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.
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.
No, a second of exposure is easily handled and we have materials that we are pretty sure will get into the hours regime. The work that needs to be done is to bridge the gap between something that runs for a day to something that runs for a year.
The highest power levels obtained even after half a decade's research was 65% of the input power and lasted for half a second
That has been improved to about pretty close to equivalent 100-120% for 10s based on D-D reactions in a machine that didn't want to use tritium. Getting this up to a Q a few times that is should not be an issue. Getting the efficiency up to commercial viable levels may be much more difficult though.
For sixty years fusion scientists have been saying
For 15 years slashdotters have been failing to read the summary, let alone the article.
"We've almost got it."
No, they haven't.
They're promising that if we keep throwing them billions, they might have something feasible in another fifty.
They've been promising that they will get it if it is funded to an adequate level.
It has only ever been funded at the level which will never be sufficient.
You're blaming "scientists" when politics is at fault. That makes you are part of the problem.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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!
We built the LHC, a massive expense, for no reason other than basic science. ... This is no different.
Actually, it is very different. LHC is about basic science. ITER is not. It is about engineering, not science. We understand the science of fusion just fine. We just haven't figured out how to build a contraption to make it happen in a controlled way.
Actually, for 60 years fusion scientists have been saying "with current funding, it's probably impossible" which isn't the same thing as saying "almost got it". This graph shows what leading scientists in 1970 thought they could deliver with different levels of funding. Do note the 'actual funding' line at the bottom, the one that is well below the 'fusion never' line that would never produce the equipment, expertise, and practical knowledge that would be required to build an economical fusion reactor. Quite frankly, given that this is what actual scientists in the field were saying 45 years ago, it's remarkable they've made as much progress as they have.