Fusion - The ITER Project

June 28 - Fusion took a giant step closer to becoming a commercial reality today, as France was selected to host a $13 billion experimental nuclear fusion project that scientists hope will eventually produce a clean, safe and endless energy resource and help phase out polluting fossil fuels.  An experimental device called the "International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)" will be built in France. ITER is hopefully the step that will bridge the gap between today’s studies of plasma physics and tomorrow's electricity-producing fusion power plants. The goal of the project is to demonstrate methods of extracting the power of nuclear fusion.  Fusion is the same process that goes on in the center of the sun in which energy is produced when the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium are fused together to form helium, while releasing huge quantities of heat.

The ITER Tokamak, a magnetic containment device, would be the first fusion device to produce thermal energy at levels equivalent to conventional electricity power plants, and would demonstrate the technology necessary for the first prototype commercial fusion power plant. It is based around a hydrogen plasma torus operating at over 100 million °C, and will produce 500 MW of fusion power.  It would work by heating isotopes of hydrogen to hundreds of millions of degrees, creating a plasma of charged particles.

The particles would be confined by magnetic fields in the doughnut-shaped Tokamak. There they would collide and fuse, producing high-energy helium nuclei and neutrons.  The uncharged neutrons would escape the Tokamak, creating heat that could be used to generate electricity. But the positively charged helium nuclei would be trapped by the magnetic fields and would help sustain further fusion reactions.

It is an international project involving The People's Republic of China, the European Union (represented by Euratom), Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America, under the auspices of the IAEA.

Design of the device has been ongoing for years, with prototypes of several components having been built and tested. The first bids for construction are expected to be awarded next year and the first plasma operation is expected in 2016. If plans progress as expected, officials hope to build a demonstration power plant in Japan around 2040. Officials project that 10-20 percent of the world's energy could come from fusion by the century's end, said Raymond L. Orbach, the U.S. Department of Energy's office of science director.

The project is quite controversial to some, but the expense is easily justified by the vast benefits that could result from the project.  Almost inexhaustible amounts of inexpensive energy with little environmental impact are claimed by the proponents.  Although we have very serious short term energy problems that must be addressed, long term solutions must also be addressed, lest we face another energy shortage in the last half of this century.

References:

Reuters/CNN, June 30,2005, Is fusion the best way forward?
NewScientist, June 28,2005, Biggest nuclear fusion project goes to France
ITER Fusion Research Collaborative, Official site of the ITER Organization
The International Fusion Project (ITER) US State Department site
DOE website on ITER

Technocrati tags: fusion, ITER

Comments

[asil]

bilgi yarışması
php script indir
restaurant
movie theater

[Bruce Emerick]

Someday, historians will say "what were they thinking, spending billions on a space station and a moon base while the solution to their energy and polution problems took a back seat?".
The ITER project deserves the priority of an Apollo program; not the back-burner position it now occupies.

[Knut Holt]

Those giant approaches where one is using huge lasers and huge magnets will not work in real life.

A more viable approach will be to send shock-waves towards the center of an appropriate gas so that a tiny volume is compressed and heated so much that fusion occurs. Thus has actually been done using sound waves in simple experiments, but so far the fusion has only resulted in some light emission. But th approach can possibly be scaled up to yield economical viable results..

[Account Deleted]

You forgot to mention India as one of the participating member in ITER

[Isochroma.wordpress.com]

It is time to halt these boondoggles before it sucks up more precious taxpayer dollars which are so desperately needed to help the ever-growing underclass of people living in poverty.

From its inception to today, fusion has been a gigantic blackhole welfare program for the rich corporations and their scientistic employees with the starving taxpayer footing the bill.

No more.

[christian louboutin]

I learn a lot from you blog that how the single article can change the value of somebody. Your perspectives are so awe-inspiring

and strong that I need to rethink about something in my life.