French Fusion Experiment Delayed Until 2025 or Beyond 272
An anonymous reader writes "The old joke is that fusion is the power of the future and always will be. But it's not looking so funny for ITER, an EU10 billion fusion experiment in France. According to Nature News, ITER will not conduct energy-producing experiments until at least 2025 — five years later than what had been previously agreed to. The article adds that the reactor will cost even more than the seven parties in the project first thought:'...Construction costs are likely to double from the 5-billion (US$7-billion) estimate provided by the project in 2006, as a result of rises in the price of raw materials, gaps in the original design, and an unanticipated increase in staffing to manage procurement. The cost of ITER's operations phase, another 5 billion over 20 years, may also rise.'"
I'll cross my fingures harder for polywell then (Score:5, Informative)
Not "French" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'll cross my fingures harder for polywell then (Score:4, Informative)
Nebel recently claimed in an interview that he expects to know if Polywell will work or not in 18-24 months [nextbigfuture.com]. Not a long wait, really...
There are some other funded projects that might work (and some that probably won't). It would be good for the world if at least one did. Maybe it is time to buy shares in an electric car-builder...?
General Fusion [wikipedia.org] seems the coolest; steam driven pistons! :-)
Re:Crazy- this should be funded more to go faster (Score:5, Informative)
So the Europeans and the US governments say they are firmly convinced of dangerous anthropogenic global warming but they won't spend 15 Bn over 10 years to speed this up?
Please note, that it is not 15 Bn to get fusion energy. It is 15 Bn for fusion energy research. The equations depends on the amount that such research would help. If there is only a tiny chance that the development of fusion energy would be a tiny step closer with this research, 15 Bn is suddenly quite a lot
But it is not a "tiny step", it is the last and most important step that is supposed to iron out the last big problems with the design and materials before a grid-connected multi-GW power plant can be commissioned (that would be DEMO [wikipedia.org], now not likely to come on stream before 2040).
Re:I've got the promo materials in front of me... (Score:4, Informative)
In the words of wikipedia, citation please?
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2004.04.004 [doi.org]
But seriously, with the hedging language in the statement you've quoted, there's nothing controversial. Note the "up to" and "aiming ultimately". (Plus "prolonged" in this line of business means a few minutes.) Fusion scientists are cautious people, having made rosy predictions in the past that never came to fruition. And when you're cautious, it's hard to convince lawmakers to hand over the money.
On the other hand, ITER as a concept has been around since the '80s. If they had just gone ahead with it back then, we would have learned a lot by now. Same goes for the cancellation of the SSC.
Re:Fusion (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fusion (Score:5, Informative)
I think you have some difficulties understanding scale. Let's take a look at an example fusion reaction, combining two deuterium atoms into tritium and a proton (note: This only occurs in 50% of deuterium-deuterium fusion reactions, but the numbers are similar for the other outcome, helium and a neutron). Deuterium has a molar mass of 2.01410178, trituim has 3.0160492, and a proton has 1.00727646677. That means, fusing two moles of deuterium gives a net mass change of 0.00487789323g. You can get the energy released from this directly by plugging it into e=mc^2 (ignoring momentum for this back-of-an-envelope calculation). The output is around 4.4e11 J. The current global energy consumption is around 5e20 J. To get this amount of energy from deuterium fusion, you would need to burn around 2e9 moles of deuterium per year.
2e9 moles sounds like a lot, but it's only around 1.1e9g, or 1.1e3 tonnes. It's around Deuterium is a naturally-occurring isotope of Hydrogen, and accounts for around 0.015% of all hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, accounting for about 75% of the total mass. 76% of the Earth's surface is covered with water. How much water would you need to get this much deuterium?
The molar mass of water is 18.0153, so you need 18.0153g for one mole, which contains two moles of hydrogen. We need just under 6667 moles of hydrogen to get one mole of deuterium, so we need about 1e13 moles of water. Now we're at some big numbers, around 2.4e11 kg of water. Because the density of water is roughly 1g:1cm^3, that's around 2.4e8m^3.
Still sounds like a lot? The volume of Earth's oceans is around 1.4e18m^3. At our current energy consumption rate, it would take around 5.7e9 years to burn it all. Note that this is longer than the current age of the Earth. Note also that this would only have a tiny effect on the oceans even after using all of the deuterium, since we would only be removing 0.015% of the hydrogen.
Of course, these are just rough figures. Fusion efficiency is likely to be low enough that we've only got enough readily-accessible deuterium for a few tens or hundreds of millions of years. It's a short-term solution, but only in as far as staying living on a single planet around a single star is.
Or possibly when the helium concentration will become high enough to be a concern.
This is even more funny. The reason helium is so expensive is because it floats to the top of the atmosphere and is lost to space if you release it. Having helium as a by-product of fusion would be nice, as it's currently in relatively short supply. Unlike other wastes, it's trivial to dispose of. Just let it into the atmosphere, and a short while later the solar winds will scatter it into interstellar space. It's sufficiently valuable that you probably don't want to do that, however.
Re:Crazy- this should be funded more to go faster (Score:4, Informative)
The reason the tokamak approach has been followed for ITER is that it is currently the most promising. Temperatures achievable in tokamak reactors are orders of magnitude higher than in other machines. Tokamaks have demonstrated fusion-relevant temperatures (~10 keV, 100 million degrees C) and net power gain (briefly in TFTR and JT60-U), and long pulse operation (in e.g. Tore Supra). Other approaches still need much more research before they get to the ITER stage.
The only other designs which come close are stellarators, and this approach is also being followed with this machine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X
The main problem with stellarators is that they need very complicated coil arrangements (whereas tokamaks' are pretty simple), greatly increasing the costs. Until relatively recently (10-20 years), the computing power necessary to design these machines properly simply wasn't available. Wendelstein 7-X is projected to have a performance similar to the JET tokamak (which was built in 1982).
Non-toroidal designs (e.g. linear machines, fusors etc.) always have problems with loss of particles/energy along magnetic fields (end loss), primarily due to fast electrons. This is because non-toroidal magnetic field structures always have nulls or holes where plasma can escape: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy_ball_theorem
Disclosure: I am a plasma physicist working on tokamaks
Re:Crazy- this should be funded more to go faster (Score:4, Informative)
Wind power only works when it's windy, and where it's windy, and not as efficiently as generally advertised. NIMBYs object to serious scale windfarms on land, and they kill migrating birds and cock up radar. There will also need to be a hugely expensive and unsightly ( or buried, and even more expensive) expansion of power grid systems.
Tidal systems are hideously expensive - estimates of UKL 23 billion for the Severn Barrage for example. And they have massive negative effects on wildlife too. NIMBYS are not fans of these either.
Photovolatic systems are unproven, but on a serious scale would probably involve enormous quantities of highly toxic chemicals. Like wind power, solar power is not available where the power is needed all the time, or even any of the time in many populated regions.
Barring a massive program of depopulation, there are no quick answers to power production vs climate change. Some or all of the three methods above will probably be part of the solution, as will be fusion power, fission power, carbon sequestration and other technologies, plus a lot of money. Anyone who says otherwise is probably selling snake oil.
Re:Someone just give this man some money.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Baah (Score:5, Informative)
Another good (informative and technical) general nuclear website: Nuclear Energy Institute (a.k.a. lobby) Nuclear Notes [blogspot.com]
Re:Crazy- this should be funded more to go faster (Score:2, Informative)
You'll be reading about these people in 10 years or so http://www.emc2fusion.org/ [emc2fusion.org]
Re:Crazy- this should be funded more to go faster (Score:5, Informative)
"Photovolatic systems are unproven, but on a serious scale would probably involve enormous quantities of highly toxic chemicals"
Photovoltaic isn't the only option for solar power though. This article [bbc.co.uk] about a plant in Spain that uses mirrors to collect light, heats water, which drives a standard turbine. This is basically last century's technology, very easy to do (relatively speaking of course), yet genius all the same.
Re:Baah (Score:3, Informative)
I found no good sources for the hidden costs
For Paks, there is a big one: it was built to benefit the people and the state-owned industry, not investors, and their prices were controlled accordingly. Had it been a private enterprise, it would have paid off big time by now.
In a broader sense, it has paid off, with cheaper products from the also state-owned factories, and a higher standard of living for an entire country (it was built in a big push to get electricity everywhere). I think that's worth more than some numbers reported yearly.
Re:Baah (Score:3, Informative)
> The fission plant per WEEK built and the acreage of solar, wind and bio per DAY built would be astronomical
To produce ALL the power used in the US now, including all electricity, heating and transportation energy use, requires a patch of solar panels in the southwest desert about 170,000 km^2 assuming 8% efficiency (which is low). That's about the same as the paved area of the USA (160,000 km^2), and about 1/3rd of the desert area.
Assuming the average road lasts 20 years before it needs re-paving (which seems very low to this Torontonian), 5% of the existing road surface has to be replaced every year. Solar panels also have a 20 year life span, or at least they'll be producing 85% power at that point. So the total effort needed to build and maintain ALL of the power in the USA using existing solar technology is the same amount of effort it that we are already using to maintain the road system.
It's big, but not "astronomical".
Maury
Re:Someone just give this man some money.... (Score:4, Informative)
Specific results aren't shared, no, but there is a pretty active community. The project leader, Dr. Rick Nebel, shares what information he can and there are some pretty in-depth discussions between him and other people who are very knowledgeable about physics and fusion. The best thing though, is that they are very likely to have a solid yes or no answer on Polywell within a year or two and it's going to cost them a tiny fraction of what ITER and similar are costing.
Re:Baah (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Crazy- this should be funded more to go faster (Score:3, Informative)
Most light water reactors are capable of load following to some extent. I worked at a BWR/6 that had originally been designed (as probably most were) with a mode in which the transmission grid operator could control reactor power within a limited range (the MASTER AUTO setting of the recirculating flow control system). Manual load follow would be doable on a routine basis over a fairly significant power range (say from 70% rated up to 100%). We didn't do either because our utility had dirt-burners and gas plants for that, but it would have been possible.
I'm pretty sure some of the BWRs in Illinois used to load follow on a regular basis. It was discussed in my GE-provided Station Nuclear Engineering course.
According to http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html, the currently operating French nukes (PWRs) load follow to some extent. Furthermore, that page states that "...Plants being built today, eg according to European Utilities' Requirements (EUR), have load-following capacity fully built in." To my knowledge, that would include the two EPRs being built now at Olkiluoto (Finland) and Flamanville (France).
Re:Baah (Score:5, Informative)
The numbers involved in realistic energy production are so large, it's almost always worth doing some simple scale calculations. Consider a small nuke with 500 MW faceplate capacity. 500 MW times 365 days/year times 24 hours/day times availability of 0.8 (allow for repair and maintenance) is 3.504e9 kWh/year.
On the hemp side, a variety of sources give 9.0 dry tons/acre/year in temperate latitudes, 1.46e7 BTUs/ton, 2.928e-4 kWh/BTU at 100% efficiency, assume 0.4 thermal efficiency (traditional coal-fired plants are about 0.33), and availability of 1.0. These numbers are all on the generous side of their ranges. Multiply that and get 1.539e4 kWh/acre/year. Call it 227,680 acres to match the output of the small nuke. A square about 19 miles on a side.
OTOH, assume cheap low-efficiency solar panels. Assume daily solar flux of 5.0 kWh per square meter per day (parts of the US are better than that), efficiency of 0.05, and availability of 1.0. Multiply that all out and get 3.693e5 kWh/acre/year. About 9,488 acres to match the output of the small nuke. Overall, an efficiency gain of 24 in favor of the panels.
Sanity check: non-crop plants are about 1% efficient in converting solar flux to biomass, so a factor of 5.0 for solar panels; assumed thermal efficiency for biomass to electricity is a factor of 2.5 for panels; growing season of five months is a factor of roughly 2.0 for panels (five month growing season in temperate latitude, but it's the five months with greatest flux); that gives a factor of about 25 in favor of panels, which matches.
Dye-sensitized solar cells can be manufactured in a roll-to-roll process, have demonstrated efficiencies greater than 5% when produced in that fashion, and depending on advances in the materials that can be used, may drastically change the cost per watt for solar PV. And solar PV can use land that's much more "marginal" than what's needed to support hemp: deserts, semi-arid high plains, and rooftops.