Construction of French Fusion Reactor Underway 389
GarryFre writes "It has been said that fusion is 50 years away for quite a few decades, but now work has actually been started. Digging has begun in the south of France on the planned site for France's first fusion reactor. A tokomak is a torus shaped magnetic confinement device which is necessary to withstand the temperatures associated with fusion that are so high, solid materials can't hold them. As such, the building represents the future core of ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.) It will be interesting to see if it takes 50 years to build it."
probably not first post anymore (Score:2, Informative)
Haven't fusion reactors been built already but have simply used more energy than they produced?
No time to google when shooting for FP.
French? Well, kind of. (Score:5, Informative)
It may well be physically in France, I wouldn't call it French per se. The I in the name most assuredly stands for International, with technical and financial input from around the world (China, the EU, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the USA, in alphabetical order).
It's a project we all may ultimately depend on as a civilisation, so the International part is important.
Professor Farnsworth begs to differ . . . (Score:5, Informative)
the world's first Fusion Reactor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnsworth-Hirsch_Fusor
Re:probably not first post anymore (Score:3, Informative)
Quite. ITER follows in the steps of the Joint European Torus (JET), and other research reactor. It is not aimed at achieve power plant break even (that is slated for the followon project, DEMO) nor economical breakeven (that would come after DEMO).
T-O-K-A-M-A-K (Score:5, Informative)
Re:As an American.... (Score:4, Informative)
Shame about the whole 3 strikes business and kicking the Roma's out of the country...
Not French (Score:3, Informative)
It's an international reactor, hence the "I" in ITER.
Duh.
ITER will be one of the many Tokamaks. (Score:2, Informative)
That's correct. Hobbyists have built fusion reactors in their garages, and successfully achieved fusion.
There are about 30 Tokamak fusion reactors in the world today. All of them produce fusion. None of them produce more power than they require to run. Why do the ITER managers believe theirs will be different? That I don't know.
Also, there is evidence that the ITER project is badly managed, in my opinion.
50 Years Away? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sure Fusion was only 20 years away when I was a kid 30 years ago.
Re:probably not first post anymore (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, ITER is intended to demonstrate a useful amount of energy production from fusion. It's baseline design is for Q=10, i.e. 10 times more power out from fusion than put in. This is essentially a feasibility demonstration, and experimental test bed for things like wall modules and blankets. The follow-on (DEMO) will then be a prototype power plant, and actually be connected up to generators etc.
ps. though AC, also a plasma physicist working on tokamaks
Re:Polywell (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ITER will be one of the many Tokamaks. (Score:5, Informative)
There are two main reasons why it is thought that ITER can achieve more power out than in (10 times more in fact)
1. It is about 8 times the plasma volume of JET (about 2x in each direction). The temperature gradients in tokamaks have limits (things like Ion Temperature Gradient mode-driven turbulence) so the bigger you make the machine the hotter you can make the middle of the plasma and the better your performance. The problem with this is that the power output goes like the volume, but the area this power is deposited on goes like the area. Hence why small fusion plants would be nice, and materials are the biggest issue for ITER and DEMO
2. They will be using Tritium in ITER. Tokamaks today have only very rarely used tritium (e.g. JET, JT60-U) to produce more power out than in (very briefly 1s). This is because the plasma physics doesn't really change when you add Tritium, so experiments use Deuterium which is much cheaper and less dangerous (e.g. radioactive). At 100 million degrees, the D-D fusion rate is still pretty small and so the amount of fusion energy produced is tiny. The D-T rate is orders of magnitude higher and so significant power can be produced
p.s. Yes, AC plasma physicist
Re:Polywell (Score:3, Informative)
I would hope LANL believes in the project. They're partners in it.
Re:Not French (Score:1, Informative)
Also it isn't Frances first Tokamak.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tore_Supra
Re:Oh well... (Score:4, Informative)
Fortunatly the magnetic confinement techniques they'll be using doesn't fail at any particular temperature. RTFM!
Re:Professor Farnsworth begs to differ . . . (Score:4, Informative)
Of course this design has no chance of achieving net power output. It's useful as a source of low-energy neutrons. I've always wondered what kinds of isotopes you could make with one. The next "radioactive boyscout" might use them. If you aren't familiar with that story, google it.
Re:Le Daily News - 9/15/2060 (Score:4, Informative)
The burning crater formerly known was France has successfully performed its first and last Fusion reaction.
~FIXED
Good joke, but I'm sorry to spoil it with a few facts. It's very difficult to make fusion happen in a reactor. The best you can do is get a small fraction of the deuterium and tritium present in the reactor to fuse at any moment. Even if you could get all of the fuel present in the reactor to undergo fusion all at once (a physical impossibility) the total amount of energy released would do no worse than demolish the reactor building. So no crater, not even a small one.
Re:Oh well... (Score:5, Informative)
Which is still a tiny bit short of the 100,000,000K that they're looking at. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iter#Reactor_overview [wikipedia.org].
Re:Le Daily News - 9/15/2060 (Score:1, Informative)
Losing all the time as when that great French loser Napoleon, like, lost all the time. He was horrible at war, wasn't he. The link you have is funny...but...I think you meant this one: (http://www.militaryfactory.com/battles/french_military_victories.asp)
There, corrected that for you.
Re:Do they know how to get the helium out? (Score:3, Informative)
the tokamak design is never going to run in continuous mode. To maintain the field strength of one of the magnetic gradients, an ever increasing current in the superconducting magnets is supplied. This has to be (cautiously) removed every n minutes. This is not a problem with the stellarator design, but that is much more complex to build. The idea is to have three tokamaks on one energy producing site, rotating in operation to keep a constant power output.
Re:Oh well... (Score:1, Informative)
They're both talking about Jimmy Carter, artard. He's also got a BSc, which would be nice to see in a few more politicians.
Re:As an American.... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Oh well... (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah I know: that temperature can be several meters from the plasma, which makes it possible to maintain.
(for the one person here who doesn't know how: The magnetic forces push the plasma away from the wall, creating a vacuum. This insulates enough for high temperature ceramic materials to survive. The backside of the ceramic materials is cooled by the energy transfer to the steam turbine (with some steps in between). There is heavy duty insulation and then the superconducting coils, cooled to the right temperature.)
France has plenty of fusion reactors already. (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tore_Supra [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak_de_Fontenay_aux_Roses [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LULI2000 [wikipedia.org]
Not French !! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:ITER will be one of the many Tokamaks. (Score:4, Informative)