International Fusion Reactor Project Moves Forward 265
mjgp2 writes to mention a BBC article about an agreement which will begin construction on the second most expensive scientific collaboration, after the ISS : the world's first large-scale fusion reactor. From the article: "The seven-party consortium, which includes the European Union, the US, Japan, China, Russia and others, agreed last year to build Iter in Cadarache, in the southern French region of Provence ... He said that the participants would aim to ratify their agreement before the end of the year so construction on the facility could start in 2007. Officials said the experimental reactor would take about eight years to build. The EU is to foot about 50% of the cost to build the experimental reactor. If all goes well with the experimental reactor, officials hope to set up a demonstration power plant at Cadarache by 2040. "
transporting electricity (Score:4, Interesting)
It will be before 2040 (Score:5, Interesting)
More work needs to be done on the spherical Tokamaks such as START and MAST [fusion.org.uk]. Which are showing increasingly promising results. I know from an inside source that more attention is being given to the spherical Tokamak. Especially now that in nearly all the participating countries there is at least a single toroidal tokamak.
From TFA:
"However, environmental groups have criticised the project, saying there was no guarantee that the billions of euros would result in a commercially viable energy source."
This baffles me, just whose side are the environmentalists on again? It doesn't matter that there is no gaurantee. The likelyhood of it being a comercially viable energy source is very high.
Also, bear in mind that everybody knows that fusion will be "along in 20 years" and has been this way for the past 60. However, most countries in the world are producing larger plasma departments at universities and there is a much greater influx of fusion scientists. Many hands make light work. And it has already been mentioned that there are many tokamaks in the world, Russia, China, Japan and America have multiple. The UK has the current largest, Jet, and it also has the spherical tokamaks as stated.
Peace out, baby.
Re:Manhattan Project (Score:2, Interesting)
Thats what happens when politicians are un-educated rubes."
That's really funny coming from a poster that thinks progress in fusion research is directly proportional to how much money is thrown at it.
I bet you also subscribe to the "if only we spent the space program money on solving poverty/homelessness/starving people in Africa!" line of thought.
Re:transporting electricity (Score:3, Interesting)
Using high-voltage AC gets the loss due to transmission down to VERY LITTLE. Like, single-digit percentage points in total transmission loss. High-tension lines in the us are ~700V, while in other places they are commonly something like twice that. Residental power in the US is ~220 at the pole, brought into the house that way, and split into ~110VAC circuits (except for the dryer and maybe electric stove - these pull from both sides for the 220V.)
Anyway all that babbling is prelude to a question: In the US we use 110 in the home and 220 on the pole. The UK uses 220 in the home, right? Do they use 440 on the pole, or is it still just 220? If the voltage is higher, it's more dangerous (jumps further) but losses are dramatically reduced.
Fusion power versus fission (Score:2, Interesting)
D-T fuel cycle Fusion produces Helium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power [wikipedia.org]
Fission power produces low radioactive waste which can be buried
and also high radioactive waste (cesium-137 and strontium-90) which is too radioactive to be buried (they give off enough heat to boil ground water into steam. Steam could corrode the containers or break up surrounding rock, raising uncertainty about secure burial.)
The cesium and strontium has to be kept in a storage pool that circulates cooling water for 150 years, before they cool down enough to be able to be buried.
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx
Both fission and fusion produce neutrons as well, which makes the reaction chamber radioactive and means that the power plant has to be buried after it's decommisioned
Re:transporting electricity (Score:3, Interesting)
certain situations where HVDC is advantageous and economical to use over
normal AC distribution.
Also, high quality switching power supplies can convert DC to DC analogous
to how a transformer converts AC to AC with similar efficiencies. As the
price of copper increases, transformers will actually cost more to make
and we may start seeing AC distribution replaced by DC distribution.
If that happens, the real question is whether or not the last mile would
be DC (very few of our home appliances would actually prefer AC).
Re:It will be before 2040 (Score:4, Interesting)
No, I don't think it is, and I don't think anyone can say that with any certainty.
I tend to class problems in three general ways:
1. Theoretical problems: We're not sure if this is even *possible*. e.g. FTL travel
2. Materials problems: We think this is possible, but we don't know what to build it out of. e.g. a space elevator.
3. Engineering problems: We know this can work, we know how to make it, we just have to work out the nuts and bolts. e.g. The Manhattan project.
Depending on the particular scheme in mind, commercial fusion is all three.
1. There are a wide variety of fusion schemes (the various aneutronic cycles, all cycles in thermal non-equilibrium), that are simply theoretically impossible [harvard.edu] to generate net energy from. Even plain old D-T fusion is *theoretically* hard; sure, we know it's possible, but getting it to proceed at a rate sufficient for useful net energy extraction might just be intractable.
2. What do you build the reactor vessel out of? You need something that can survive the 300-500 displacements *per atom* that it will experience from neutron collisions over the lifetime of the reactor. No such material is known; ITER will generate only one hundredth of that sort of neutron flux, so it can't even adequately explore the issue. There's another test facility intended to do that, but it's doesn't even exist on blueprints yet. Again, proper materials just might not exist, so you might have to replace the reactor vessel inner surface every few years, which dramatically increases the costs of the scheme and makes it much less viable commercially.
3. Everything else, and there's a lot of it, sits here. And there are some pretty big engineering problems as well, but yeah, those aren't show-stoppers. How do you get the energy out? How do you turn a flood of 14 MeV neutrons into electricity?
Re:Manhattan Project (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a tough nut to crack and more money for more projects and more jobs would help a good deal.
Re:It will be before 2040 (Score:4, Interesting)
>How do you get the energy out? How do you turn a flood of 14 MeV neutrons into electricity?
What happened to the idea of coating the walls with a "waterfall" of liquid lithium? It heats up (energy extraction), absorbs neutrons (sparing the vanadium walls and deferring or eliminating the need to anneal in place), and when it absorbs the neutrons it breeds tritium that can be used for reactor fuel. Is it too high a vapor pressure or something?
US should sponser an He Prize (Score:4, Interesting)
I bet there are a couple hundred smart engineers/physicists out there that would make this happen.
Solar Power Funding (Score:3, Interesting)
How does government funding for photovoltaics compare to funding for Fusion research? Does anyone have the figures? I've never heard of any grand government push to make dirt cheap 50% efficient solar cells. Imagine if you could buy a 1m square 50% efficient solar cell for $10. That sort of technology could change the balance of power in the world.