ITER project France - Man's fusion energy dream

Fusion energy can solve almost all energy needs of mankind. But it's proving devilishly tough to get.

ITER project France - Man's fusion energy dream

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• Fusion decoded: In 1938 Hans Bethe, a German physicist, worked out that stars shine because they fuse the nuclei of hydrogen into helium at their cores, a process that releases energy. Physicists have dreamed ever since that they might one day be able to build power stations that could recreate and harness that stellar process on Earth. It could end the energy problems for earthlings once and for all.
• The fusion promise: Nuclear fusion could provide clean and carbon-free power, has an unlimited supply of fuel available in ordinary sea water, and would create only small amounts of (relatively safe) waste. Such a power source could tackle two of the 21st century’s most pressing issues in one fell swoop, by satisfying the world’s increasing thirst for electricity without contributing any further to its environmental woes. If only scientists could make the technology work.
• A star on Earth: The problem of recreating a star on Earth is hard. Fusing hydrogen nuclei, which are bare protons, is extremely difficult because these positively-charged particles repel each other with great force. Fusion is possible within stars only because the immense gravity there forces the nuclei to stay together for long periods of time and overcome their mutual electrostatic repulsion.

1. Instead of trying to fuse hydrogen nuclei, therefore, physicists have focused their efforts instead on the (relatively) easier task of fusing the nuclei of deuterium and tritium.
2. These are isotopes of hydrogen that respectively contain one and two neutrons (nuclear particles that have no electrical charge) in addition to the single proton of standard hydrogen. Deuterium is abundant in sea water—around one in 6,000 molecules contains it—and tritium can be made by bombarding lithium with neutrons.

• A long journey: After seven decades of effort by many scientists, funded by billions from governments all over the world, viable nuclear fusion remains a distant dream. Most of the current work in this area (and virtually all the public money) is now focused on the $20 bn ITER experiment in France, a joint undertaking by 35 countries to see, once and for all, if fusion can be made to work at scale.

1. ITER is years behind schedule and was plagued by cost overruns during its early years. It is unlikely to succeed for at least another 15 years, if it ever does. Commercial power plants based on its technology would take another 30 years, perhaps more, to develop.
2. Many startups in America, Britain and Canada want to speed things up. Funded largely by venture capital, they want to leapfrog the slow, lumbering ITER  project to bring fusion electricity onto power grids within 15 years.
3. After many decades of disappointment, there really is good reason to be optimistic about fusion. Some say that Elon Musk did not invent rocket science but that he and others took half a century’s worth of government-led research — everything from the Mercury and Apollo missions all the way to Shuttle and Soyuz beyond — and combined it with the entrepreneurial appetite for risk. The results are demonstrably better, faster and cheaper ways of getting into space.
4. Like space travel, fusion has benefited from all those years of government investment. To that can be added radical new reactor designs that utilise advanced materials, new manufacturing methods and faster computing—plus a powerful new factor: climate change. The geopolitical pressure to shift energy production away from carbon is increasing all the time and private investors can see that market signal.
5. The fusion startups’ failure rate will no doubt be high and any pay-off could be decades away. But for investors who yearn to find ideas that might one day transform the world, nuclear fusion is about the boldest bet there is.

• Knowledge centre: ITER ("The Way" in Latin) is one of the most ambitious energy projects in the world today. In southern France, 35 nations are collaborating to build the world's largest tokamak, a magnetic fusion device that has been designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy based on the same principle that powers our Sun and stars. The experimental campaign that will be carried out at ITER is crucial to advancing fusion science and preparing the way for the fusion power plants of tomorrow. ITER will be the first fusion device to produce net energy. ITER will be the first fusion device to maintain fusion for long periods of time. And ITER will be the first fusion device to test the integrated technologies, materials, and physics regimes necessary for the commercial production of fusion-based electricity.

 

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