the fusion reaction it will not be economically feasible considering some of the alternatives such as thorium salt reactors.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
The problem with getting private funds is due to the patent office denying anything that smells like the p and f claims. What investor is going to go into a business where the product is not protected and relatively easy to duplicate... Not many. This has bred secrecy in the field for those close to production, they cannot release either their research or the product itself without a patent cause they have responsibility to their investors. What we do get from them is internal test data, observations from scientists, and eventually third party verification.
I don't follow your logic. You have to put some energy into a magnetic field to set it up, but you have to put some energy into bending metal etc to build a solid reactor. With superconducting coils and nothing going on inside, the magnetic field costs nothing to maintain.
Of course, there is something going on inside, and it will cost energy to maintain the magnetic field. But I see no evidence that this should be of the same size as the energy produced. And I would have thought that the engineers working on devices like this would have thought of that at some point over the last thirty years. What you are suggesting is that every engineer/scientist who has worked on the project and its predecessors is a complete idiot.
As I understand it, the cost of maintaining the magnetic field increases as the surface of the container, i.e. as the square of dimension, and the energy produced as the volume of the container i.e. the cube of dimension. Therefore, by just scaling up, at some point power generation must exceed costs. Of course, that may be at an unattainably large volume, which is why we need more research before attempting to build one. But is is theoretically, if not commercially, a sure thing.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
So how do we get Elon Musk interested in fusion research?
Necron69
ITER Construction will be managed within an agreed capped ceiling of 4,700 kIUA (ITER Unit of Account in thousands). This construction cap is based on the ITER Baseline adopted in July 2010 by the ITER Council and cannot be exceeded.
From here.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The world's largest scientific project
In what sense is that?
The size of the science, clearly.
My webcomic
I can think of no technology which has comparable levels of continued failure.
I can, it's call the NIF...
You must be talking about those EMC2 folks...
Unfortunatly, although the Navy continues to fund research into Polywell style fusion reactors, there are several big hurdles to overcome. The biggest ones (to me) are that the concept has unknown scaling constants (e.g, does a "big" version lose too much efficinecy), and they most expensive component (the magnets) are inside the reactor and get bombarded with radiation which creates and equally big material science headache as some of the alternate approaches.
Read more about it here...
The NASA patent is marked for examination (20110255645), but I have never seen any patent other than George Miley's (8227020) get through the patent application process... Rossi will need to provide more info for the EU to issue him a patent, and here are his patent filings (http://ip.com/patfam/en/40296889)... most LENR patents are in the queue...
What other LENR patents have been issued, other than Dr. Miley's?
The intention of ITER is to build a useful fusion reactor - eventually.
No, not really. They don't have any plans to convert excess energy into electrical power. At best, assuming they can get it to work, it will be useful as a test bed for materials.
Well, it's good to see Dr. Miles get a patent. I clearly need to learn how to search the patent office databases.
I dont doubt some people would send you emails like that... There are quite a few militant LENR believers out there, but I would never be one among them to use a patent as proof. It would just make it easier to gain private investment. With NASA and SPAWAR working on LENR, the developement of the Widom-Larson theory, and the repeatable co-deposition experiment, I am advocating for public investment. Of course not being an expert in the relating fields makes my opinion worth squat, it cant hurt to try.
I second this. The greatest managers I've ever had were people who also actually did some of the work. There's good guidelines in the PMP guide. However, one of the first things in it says something like, apply these guidelines where appropriate. Unfortunately there are alot of PMP's with only superficial knowledge of the subject matter or skills they manage, and can't even be bothered to sit down for a day one-on-one with a few coders/researchers and figure out what the heck it is that is going on. So they don't know how to apply management appropriately because they don't know what they are managing.
There are maybe three types of managers:
Actively involved in the work on the project, yet trusts coworkers enough not to hinder their own abilities. These managers can better model the consequences of their management decisions because they have a more accurate model in their mind of the work being done. They might not think of it in terms of a "model".
There is a more dangerous type, who is not an experienced worker, but only superficially skilled. They might feel empowered to perform more micromanaging where they shouldn't. Where as the above probably knows his coworkers better and trusts their abilities more and will actually do less micro managing.
Then there are those who realize that their subject matter knowledge is superficial, and those don't make the same mistakes as the previous. They know the bounds of their management abilities and can support the project appropriately.
And finally there is the completely oblivious. They usually throw around management buzz words. If they hear a techy word they recognize, they try to relate. If you say something about forking your code base to prototype a new feature, they might combine some techy buzz words with management buzz words to create a nonsensical question like "What is the project risk involved of forking the code?". Answering nonsensical questions is tough, because it usually involves invalidating the question since there can only be a nonsensical answer to a nonsensical question.
Ok so I ended up with a fourth in between there and forgot to edit :/ I did say "maybe three" :)
http://www.generalfusion.com/
Mostly random stuff.
the money wasted on ITER could pave over square miles of desert with solar cells and provide actual fusion-based power.
This article pretty much explains the extent of NASA's support (mostly a single employee for those not wanting to rtfa)...http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/01/16/cold-fusion-nasa-says-nothing-useful/
The NASA scientist does say from his results that LENR deserves further investigation, what he unequivocally denies is people like Rossi that say they get x,y, and z results but are shady when it comes with sharing the data or allowing third party unbias observers. Quite frankly, I agree with him. LENR should be put through the rigor of the scientific method and a consensus should be built, this process is slow, and tedious but absolutely necessary for this field to progress. Unfortunantly, public grants/funds will be unavailable to any researcher looking to duplicate or begin work in this area.
From what I understand Rossi is working on third party validation through two independent parties (one being a university)... the report is due sometime in late November. Perhaps, the proof is just around the corner...
FYI a recent post by Rossi on jonp says by February 2013 a 1 MW plant will be operating under private enterprise and anyone will be able to view it... Time will tell... If it gets pushed back at all i am just going to ignore the ecat entirely and wait till the scientists in lenr do the needed work.
For me Rossi and his eCat are out of chances. Everything he's doing is consistent with someone who is bullshitting and dragging things out. If it really worked he's had ample opportunity to show that now. He stopped a demonstration because he thought people would get "bored" - LOL, yeah right.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.