France will be the first experimenting with nuclear fusion

[UltraBurz]

http://www.eitb24.com/noticia_en.php?id=72198

Developers hope the project will one day generate endless, cheap energy by reproducing the sun's power source and wean the world off fossil fuels.

06/28/2005 - 19:06
An international consortium chose France on Tuesday as the site for an experimental nuclear fusion reactor - a US$13 billion (euro10.8 billion) project that developers hope will one day generate endless, cheap energy by reproducing the sun's power source and wean the world off fossil fuels.

France beat out Japan to host the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, which is also backed by the United States, China, the European Union, Russia and South Korea. Nuclear fusion produces no greenhouse gas emissions and only low levels of radioactive waste. "This is a great success for France, for Europe and for all of the partners in the ITER," French President Jacques Chirac said in a statement issued minutes after the announcement in Moscow.

"The international community will now be able to take on an unprecedented scientific and technological challenge, which opens great hopes for providing humanity with an energy that has no impact on the environment and is practically inexhaustible," Chirac said.

Officials say with the site issue resolved, project participants will now negotiate the construction details and sign a final agreement hopefully by the end of the year. Construction should be completed by about 2014. At stake are some 10,000 jobs.

Fusion, which powers the sun and stars, involves colliding atoms at extremely high temperatures and pressure inside a reactor. When the atoms fuse into a plasma they release energy that can be harnessed to generate electricity. Also, while fossil fuels are expected to run short in about 50 years, the reactor would run on an isotope of hydrogen, a virtually boundless source of fuel that can be extracted from water. "We are all dealing with the question of how to address a sustainable and also environmentally friendly energy source for the future, and fusion is extremely promising," EU Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik said after the talks.

Division among the six parties

The six parties in the project's consortium had been divided over where to put the test reactor and competition was intense. At stake are billions of dollars (euros) in research funding, construction and engineering contracts. Japan, the United States and South Korea wanted the facility built at Rokkasho in northern Japan. Russia, China and the European Union wanted it at Cadarache, in southern France. The EU argued that Cadarache, one of the biggest civil nuclear research centres in Europe, has existing technical support facilities and expertise for the project, thus reducing the risks.

Japanese newspaper reports had said Tokyo was prepared to give up hosting the ITER project in return for a bigger research and operations role in the project. The deal concluded Tuesday assured Tokyo of that role. "Japan is happy and sad at the same time. We decided to overcome the sorrow and turn the sorrow into joy. Japan in the future will be ready to make contribution to the development of fusion energy," said Nariaki Nakayama, Japan's minister for education, science and technology.

A commercially viable source of energy

The EU and Japan have reached an agreement on a broader cooperation in developing fusion energy to make it a commercially viable source of energy. The EU also has agreed to transfer up to 10 percent of its procurement to Japan, so that both participate on similar terms in the high-tech components of the reactor. The EU will support a Japanese candidate for the post of the ITER director general and back the construction of a demonstration reactor in Japan in a later phase.

Nakayama said Tuesday that the project would allow Japan to "become a base of international research and development in the field of fusion energy." The United States pledged its support. "We shall maintain a strong domestic program in fusion in order to supplement the ITER process and look forward to its success as a vehicle for energy security for the world," said Raymond L. Orbach, the U.S. Department of Energy's office of science director.

Good for France, cause when that thing goes Ka-Boom I'd rather it be vaporizing a part of France than here.

[Kula]

I have a friend who's a Nuc Engineer and he is not at all optimistic that we will ever have a working fusion reactor.

[Ddrak]

It's only a technical problem, therefore it will be solved one day.

Dd

[Embar Angylwrath]

It's only a technical problem, therefore it will be solved one day.

Dd

Aye.. no theoretical hurdles really.. only technology.

[CroinctheNeoCon]

It's only a technical problem, therefore it will be solved one day.

Dd

Aye.. no theoretical hurdles really.. only technology.

So you are telling me that we can solve the mystery of fusion reaction but we still have to pay $2.10 a gallon for gas cause we can't make a "BIGGIE" version of a tonka toy????

WTF DUDE!

[UltraBurz]

It's only a technical problem, therefore it will be solved one day.

Dd

Aye.. no theoretical hurdles really.. only technology.

So you are telling me that we can solve the mystery of fusion reaction but we still have to pay $2.10 a gallon for gas cause we can't make a "BIGGIE" version of a tonka toy????

WTF DUDE!

Need more "Wars for Oil".

[Ddrak]

Gonna be warz for water when fusion powered cars are viable. Then again, you thought a gas tank blowing was bad - wait until the fusion reactor goes up!

Dd

[GINLAAN]

$2.10 a gallon

I would love to pay that for gas. ITs back up to 2.75 here.

[UltraBurz]

$2.10 a gallon

I would love to pay that for gas. ITs back up to 2.75 here.

Yah no kidding.

[Kula]

Well don't take what I am going to say as gospil because I am only going from memory. But my friend told me that the energy needed to force the cusion reaction combined with the energy needed to contain the plasma exceeds the energy output of the reaction. But next time I talk to him on the phone I will ask him about it again.

[Fobbon]

I'm pretty sure that's wrong. I'm sure the, oh, hundreds of thousands of scientists working on fusion power over a period of 30 years have thought about that one a few times over.

Then theres the whole "sun" thing.

[Ddrak]

Well, in Kula's defense, we really don't want to build a reactor of sufficient size that gravity will hold the reaction for us. Probably can't fit that into a reasonable sized power station.

Dd

[Kula]

Sure. Building the damn thing in space would be no problem. But there's this damn gravity thing to consider here on earth. Ya know when you allow plasma to strike the earth and get to the ground water the resulting explosion would be quite a sight.

So they'd rather use magnetic containment which requires an enourmous amount of enery to contain the plasma......then you have to factor in the energy needs to begin the reaction.

[Ara]

The energy needs to create a D-T fusion reaction are, on the scale of things, small. As for what's been done already:

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory claims to have hit a temperature of 510 million degrees K - Please note that our sun has an estimated core temperature of approximately 20 million K. This is the current record for highest man-generated temperature. This furnace produced a (probably net) 10.7 million watts of theoretically harvestable energy in November 1994. The magnetic field required to do this is roughly one order of magnitude more than the one required to take an MRI - or less.

The scientific issue is not, and has not been, the generation and containment of the fusing plasma for many years, it's been: 'How do we reap the reward, and how do we keep the fucker fueled?' That's solved now. We know how to, in one fell swoop, generate tritnium and transfer the energy generated by a fusion reactor out of the reactor in a useful form. Deuterium can be pulled, comparatively trivially, from the ground. It's no longer a question of science. It's a question of engineering, and the engineers are asking, 'Who's paying for this?' and 'Who gets a man made micro-star in their back yard?'

[Embar Angylwrath]

The energy needs to create a D-T fusion reaction are, on the scale of things, small. As for what's been done already:

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory claims to have hit a temperature of 510 million degrees K - Please note that our sun has an estimated core temperature of approximately 20 million K. This is the current record for highest man-generated temperature. This furnace produced a (probably net) 10.7 million watts of theoretically harvestable energy in November 1994. The magnetic field required to do this is roughly one order of magnitude more than the one required to take an MRI - or less.

The scientific issue is not, and has not been, the generation and containment of the fusing plasma for many years, it's been: 'How do we reap the reward, and how do we keep the fucker fueled?' That's solved now. We know how to, in one fell swoop, generate tritnium and transfer the energy generated by a fusion reactor out of the reactor in a useful form. Deuterium can be pulled, comparatively trivially, from the ground. It's no longer a question of science. It's a question of engineering, and the engineers are asking, 'Who's paying for this?' and 'Who gets a man made micro-star in their back yard?'

Crystal clearly they haven't yet measured the frictional heat on Raistle's penis when he whacks off to pictures of Hooch.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Serioulsy though.. they used a magentic confinement on the plasma? Or did they use intertial confinement? Or both?

[Ara]

The grand majority of functioning reactors today are variants of the Tokamak, which uses a toroidal magnetic field.

[RAISTLE LOL]

The energy needs to create a D-T fusion reaction are, on the scale of things, small. As for what's been done already:

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory claims to have hit a temperature of 510 million degrees K - Please note that our sun has an estimated core temperature of approximately 20 million K. This is the current record for highest man-generated temperature. This furnace produced a (probably net) 10.7 million watts of theoretically harvestable energy in November 1994. The magnetic field required to do this is roughly one order of magnitude more than the one required to take an MRI - or less.

The scientific issue is not, and has not been, the generation and containment of the fusing plasma for many years, it's been: 'How do we reap the reward, and how do we keep the fucker fueled?' That's solved now. We know how to, in one fell swoop, generate tritnium and transfer the energy generated by a fusion reactor out of the reactor in a useful form. Deuterium can be pulled, comparatively trivially, from the ground. It's no longer a question of science. It's a question of engineering, and the engineers are asking, 'Who's paying for this?' and 'Who gets a man made micro-star in their back yard?'

Crystal clearly they haven't yet measured the frictional heat on Raistle's penis when he whacks off to pictures of Hooch.

what