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The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is set to launch operations in 2025. A multination project to build a fusion reactor cleared a milestone yesterday and is now 6 ½ years away from "First Plasma," officials announced.
Yesterday, dignitaries attended a components handover ceremony at the construction site of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in southern France. The ITER project is an experiment aimed at reaching the next stage in the evolution of nuclear energy as a means of generating emissions-free electricity.
The section recently installed—the cryostat base and lower cylinder—paves the way for the installation of the tokamak, the technology design chosen to house the powerful magnetic field that will encase the ultra-hot plasma fusion core.
"Manufactured by India, the ITER cryostat is 16,000 cubic meters," ITER officials said in a release. "Its diameter and height are both almost 30 meters and it weighs 3,850 tons. Because of its bulk, it is being fabricated in four main sections: the base, lower cylinder, upper cylinder, and top lid."
[...] Thirty-five nations are cooperating on the project to bring fusion power to the masses.
Achieving controlled fusion reactions that net more power than they take to generate, and at commercial scale, is seen as a potential answer to climate change. Fusion energy would eliminate the need for fossil fuels and solve the intermittency and reliability concerns inherent with renewable energy sources. The energy would be generated without the dangerous amounts of radiation that raises concerns about fission nuclear energy.
(Score: 3, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Friday August 02 2019, @01:00AM (7 children)
The name of the place is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.
Isn't thermonuclear the same as a hydrogen bomb? That's really scary and will kill us all. We shouldn't build it.
I hope they have a good PR team.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @01:15AM (1 child)
It's OK, this is clean radiation.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday August 02 2019, @01:30AM
Whew! That's good news then.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @01:19AM (4 children)
So according to you hydrogen bombs don't leave fallout when they blow up?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @02:18AM (3 children)
Well hydrogen bombs just create a bunch of rain as long as there is sufficient oxygen available. What you got against rain pal?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @09:07AM (2 children)
LOL, somebody just confused chemistry with physics. Bad mistake pal! Hope you were aiming for humor...
The hydrogen in a hydrogen bomb isn't burned (i.e. combined with oxygen to form water) but instead it fusions into helium. In the process some tiny fraction of the mass disappears and is turned into energy according to Einstein's famous e=mc^2.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 02 2019, @12:09PM
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday August 02 2019, @06:37PM
And people said we have a shortage of helium. Sounds like we can make plenty!
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @01:47AM (2 children)
30 years of 6 1/2 years away.
So far NEVER any positive energy balance.
A nice play field so far and nothing more
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Friday August 02 2019, @02:13AM
The problem is that governments are backing ITER and calling it a day. ITER's timeline is insane even before delays.
https://fortune.com/2015/09/28/jeff-bezos-peter-thiel-fusion/ [fortune.com]
And LPPFusion and others.
The successor to ITER, DEMO, would be producing electricity around 2048, if not later. Plenty of time for a small-scale design to pan out.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday August 02 2019, @02:13AM
How much certifying the existence of the Higgs boson impacts on your everyday life?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Friday August 02 2019, @02:25AM (7 children)
Anyone taking bets on the ITER being sabotaged just as it's about to achieve its mission?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday August 02 2019, @02:33AM (6 children)
ITER is just the beginning. After ITER there is DEMO [wikipedia.org] and PROTO [wikipedia.org], with commercial fusion well after 2050.
One or more companies like Helion Energy, Tri Alpha Energy, General Fusion, General Atomics, LPPFusion, or Lockheed Martin will create working fusion long before the ITER tokamak design can threaten fossil fuel industries. In the meantime, solar and other renewable sources will cut into those industries plenty by 2031.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @02:48AM (2 children)
I see you have drunk the kool aid.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Friday August 02 2019, @02:51AM (1 child)
And you drank the toilet water.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @06:34AM
You mean, like, not Brawndo? The stuff in the toilets? Ewwww! It doesn't have any electrolytes!
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Friday August 02 2019, @03:21AM (2 children)
Private fusion. What could possibly go wrong?
And yet that seems the preferable path overall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @11:03AM
On hot days I can get a bad case of "bat wing", which is kind of like "private fusion". Correcting it in public is something that can go wrong. So is not doing anything about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @03:33PM
It might be overruled by someone higher in the chain of command: Corporal Punishment; General Confusion; Sargent Slaughter; some Petty excuse for an Officer; Gunny; Captain Planet; Major Pain; a very Model, Major General; General panic; and of course the Reality TV Star in Chief.
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Friday August 02 2019, @05:14AM (2 children)
Fusion solves all of the stated problems with current energy production. But it wrecks the unstated goals of the Green movement, the forced deindustrialization of the West, massive depopulation worldwide and a general return to the standard of living of a few hundred years ago for most of the survivors. The Party Elite of course would continue to live large, fly, etc. So they will allow governments to throw money at it, because it employees a lot of scientists and thus keeps them on the Global Warming reservation. But it won't be allowed to succeed. Whether they can stop all of the private efforts remains to be seen.
A working fusion reactor also crashes the value of most existing energy sources, which has quite a large market cap, so those forces are happy to quietly join with Big Green to ensure fusion stays thirty years away. But at least we would still need some fossil fuels, airplanes would need fuel and batteries are still too big and heavy. Every investment in wind and solar, both existing installed plant and the companies who make it, head rapidly toward a value of zero after the first demo reactor connects to the grid. Same for tidal, geothermal, all of them. Batteries would be the only "Green" industry to benefit. Electric cars would be unchanged, they are slowly becoming practical as batteries improve and that trend would be unchanged.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @09:09AM
Your medication only helps when you take it. Psychosis is not something to toy with.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @11:05AM
Dude, Kermit the Frog already told us that it isn't easy being green. You're getting dangerously close to copyright infringement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @05:18AM
10 more years
10 billion more dollars
10000 newly minted grad students.
then we'll have this fusion thing licked.
said every decade for the last 60 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @09:03AM (2 children)
You know the fbclid click id. I thought SN wasn't corporate whores.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 04 2019, @04:23AM (1 child)
Looks like you thought wrong...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 04 2019, @08:06PM
Still going strong...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @01:57PM
i am kindda excited abou this. it's giving many smart people the chance to manufacture something outrageous (some part of iter) that might not ever get produced if it were just profit oriented. maybe in the process something new pop up.
however what is rather enthusiasm dampening is the fact that this reactor will also produce copious amounts of free neutrons.
this, coupled with another fact that is that the torus design has more or less been studied to death.
in the 90's, the design was already 30 years old ... and didnt work.
the excuse for the torus design not to die and try something new seems to be:"But it just needs to be BIGGER!"
if the torus design eventually produces more energy then put in, i suspect that it will be of such an enormous size that it's operation will cement into place endless reliable energy BUT ALSO "the financial ruling party" of the planet!
because, you know, judging from just the puny energy freedom solar pv produces and the hurdles involved to connect it to the big boy grid, a cupboard sized working fusion reactor would upset the balanced of the "powers that be" something massively.
so, there's probably a way to do fusion that way (go 3-phase synchrogenerator+supermagnets+MHD) but would upset the worlds (financial) ruling class (and their philosophy, culture, mentality) too much.
so, maybe, fusion being good, the "good" radioactif waste will spearhead (soften sentiment) the reopening of defered radioactif dump sites?
note: also i figured it out: if the "heat of helium" can be decelerated in a magnetic field there's no need to go the "long way" to extract fusion energy by heating water to steam to turbine. if the "hot helium ion could do work on a field, the field gains energy and the helium cools down and loses energy?