ITER Fusion Reactor On Track To Generating Power By 2028 232
ananyo writes "ITER, the multibillion-euro international nuclear-fusion experiment, is on track to generate power by 2028. But some of the science that was supposed to happen along the way is going to be dropped to keep the vision alive. The plans form the main thrust of recommendations by a 21-strong expert panel of international plasma scientists and ITER staff, convened to reassess the project's research plan in the light of the construction delays. The plans were discussed this week at a meeting of ITER's Science and Technology Advisory Committee. The meeting is the start of a year-long review by ITER to try to keep the experiment on track to generate 500 MW of power from an input of 50 MW by 2028, and so hit its target of attaining the so-called Q10, where power output is ten times input or more. ITER initially aims to produce a Q10 for a few seconds, and then for pulses of 300–500 seconds, and work up over the following decade to output ratios of 30 times more power out than in, with pulses lasting almost an hour. Eventually the aim is to develop steady-state plasmas, which will yield information relevant to industrial-scale fusion-power generation. It is experiments relating to the understanding of longer-pulse and steady-state ITER plasmas that are most likely to be delayed beyond 2028."
Re:Why Didn't I think of that? (Score:2, Informative)
It takes a special brand of incompetent to that obviously fuck up an article *headline.*
Re:Improvement (Score:5, Informative)
You are sooo right. I've been reading "fusion power is coming soon!" for decades.
When the first projection was made back in the 70s about fusion in next 50 years, it assumed that funding would remain constant or would increase. But what happened was funding kept getting slashed, over and over again. It would be like saying we'll get to the moon in a decade in 1960, and then proceeding to gut NASA of any resources. Then in 1970s bitching they are not much further along as they only had money for 1 sounding rocket and 3 slide rules.
To be even more frank, fusion *requires* that physical sciences and material sciences advance to a certain point. Cutting funding to such research makes fusion further away. And physical science research has been severely cut since 1970s. If it wasn't for the EU, Japan and China, ITER would not have existed in the first place. US has only shut down funding.