International Nuclear Fusion Project May Be Delayed By Years, Its Head Admits (theguardian.com) 96
An international project in nuclear fusion may face years of delays, its boss has said, weeks after scientists in the United States announced a breakthrough in their own quest for the coveted goal. The Guardian reports: The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter) project seeks to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy. Installed at a site in southern France, the decades-old initiative has a long history of technical challenges and cost overruns. Fusion entails forcing together the nuclei of light atomic elements in a super-heated plasma, held by powerful magnetic forces in a doughnut-shaped chamber called a tokamak.
Iter's previously stated goal was to create the plasma by 2025. But that deadline will have to be postponed, Pietro Barabaschi -- who in September became the project's director general -- told Agence France-Presse during a visit to the facility. The date "wasn't realistic in the first place," even before two major problems surfaced, Barabaschi said. One problem, he said, was wrong sizes for the joints of blocks to be welded together for the installation's 19 metres by 11 metres (62ft by 36ft) chamber. The second was traces of corrosion in a thermal shield designed to protect the outside world from the enormous heat created during nuclear fusion. Fixing the problems "is not a question of weeks, but months, even years," Barabaschi said.
A new timetable is to be worked out by the end of this year, he said, including some modification to contain the expected cost overrun, and to meet the French nuclear safety agency's security requirements. Barabaschi said he hoped Iter would be able to make up for the delays as it prepares to enter the full phase, scheduled for 2035.
Iter's previously stated goal was to create the plasma by 2025. But that deadline will have to be postponed, Pietro Barabaschi -- who in September became the project's director general -- told Agence France-Presse during a visit to the facility. The date "wasn't realistic in the first place," even before two major problems surfaced, Barabaschi said. One problem, he said, was wrong sizes for the joints of blocks to be welded together for the installation's 19 metres by 11 metres (62ft by 36ft) chamber. The second was traces of corrosion in a thermal shield designed to protect the outside world from the enormous heat created during nuclear fusion. Fixing the problems "is not a question of weeks, but months, even years," Barabaschi said.
A new timetable is to be worked out by the end of this year, he said, including some modification to contain the expected cost overrun, and to meet the French nuclear safety agency's security requirements. Barabaschi said he hoped Iter would be able to make up for the delays as it prepares to enter the full phase, scheduled for 2035.
Handy reference (Score:5, Funny)
Bookmarking this story for the future. Will come in handy the next time "why is your project late?" conversation comes up.
Re: (Score:2)
FTA: The date "wasn't realistic in the first place," even before two major problems surfaced,
Yes, there appear to be some real problems in their project estimation methodology that may in fact detract from the feasibility of the entire project
On the "good" side a LOT of progress has been made in magnet technology, control over plasma eddies and flows, and heat shielding and redirection that might allow these newer projects to see success where ITER has been relegated as a test bed
Fusion has already been "delayed" for 50 years (Score:3)
Mainly because its a boatload harder than anyone ever dreamed. A few more years of delays is just noise in the scheme of things.
It may well turn out that *practical* nuclear fusion electricity generation simply isn't possible with our current technology and might need to wait for some kind of tech breakthrough either in containment control systems and/or materials.
Re: (Score:1)
It may well turn out that *practical* nuclear fusion electricity generation simply isn't possible with our current technology and might need to wait for some kind of tech breakthrough either in containment control systems and/or materials.
And yet, the universe has no problem creating nuclear fusion at the drop of a hat.
Re:Fusion has already been "delayed" for 50 years (Score:5, Informative)
It is also easy if you don't have to care for your direct environment. Hydrogen fusion bombs produced positive yield already in the 1950ies.
Re: (Score:2)
It is easy if you have a gas ball of 1 million miles in diameter to play with. The average energy radiation of 1 pound of Solar matter is less than the energy radiation of 1 pound of human, a quite manageable amount.
So, if the sun were made of sons it would be a brighter sun?
Re: (Score:3)
I always like to point out that on a cubic meter by cubic meter basis, the Sun produces less energy than your typical compost heap. The difference is that the sun is *really* big, and surrounded by an almost perfect vacuum bottle.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It may well turn out that *practical* nuclear fusion electricity generation simply isn't possible with our current technology and might need to wait for some kind of tech breakthrough either in containment control systems and/or materials.
And yet, the universe has no problem creating nuclear fusion at the drop of a hat.
Fusion, controlled, exothermic: pick two.
Re:Fusion has already been "delayed" for 50 years (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet, the universe has no problem creating nuclear fusion at the drop of a hat.
Yes, and if we could build fusion reactors on a scale a million times greater than the planet we live on we'd find it easy too to build a gravitationally confined reactor. However, since we lack enough fuel to create something that large we are trying to do something the universe hasn't done naturally: build a much, much smaller magnetically confined fusion reactor and it is much, much harder.
Re: (Score:2)
I like your explanation. I would have just said, "Watch Spider-Man 2 and pay attention to what Doc Ock is trying to do."
Re: Fusion has already been "delayed" for 50 years (Score:2)
The universe requires hundreds of thousands of years to build a modern star. Why arenâ(TM)t you complaining about their project planning?
Re: Fusion has already been "delayed" for 50 years (Score:5, Informative)
Nah, weâ(TM)re pretty much there, itâ(TM)s just ITER isnâ(TM)t the solution.
Take a look at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, and Helion Energy. Both of those have a really strong chance of producing net positive fusion in the next couple of years, and not in the somewhat misleading way that NIF did.
CFS is building SPARC as a proof of concept of their reactor. Theyâ(TM)re building a tokamak like ITER, but itâ(TM)s much smaller, and thus cheeper and faster. Their secret sauce is that theyâ(TM)re building their magnets with REBCO high temperature superconducting magnets. That allows them to achieve a much higher magnetic field strengths, which increases the power density at the cube of the magnetic field strength. They expect SPARC to achieve Q_plasma of around 10 in 2024-5. That will then allow them to firm up the last details and build ARC (their larger scale reactor that they expect to connect to the grid) which will have all the hardware necessary to generate electricity, breed tritium, etc. theyâ(TM)ve got solutions to the maintenance nightmare that Tokomaks usually are, to the blanket degradation, etc. ARC is expected to provide a net 500MW power output, Q_plasma of greater than 20, and Q_total around 2.
Helion meanwhile is building an entirely different type of reactor. They form plasma into specially shaped blobs that they can control with their magnets very accurately. They then fire the blobs of plasma at each other at about 0.01c. When they smash into each other, that kinetic energy is almost all converted into heat, and the temperature of the plasma rapidly rises to fusion temperatures. They carry on squeezing it with their magnets, and fusion begins. As the fusion happens, (between deuterium and helium in their case), high energy charged particles are produced, which push back against the magnetic field of the reactor. They can recover that energy from the magnets directly as current flow. They expect the reactor theyâ(TM)re building to generate net electricity this year or next.
Thereâ(TM)s also relativity fusion who believe they can build a stellerator in a much more simple way than traditional by effectively 3D printing the coils for their magnets onto cylindrical metal segments.
Why should you believe that any of these systems will be any more successful than the past? Two reasons:
1. If you look at the energy output of fusion systems up until 1980 or so, youâ(TM)ll see that the output was growing exponentially. It was doing so exactly in line with what the physics we knew predicted as magnetic field strengths and device sizes increased. ITER is just carrying on up over the net energy output line by increasing reactor size, because weâ(TM)d reached the limits of the magnetic fields we could create. High temperature superconductors have made it possible to hit much higher field strengths and all the physics says that should work just fine.
2. At this point, industry is willing to invest, and not naive idiots, but investors with real money, and real knowledge of the field. CFS has billions in funding from industry at this point, because theyâ(TM)re hugely confident that the device will work.
Re: (Score:2)
Well I really hope you're right but if the past is anything to go by these new systems will hit new snags.
"At this point, industry is willing to invest, and not naive idiots, but investors with real money, and real knowledge of the field"
Thats what a lot of crypto investors said.
Re: (Score:2)
I would suggest that every single human endeavor has progressed in the same way, and that we have only been successful due to an innate tenacity and desire to progress beyond the current "snag"
Ponzi schemes, of course, have always been a pitfall, because they use that same human tenacity for the purpose of bilking the masses who want phenomenal gains without all of the hard work and grit
Re: (Score:2)
CFS/ARC is a bit of unholy union here. The ARC people are extremely cautious but willing because theres simply no public money in the US for this, so they'll do anything. Meanwhile, CFS people are super overselling it. The idea is basically, get few hundred of millions of VC rube money to fund SPARC, turn it on and ask "will it quench?". The consensus is along the lines "most likely, but we'll probably figure out whether cuprate superconductors are at least worthwhile for this sort of thing".
Re: (Score:2)
"At this point, industry is willing to invest, and not naive idiots, but investors with real money, and real knowledge of the field"
Thats what a lot of crypto investors said.
Indeed. Gullible investors with deep pockets have financed all sorts of hypes, from crusades over tulips to NFTs. The only indication that nuclear fusion is actually near will be when somebody can demonstrate a gross energy positive controlled continuous operation of a test reactor - and even then there would still be a chance that, while technically feasible, "fusion on earth" could still remain more expensive than just harvesting the radiation from the fusion reactor in the sky.
Wow! Your "ISN'T" is much better than the other... (Score:2)
CFS is building SPARC as a proof of concept of their reactor. TheyÃ(TM)re building a tokamak like ITER, but itÃ(TM)s much smaller, and thus cheeper and faster. Their secret sauce is that theyÃ(TM)re building their magnets with REBCO high temperature superconducting magnets. That allows them to achieve a much higher magnetic field strengths, which increases the power density at the cube of the magnetic field strength. They expect SPARC to achieve Q_plasma of around 10 in 2024-5.
That's a whole bunch of ISN'Ts rigth there. Five ISN'Ts if I count correctly.
That will then allow them to firm up the last details and build ARC (their larger scale reactor that they expect to connect to the grid) which will have all the hardware necessary to generate electricity, breed tritium, etc. theyÃ(TM)ve got solutions to the maintenance nightmare that Tokomaks usually are, to the blanket degradation, etc. ARC is expected to provide a net 500MW power output, Q_plasma of greater than 20, and Q_total around 2.
Whoa boy... That's a whole string of ISN'Ts. Amazing!
Every single word is a speculation or a wild guess about future events.
All the way up to "theyÃ(TM)ve got solutions to the maintenance nightmare that Tokomaks usually are" - which is an ISNT't as well, only disguised as an IS, being based on merely a claim and not on a scientifically proven and repeatable truth.
Helion meanwhile is building an entirely different type of reactor. They form plasma into specially shaped blobs that they can control with their magnets very accurately. They then fire the blobs of plasma at each other at about 0.01c. When they smash into each other, that kinetic energy is almost all converted into heat, and the temperature of the plasma rapidly rises to fusion temperatures. They carry on squeezing it with their magnets, and fusion begins. As the fusion happens, (between deuterium and helium in their case), high energy charged particles are produced, which push back against the magnetic field of the reactor. They can recover that energy from the magnets directly as current flow. They expect the reactor theyÃ(TM)re building to generate net electricity this year or next.
Meanwhile, the entire paragraph of what the reactor CAN do is b
Re: (Score:2)
Here's the thing - investors are just as ignorant (or more) than any other gambler out there. You really think a guy who spent all his life making money has time or brains to just pick up all the doctorate-level nuclear fusion he needs, on the go? Fuck that!
Don't forget Dear Ms Holmes and Theranos. A lot of supposed genii out there backed her.
But you are 100 percent correct. Whoever it is who is arguing with you that anyone who thinks that this fusion thing probably won't work is an idjit versus these Übermenschen investors, who know the real truth that fusion power is a-gonna happen any day now is just plain wrong.
There are plenty of technical reasons why it probably won't, and a lot of what it's more inflamed backers - and worse, people trying to
Re: (Score:3)
between deuterium and helium in their case
While I think Helion's approach to be novel. The thing is that is relies on D + He-3 reactions. This has always been the goal fusion, the problem is that He-3 is insanely rare on this planet. They purpose D-D reactions to breed the He-3, but tritium is also made during these reactions would rob some of the deuterium from the reactions to make He-4. They have purposed having a breeder and a power reactor as separate things, cool idea, but the power reactor will need to be massively profitable versus the
Re: (Score:2)
between deuterium and helium in their case
While I think Helion's approach to be novel. The thing is that is relies on D + He-3 reactions. This has always been the goal fusion, the problem is that He-3 is insanely rare on this planet. They purpose D-D reactions to breed the He-3, but tritium is also made during these reactions would rob some of the deuterium from the reactions to make He-4. They have purposed having a breeder and a power reactor as separate things, cool idea, but the power reactor will need to be massively profitable versus the cost of the breeder reactor and I'm not sure if it'll do that. MAYBE, it is one of those things we will just absolutely have to see, but breeding He-3 is just a very neutron heavy thing that's going to create a lot of wear and tear on the reactor that's going to have a cost. I haven't the slightest what their reactors cost but they'll need really cheap breeders because those things are going to need maintenance and clean up on a fairly regular basis. If the cost to do those things is high, it doesn't matter how cheap the power reactor is, the breeder is going to eat it all.
Yes - we will have to build quite a few breeder fission reactors. More expense, and assuming that the world switches over to this presumed clean and virtually unlimited fusion power source (in truth it is neither) We might even need to build huge fission reactors and turbines to provide the parasitic power needs of the fusion reactors.
From what I understand, ITER will use up most of the world's supply of tritium. Meanwhile they are claiming that it's like water - Deuterium is common, the only tritium on
Re: (Score:2)
> The thing is that is relies on D + He-3 reactions
Which is much harder to use than D-T for a number of reasons. About 30 times harder IIRC.
> They have purposed having a breeder
This worked out so well for the fission industry... building two reactors to make one run seems highly unlikely to be economically feasible.
> the breeder is going to eat it all
Assuming it works at all. Their proposed mechanism has never worked in the past and their explanation of why it might in their version is missing.
Re: (Score:2)
ReBCOs are known for 30 years. Multiple accelerators toyed with it, and ultimately went back to good ole NbTi. Turns out preventing quench at 1.9K isn't *that* hard, your magnet being made of textured material causing a quench at "high temperature" of 20K is.
Ditto for field strength, conventional superconductors can go well over 20T, but it's rarely used in practice (construction limits with dense fields).
Re: (Score:3)
> Nah, weâ(TM)re pretty much there, itâ(TM)s just ITER isnâ(TM)t the solution.
We are about two orders of magnitude from "there". ITER will get one of those, the other remains to be discovered.
Q measures only the energy being sent into the plasma as heat, it does not measure anything else. For instance, in JET the record Q is 0.67, with 24 MW of heating vs 16 MW of output. However, that 24 MW was not the amount of energy going into the device as a whole. For one, the heating systems are abo
Re: (Score:1)
Well, not harder than *anyone* dreamed. There have been well-informed objections to achieving practical fusion power for decades. Parse what I just said carefully: it means there are things that need to get done that nobody knows how to do yet. Of course we have ideas for how to do them, and it's possible that they'll work like we hope they will. But until all the "don't knows" are cleared up, any timeframe is no better than a number pulled out of a hat.
If you haven't heard of these problems it's because
Re: (Score:2)
When you are trying to sell a project that is extremely difficult and uncertain , you *could* give a sober, realistic, and nuanced prospectus to a public and to funding agencies who are extremely risk-averse and near-term focused. Or you can give everyone a barely possible but vanishingly improbable view of how things will go. Which would you do if it were *your* life's work?
I'll do sober and realistic every time. Which is why in my field, I'm often called upon to speak truth to EhrmaGherd Blue sky and cute puppies people.
Re: (Score:2)
Mainly because its a boatload harder than anyone ever dreamed. A few more years of delays is just noise in the scheme of things.
Bear in mind that ITER represents the tokamak approach to fusion, which uses shaped magnetic fields to confine the reaction. The big breakthrough last month was LLANL's inertial confinement approach.
Re: (Score:3)
The big breakthrough last month was LLANL's inertial confinement approach.
Repeat after me, inertial confinement is weapons simulation (testing). In no way was that headline at all honest. There was no breakthrough. Congress was voting on the budget for next year and Livermore needed its budget approved so they "created" a breakthrough using dishonest accounting. If you need such things, there is no breakthrough.
Re: (Score:2)
> There was no breakthrough
No, that is not fair. There was a major advance, it just has nothing to do with what the press is reporting.
NIF's shot achieved clear and continual fusion burning, aka ignition. This has never been achieved before in any other fusion reactor (outside bombs of course). This **is** a major advance, one that is so important they put it right in the name of the plant. Ignition is an absolute requirement for practical fusion, and this is the first demonstration of it since the first
Re: (Score:2)
Or economics. It may turn out fission is just far cheaper including the cost of waste disposal. Currently, ITER promises "only" 50% more expensive reactors per MW than super-safe modern LWRs. In theory, because nobody has managed to run tokamak for longer than 6 minutes, so people are especially vary of such cost promises that are made on napkin, with no relation to actual costs of commercial reactors because nobody is building one.
Still nifty tech with bunch of application elsewhere (accelerators..).
Re: (Score:3)
> Currently, ITER promises "only" 50% more expensive reactors per MW than super-safe modern
They do nothing of the sort. ITERs design, scaled to a production design, would be at least ten times the size of a fission plant of the same power, and likely cost much more than that to build - fission plants don't have superconductors, aren't built in a ring, and are about 1/10th the size and 1/20th the materials for just the reaction chamber alone. I once calculated that the concrete floor of ITER cost 1/10 the
Re: (Score:2)
Read again, I'm talking about price per MW, not scale. Yes, tokamaks can be big, roughly by an order of magnitude power density for same volume. And also over more than an order of magnitude costlier.
FWIW, the limit for fission plants isn't "inefficiency" of fission, but scaling beyond 10GW, especially coolant wise (at some point you have more of evaporation towers than of a power plant).
Re: (Score:2)
>> It may well turn out that *practical* nuclear fusion electricity generation simply isn't possible
I doubt that.
But I think it will just be comically uneconomical.
Apparent Success (Score:2)
It would seem that this scheme is fusing the pockets of some with lots of cash from the unwitting.
Meanwhile the Sun still shines and wind still blows.
Re: Apparent Success (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
A quick look outside shows that the the wind is not blowing, and the sun is not shining even though it is 7 AM.
The good news is that it is above freezing, a balmy 35 F.
Re:Apparent Success (Score:5, Interesting)
It would seem that this scheme is fusing the pockets of some with lots of cash from the unwitting.
Meanwhile the Sun still shines and wind still blows.
The "scheme" here is fundamental research into plasma physics at a large scale. There's an argument to be made that even if this thing never turns on, just the attempt to fabricate the components and build it taught us useful lessons about trying to build and deploy this kind of technology at scale.
All that said things aren't looking great for ITER. A friend of mine was fairly close to the announcement that was made about this a few weeks ago, and fundamentally what has to happen is the whole thing they just painstakingly put together has to be entirely disassembled and chunks of it refabricated to meet the necessary specifications. There's a very open question about whether various nations will agree to dump the kind of money required into ITER or tolerate the time it would take to get it back on track.
When ITER was designed the kind of physics we wanted to study required a massive contraption, and while it still has its advantages there have been breakthroughs in material science that mean that at least some of the physics ITER is supposed to study might be doable with a much smaller machine. And with something like a dozen privately funded fusion projects now with serious prospects of creating net positive energy, with at least somewhat clear sightlines to maybe even get to engineering breakeven (so the machine actually produces more power than we put in, not just the reaction itself), a lot of the rationale of "well we need ITER if we ever want commercial fusion" has evaporated as well.
So we'll see. I'd make the mildly bold prediction that we'll see several private companies hit net energy positive from a fusion reaction in the next 5-10 years, and at least a couple build a commercial prototype that hits engineering breakeven within 20 years. That's without ITER at all. These companies may not ever create a commercially viable (profitable) fusion reactor, but I think they're going to get close enough for people to consider it.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe the real purpose (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
How would your conspiracy work? According to Wikipedia, the idea was originally proposed by Gorbachev to Mitterrand on his first visit to Paris in 1985, and one month later presented to Reagan in a summit in Geneva. It is funded by governments of 35 countries including USA, China, India, Korea, Japan, the UE, UK (UK previously participated as part of EU, now in its own name).
1. How could "the oil industry" consistently corrupt the world leaders of a large fraction of the entire Northern Hemisphere without b
Re: (Score:1)
1. Money, lots of money, the Koch bothers demonstrated on the 1990's that spending $100 Million on political campaigns brought them $10 Billion in financial returns. It has only gotten worse since then
2. Russia sits on greater oil reserves than all of the Arabian Gulf, and could easily influence poor decisions in the course of ITER that would allow them to see full value from their oil by simply delaying the completion of ITER
3. The oil industry KNEW about global warming in the 60's and has run an effective
Re: (Score:2)
Russia sits on greater oil reserves than all of the Arabian Gulf, and could easily influence poor decisions in the course of ITER that would allow them to see full value from their oil by simply delaying the completion of ITER
So now the possible conspirers moved from "the oil industry" to the Russian government. But it's but not coherent with the facts that Russia has long be a user of nuclear energy and does not see nuclear as competitor to their oil, and Russia never tried to delay research on fusion during the period 1951 (their first implementation of a working Tokamak) to 1985 (their ideation of ITER). Also they would need votes at the ITER council to influence the decision process, so they would have needed to call allied
Re: (Score:2)
1. How could "the oil industry" consistently corrupt the world leaders of a large fraction of the entire Northern Hemisphere without being noticed, along more than 35 years, across changes of ruling parties, regimes, even revolutions?
If it suborned world leaders, this would eventually happen. But suppose that instead, oil company disinformation operated at the other end of the social scale? By seeding folk songs, editorials, social media sneers, and conspiracy theories into the popular culture, it could keep the general public turned away from any solution but the one they make money on.
And it's working.
Re: Maybe the real purpose (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
> We have spent globally more on building new renewables than any other power source in history
Citation please.
Given that PV is the cheapest form of power in history, and wind not far behind, and that thse still represent a fraction of the worldwide power supply, I find the statement very difficult to believe.
> If we had spent that on nuclear plants, we would be about half way to solving AGW
For every watt of capacity from a nuclear plant, one can buy 8 watts of wind and about 12 watts of PV. For equal
NOTHING on the ITER website. (Score:1)
The very-well-funded ITER website should tell us IMMEDIATELY about these problems - not leak them via AFP or the Guardian.
The director, Barabaschi, should resign.
Re: (Score:3)
ITER is spending our money without telling us about all the cock-ups it is making and money it is wasting on them.
Pop culture fusion. Breathless "We're just a few years away from clean and virtually unlimited power by the magick of FUSION! "
And people eat that stuff up like manna from heaven.
Truth is, ITER and others don't have to make any changes, because the true believers will just continue to believe.
Re: (Score:2)
They did not "leak" it, they made a press release to major agencies, and this is exactly how you tell the world. Their website lags some days behind newspaper articles (they do have an exhaustive newsline, last publication 19th December, so expect this one to be copied in a week or two). Asking the director to resign because over a two weeks delay of updating the website is a bit exaggerated.
This is a new director in place since September (previous director Bernard Bigot passed away aged 72), and after disc
Re: (Score:2)
We can definitely trust this guy with our billions and our energy future.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, there is no way "two weeks delay of updating the website" is in any way "trying to hide the problems".
You only know about the story because a Director made a press release to one of the world's 3 big news agencies in existence (and the world's most senior by age). You can't say they hide a story while what they did is to reveal to the world using a world class news agency. Who even cares about their website?
Re: (Score:2)
Do YOU see it here, in ITER's press releases ?: https://www.iter.org/news/pressreleases
The director, Barabaschi, should resign.
Re: (Score:2)
Barabaschi had to tell AFP when they went to ITER and would have found out about it.
1. Who do you think invited AFP there and for what purpose?
2. Journalists would have found nothing, they are not going to visit the actual place of problem unless the Direction made it part of the visit track, and even by visiting they would not have noticed a technical problem because they are not technical experts and they are not doing an investigation. They went to listen, and the direction openly told them there was an issue.
But you are right, it was not a press release, it was a press conference, much
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. And you are wrong.
Don't dig an even deeper hole for yourself in a pathetic attempt to defend corruption and/or incompetence.
Re: If you think that is bad,.. (Score:1)
Re: If you think that is bad,.. (Score:1)
Re:HAHAHAHAHAHAHA (Score:5, Informative)
ITER funds have been allocated by every president since Reagan. Major funding started during the Bush administration. Reference: https://www.presidency.ucsb.ed... [ucsb.edu]
Re: (Score:3)
The Bush II administration delayed the choice of a site to build ITER because everyone else wanted it built in France but this was at the time of "Cheese eating surrender monkeys" refusing to support the Iraq invasion. Eventually good sense prevailed and Cadarache was selected but that ate up a few years of development time.
I did read a little while back that the US was currently delinquent on its expected financial, staffing and engineering inputs to the project commensurate with its 9% stakeholding. This
Re: (Score:2)
Stop lying. Do you have any source that says the Trump administration stopped making contributions? Because here are references stating the opposite:
1. https://www.aaas.org/news/upda... [aaas.org]
"The international fusion energy project ITER nearly doubled to $242 million from $132 million in FY 2019 – but at the expense of other fusion research, which was cut by 4.2 percent."
2. https://www.newsweek.com/trump... [newsweek.com] (read the last line of the article)
Re:HAHAHAHAHAHAHA (Score:4, Informative)
From the Newsweek article you linked to:
The United States had given about $1 billion to ITER as of 2018, and had been planning to contribute an additional $500 million through to 2025, but Trump slashed the funding to $75 million for 2019. The 2018 grant also fell short by around $40 million, Reuters reported at the time.
From a Physics Today report, back in January 2018:
Since rejoining ITER in 2003, the US has never come close to providing annual contribution levels commensurate with its 9% ownership share. Through FY 2017, it has contributed a total of $1.1 billion. ITER spokesperson Laban Coblentz says the US made no cash contribution to support operations at the French site in FY 2016 or 2017, and the unpaid balance for the two years stands at $65 million. In addition, the US in-kind contribution in 2017 fell short by about $50 million. Five member nations - China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Russia - have the same ownership share as the US, and Coblentz says those countries are pulling their weight. As the host, the European Union is paying nearly half of ITER's cost.
Re: (Score:2)
"Since rejoining ITER in 2003, the US has never come close to providing annual contribution levels commensurate with its 9% ownership share. " --That means 2008-2016 too. You can't put this on Obama. Furthermore, it's clear that Trump funded it, at expected level or not, he funded it. In 2019 he increased the funding to $242 million.
Re:HAHAHAHAHAHAHA (Score:5, Funny)
The only reason the U.S. even got involved in this nightmare was the Obama administration never saw anything with the world "international" in the proposal that it waould do due dilligence on or even consider disliking.
Damn O'Blama just stood there and watched the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, didn't do a thing about it.
reference: The book of new trooths by Marjorie Taylor Green
To quote Gomer Pile, (Score:2)
It's fusion or bust! (Score:2)
They are not even keeping pace with energy demand growth. This chart shows even with the rapid growth of renewables, natural gas grew just as fast because the total energy demand increased.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Now add in that hydro will likely go down with all the droughts. Nuclear will also go down as few new plants are being built to replace those retiring. Wind and solar best locations are already used. The earliest wind and solar installations will soon need
Re: (Score:2)
This chart shows even with the rapid growth of renewables, natural gas grew just as fast because the total energy demand increased.
Much of the growth of natural gas is because it is replacing coal and oil, largely by converting existing coal and oil plants. Natural gas has the lowest carbon/energy output ratio of any fossil fuel: It's about a third that of petroleum, half that of coal. (You'll notice that coal generation is going DOWN in those graphs.)
Re: (Score:1)
A project management problem (Score:1)
"wrong sizes for the joints of blocks to be welded together"
"corrosion in a thermal shield"
And this will take years to fix? I have zero confidence that the project will ever be completed.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Barabaschi became the project manager in September so presumably the current problems aren't his fault. But if the fixes will take years, it sounds like they have to disassemble some of what they already built.
Re: (Score:2)
An honest man would resign.
20 years ago, the reasonable thing to do was to support ITER.
But not any more.
After so much continued, systemic, incompetence and corruption, only blinkered idiots can support them any more.
Time to sack all the upper management, and start over with proper, honest, oversight.
The Dream of Centralized Power Generation (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
2022 was the year that solar got a LOT cheaper than grid power if you have a good solar site - mainly due to improvements in battery technology and economy of scale leading to manufacture of some good but inexpensive inverter designs at scale.
As of the end of the year break-even time for a homeowner-owned solar instalation in a decent solar site in much of the US was about four years. (Two years in California, with its high and progressive electricity rates. {The price per kWh rises drastically when you u
It's So Simple, What Could Go Wrong (Photo) (Score:2)
Déjà vu all over again (Score:2)
2035? (Score:3)
Thanks for nothing, AGW will be unstoppable by then
Fusion is hard, big projcts are inefficient (Score:2)
Then large projects are hard. Look at the difficulties building conventional low-tech multi X $10B projec
What if Tritum Cannot Be Bred? (Score:2)
Results delayed, funding to continue (Score:5, Interesting)
What He's Really Saying Is... (Score:2)
"The government found out the fossil fuel/coal execs can't quietly sell their stocks fast enough by that due date. So I've been told I have to expand the time frame so they can do what they do without people catching on. You know, like the tobacco did before the age was raised to twenty one."
The problem is obvious (Score:2)
They're only building their chamber in two dimensions! You have to add that third one to really get going.
i must say that you did uour best (Score:1)
By the way this post was Amazing but can you please write on Natural Formation of Rivers ! [clavick.com]
https://clavick.com/convention... [clavick.com] I Really Appreciate the way you describe the topic, nice keep it up. Clavick [clavick.com] https://clavick.com/ [clavick.com] https://clavick.com/minerals-a... [clavick.com] i must say
Circa 1974 (Score:2)
I remember a few of us talking about this with one of the EE professors at Cornell and he said, "The problem isn't building a fusion reactor, the problem is converting the energy it produces." When we looked confused, he looked up and after a few seconds we realized what he meant. Hint: We were outside and his area of research was converting light to electrical current [they didn't have solar cells back then].
So, yes Virginia, we already have an effectively functioning fusion reactor. The only real reas