A small step for fusion power...

[Vera]

... a potential giant leap for humanity. Or we can at least hope.

"Nuclear fusion’s energy potential is vast. Scientists believe it could, theoretically, lead to the construction of commercial power plants that would deliver virtually unlimited amounts of energy without leaving a trail of waste behind.

But efforts to harness the technology have been exceedingly slow.

However, a small step forward has been made by scientists at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility operated by San Diego-based General Atomics.

Researchers conducted a first of its kind experiment focusing on a long-observed but little understood mechanism that can enhance the performance of fusion projects, including a multi-national and multi-billion dollar effort under construction in France."

"Got my fingers crossed.’ As ITER fusion project marks milestone, chief ponders pandemic impact"

Show ContentSpoiler:

The $25 billion ITER project, which aims to build the world’s largest fusion reactor and finally demonstrate that melding together hydrogen nuclei is a viable energy source, passed a major milestone today as construction crews lifted the first major piece of the reactor, known as a tokamak, into place.

Over 2 days, a crew of about 200 carefully lifted the cryostat base, a steel dish big enough to fill a baseball diamond and weighing as much as a giant redwood tree, into the tokamak pit near Cadarache in France. The cryostat base—the single largest and heaviest tokamak component—is the bottom section of a huge metal can that will eventually contain the rest of the reactor, including the vacuum vessel, huge superconducting magnets, and cooling systems. The ITER team is racing to have all of ITER’s major components on site by the end of 2021, in order to meet a December 2025 deadline for switching on the massive machine.

ITER has been a long time in gestation. Originally dreamt up in the 1980s, it was inaugurated as an international project based in France in 2007 and now has seven partners: China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the United States. Projected at the time to be complete in 2016 at a cost of $11 billion, a thorough review in 2016 under then-new Director-General Bernard Bigot pushed the deadline back and the budget up. But members stuck with it and Bigot has kept the project on track.

Then, as the project neared the 70% complete mark this year, the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Unlike at most major science facilities worldwide, the decision was made to push ahead. The construction process, which involves hundreds of suppliers in member states across the globe who are required to deliver components at exactly the right time, would fall apart if forced to stop and restart. Most of the 2000 office-based staff were sent home to telework and those on the work site trimmed from 2500 to 700 essential workers.

Although construction has continued, delays have compounded on the already tight schedule. Next month, the ITER Council, which represents the member states, will meet—most likely remotely—and Bigot will ask it to make some tough decisions.

ScienceInsider spoke with Bigot this week as the cryostat base still hovered over the tokamak pit on the end of a crane. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: What’s the status of the cryostat base installation?

A: We started at 7 a.m. and checked everything was under control. The base was lifted above the top floor of the tokamak building to lower inside. I expect it to be in position tonight. It was an amazing exercise with very high precision and has gone smoothly so far.

Q: How does it feel to finally be at the start of tokamak assembly?

A: When you’ve been working for years and years on something and see it start to become real, you do feel a little bit of excitement. You also feel your responsibility: With the trust of so many people you feel very responsible.

Things are progressing as expected. With the welcoming of toroidal field coils [17-meter-tall superconducting magnets], we feel more and more confident that our strategy was the right one. But there’s still a lot to do.

Q: What’s the next step in assembly?

A: Next is the lower [cryostat] cylinder. It’s a can and it must be welded to the base, which will be very challenging and [will] finish in July. Then we will receive components to start vacuum vessel installation. Sector six [a 40° slice like an orange segment] arrives from [South] Korea at the end of July and toroidal field coils 12 and 13 from Japan are now at sea and will arrive in mid-June. We must assemble these three pieces together with their thermal shielding. That’s the main objective in the coming months.

Q: How has ITER managed to keep working during the COVID-19 lockdown?

A: We faced this quite early. China is a major partner and we saw the propagation of the virus there. China nearly stopped. We thought about how to continue. To stop and start again would be a nightmare. We decided to continue, but slowed down. We put barrier measures in place: physical distancing, hand washing, masks. We implemented this very early and members were supportive of the strategy.

Q: Have there been many COVID-19 cases among the staff?

A: We were lucky not to have a single coronavirus infection. Visitors were arriving continuously but we took precautionary measures. Some have shown symptoms but none were confirmed cases.

Q: Which parts of the project have been worst affected by the lockdown?

A: The part most affected is the delivery by Europe of five vacuum vessel sectors. It’s a large consortium, much of it in Italy, and components need to be moved from Italy to Germany or Spain and back to Italy. Some workshops in Italy had to stop. The companies have been keen to find recovery measures, but it’s too early to estimate the impact.

Q: When the ITER Council meets next month, what will you tell them about the project’s ability to meet the deadline?

A: I will provide a note to the council on coronavirus impact, which I’ll prepare a month from now. I feel the impact will be difficult to recover from if the vacuum vessel is delayed beyond the end of 2021. The toroidal field coils, and eight of the nine vacuum vessel sectors, have not been impacted; [South] Korea did not shut down but continued working with no delay. But in Europe there has been some delay.

So the ITER Council will decide: Keep going with extra cost, or extend by around 1 year with little cost impact.

Q: What would be the cost of extending the schedule by 1 year?

A: It’s too early to say, but we are now [spending] at around €1 million per day minimum, so 1 year would be very significant.

Q: And what would be the impact if there is a resurgence of COVID-19?

A: The impact would be very severe. I’ve got my fingers crossed that we never see another coronavirus wave.

Posted in: People & EventsPhysicsScientific Community

Both articles are rather interesting.

[Minimalist]

The oil companies and their republicunt buddies will tie them up in litigation for the next 50 years and China will slip by and develop it first.

We are hopelessly wedded to the past.

[Vera]

[Mr Greene]

The oil companies and their republicunt buddies will tie them up in litigation for the next 50 years and China will slip by and develop it first.

We are hopelessly wedded to the past.

China is already part of the project.

[Vera]

China is already part of the project.

And Russia! This is no fusion power project, this is some nefarious Putin power project, meant to make him live forever and/or clone Orange Fuckface. Run for the hills (and the nuclear fallout shelters)

[Minimalist]

[Vera]

Kindly take your shit somewhere else. This is unacceptable and deeply offensive to the people who actually want to have a conversation, not a mindless rant. You did the same in my last two scientific threads even after I explicitly said this is rude, narcissistic and disrespectful to the forum.

[LastPoet]

These reactors need an energy input to keep working, in theory, they should output much more than they need to operate. This makes them more safe than fission reactors, as those require control rods and any malfunction can cause an incontrolable chain reaction. In fusion reactors, malfunctions may cause an accident, but any damage would be local and the reactor would stop immediately with just a couple of circuit breakers.

[Vera]

These reactors need an energy input to keep working, in theory, they should output much more than they need to operate. This makes them more safe than fission reactors, as those require control rods and any malfunction can cause an incontrolable chain reaction. In fusion reactors, malfunctions may cause an accident, but any damage would be local and the reactor would stop immediately with just a couple of circuit breakers.

It has such potential and yet, the moment one makes the mistake of trying to read some comments, it is all a bunch of armchair physicists arguing ad nauseam, Nah, we should have invested in solar power instead (because it's either/or and because we invest sooooooo much in fusion...), It's never gonna happen, etc.

Our capacity to disagree and fight on all topics, for the sheer infantile pleasure of disagreeing and fighting is astounding. On a forum like this it's just pathetic to see, when it's literally a matter of survival it becomes terrifying.

[Vera]

Scientists Start Assembling The World's Largest Nuclear Fusion Experiment

Show ContentSpoiler:

"The ITER project was launched in 2006 by 35 countries including the United States, Russia, China, Britain, Switzerland, India, Japan, South Korea and the 27 members of the European Union.

"Fusion is safe, with minute amounts of fuel and no physical possibility of a run-away accident with meltdown" as with traditional nuclear power stations, the partners said in a statement.

A further advantage: the fuel for fusion and lithium to help manage the reaction is found in seawater and is abundant enough to supply humanity for millions of years.

"A pineapple-sized amount of this fuel is the equivalent of 10,000 tonnes of coal," the partners said.

ITER, the world's largest experimental fusion facility, is meant to produce about 500 megawatts of thermal power, equivalent to some 200 megawatts of electric energy if operated continuously, enough to supply some 200,000 homes.

Its "Tokamak" nuclear fusion reactor will comprise about a million components in all, some like its hugely powerful superconducting magnets standing as high as a four-floor building and weighing 360 tonnes each.

"Three-dimensional puzzle"
Some 2,300 people are at work on site to put the massive machine together.

"Constructing the machine piece by piece will be like assembling a three-dimensional puzzle on an intricate timeline," said ITER's director general Bernard Bigot.

"Every aspect of project management, systems engineering, risk management and logistics of the machine assembly must perform together with the precision of a Swiss watch," he said, adding: "We have a complicated script to follow over the next few years."

Once finished, the reactor should be able to recreate the fusion processes that occur at the heart of stars at a temperature of some 150 million degrees Celsius, 10 times hotter than the Sun

It could reach full power by 2035, but as an experimental project, it is not designed to produce electricity.

If the technology proves feasible, future fusion reactors would be capable of powering two million homes each at an operational cost comparable to those of conventional nuclear reactors, Bigot said."

And of course:

"Such "artificial suns," however, are criticised by environmentalists as a cripplingly expensive scientific mirage."

Indeed, let's not even try because "environmentalists" are to the last person highly-educated scientists that are beyond criticism or even the ability to be wrong. I mean, who doesn't trust GreenPeace implicitly, right?

An interesting article (funny that they quote Monbiot because he is so often full of so much self-righteous shit, it's painful, even embarrassing to read)

"[...]

Most major environmental groups — from Friends of the Earth to Greenpeace to the Sierra Club — want a ban or moratorium on GM crops, especially for food. They fear the toxicity of these “Frankenfoods,” are concerned the introduced genes will pollute wild strains of the crops, and worry that GM seeds are a weapon in the takeover of the world’s food supply by agribusiness.

For myself, I am deeply concerned about the power of business over the world’s seeds and food supply. But GM crops are an insignificant part of that control, which is based on money and control of trading networks. Clearly there are issues about gene pollution, though research suggesting there is a problem is still very thin. Let’s do the research, rather than trash the test fields, which has been the default response of groups such as Greenpeace, particularly in my home country of Britain.

As for the Frankenfoods argument, the evidence is just not there. As the British former campaigner against GMs, Mark Lynas published in September in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, that GM corn can produced tumors in rats, has been attacked as flawed in execution and conclusion by a wide range of experts with no axe to grind. In any event, the controversial study was primarily about the potential impact of Roundup, a herbicide widely used with GM corn, and not the GM technology itself.

[...]

"And more recently, remember the confusion over biofuels? They were a new green energy source we could all support. I remember, when the biofuels craze began about 2005, I reported on a few voices urging caution. They warned that the huge land take of crops like corn and sugar cane for biofuels might threaten food supplies; that the crops would add to the destruction of rainforests; and that the carbon gains were often small to non-existent. But Friends of the Earth and others trashed them as traitors to the cause of green energy.

Well, today most greens are against most biofuels. Not least Friends of the Earth, which calls them a “big green con.” In fact, we may have swung too far in the other direction, undermining research into second-generation biofuels that could be both land- and carbon-efficient.

We don’t have to be slaves to science. There is plenty of room for raising questions about ethics and priorities that challenge the world view of the average lab grunt. And we should blow the whistle on bad science. But to indulge in hysterical attacks on any new technology that does not excite our prejudices, or to accuse genuine researchers of being part of a global conspiracy, is dishonest and self-defeating.

We environmentalists should learn to be more humble about our policy prescriptions, more willing to hear competing arguments, and less keen to engage in hectoring and bullying."

[Thumpalumpacus]

I find it really frustrating that so many people insist on a perfect solution to every problem, and rejecting improvements because they don't solve every.single.issue.

[Minimalist]

Yes, The perfect is the enemy of the good.

[LastPoet]

The irony is that we can turn the surface of the planet to cinders using thermonuclear bombs while harnessing that power to bring a relatively clean, unlimited source of energy to all mankind keeps it in a drawer.

Money, its always about that.

[TheGentlemanBastard]

I find it really frustrating that so many people insist on a perfect solution to every problem, and rejecting improvements because they don't solve every.single.issue.

While I agree with the sentiment of not letting the "perfect" be the enemy of "good enough," I have a hard time getting excited about a technology that was a decade away 20 years ago and is still a decade away today.

[Bucky Ball]

But the day it's here, is the day it's here.
Kaboom.
If they prove it can work on a large scale, there will be a race to get it functional.
Earlier this year, (as the pandemic began) oil commodity prices actually went negative, (first time ever I think), as they couldn't sell it, and had to pay to store it.)
Also, slowly but surely, oil prices have steadily fallen as alternatives have been identified and proliferated.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I find it really frustrating that so many people insist on a perfect solution to every problem, and rejecting improvements because they don't solve every.single.issue.

While I agree with the sentiment of not letting the "perfect" be the enemy of "good enough," I have a hard time getting excited about a technology that was a decade away 20 years ago and is still a decade away today.

Sure -- they've been going on promises since I was a lad. But sometimes tough problems take a loooooong time to solve.