ITER delays first plasma for world's biggest fusion power rig by a decade
- Reference: 1720076287
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/07/04/iter_new_baseline_project_delays/
- Source link:
Tokamaks are typically designed around a doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber, inside of which gases are subjected to extreme heat and pressure and become a plasma. Strong magnets are used to keep that hot plasma away from the chamber's walls, and the heat is used to boil water into steam that turns turbines to make electricity.
ITER has built what it claims is the world's largest tokamak and hopes it will achieve a deuterium-tritium plasma – in which the fusion conditions are sustained mostly by internal fusion heating, rather than needing constant input of energy. The org aims to produce 500MW of fusion power from 50MW of input, as a demo that lights the way for commercial machines.
[1]
ITER director-general Pietro Barabaschi yesterday [2]outlined [PDF] a new project baseline to replace the one in use since 2016. That older document foresaw "first plasma" in 2025 – but only as "a brief, low-energy machine test, with relatively minimal scientific value." A planned series of experiments would proceed until 2033.
[3]
[4]
The org has known since 2020 that it would not achieve first plasma in 2025, so these changes are not unexpected.
COVID-19 complicated already-troubled efforts to build ITER's tokamak, which was beset by quality problems and over-optimistic assumptions about what it would take to manufacture components.
[5]
Fair cop: ITER will need a 6000-ton magnet capable of storing 41 Gigajoules of energy. That can't be easy to build!
"We could have retained the Baseline 2016 roadmap, but this would have been illogical – based on the availability of additional key components to construct a more complete machine," Barabaschi conceded yesterday.
The new baseline prioritizes the Start of Research Operations – which are now hoped to commence in 2033. Barabaschi explained the delay will give ITER the chance to run more tests on some elements of the tokamak, meaning that a "more complete machine" will be available by 2033.
[6]
By 2039, ITER wants its Deuterium-Tritium Operation Phase to start – four years later than first planned.
[7]Lawrence Livermore lab repeats fusion breakthrough – yep, still kinda works
[8]Joint European Torus experiments end on a 69 megajoules high
[9]World's largest nuclear fusion reactor comes online in Japan
[10]Microsoft signs up to buy electricity produced by fusion, perhaps in 2028
One big change to the baseline is using tungsten instead of beryllium for the tokamak's First Wall – the bit facing plasma. ITER boffins have determined that tungsten "is more relevant for future 'DEMO' machines and eventual commercial fusion devices."
An extra €5 billion ($5.4 billion) will be needed to realize this plan. ITER members are considering that requirement.
ITER's [11]post announcing the new baseline notes that the org's "costs historically have been difficult to estimate precisely because the bulk of financial contributions are provided in-kind by ITER Members in the form of components, for most of which Member governments are not required to publish their actual costs."
So take that €5 billion figure with a hearty pinch of plasma.
Fusion experiments have [12]shown the tech has great promise as a source of clean energy. Which is why governments are [13]throwing money at it . To date, however, no experiment has come close to ITER's planned output – or even reliable operations – making Microsoft's [14]deal to source energy from fusion by 2028 vastly optimistic. ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZoZywhSdi4trannn-19iaQAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.iter.org/doc/www/content/com/Lists/Stories/Attachments/4056/Baseline_Press_Conference_Summary_July-2024.pdf
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZoZywhSdi4trannn-19iaQAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZoZywhSdi4trannn-19iaQAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZoZywhSdi4trannn-19iaQAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZoZywhSdi4trannn-19iaQAAAEI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/07/lab_repeats_fusion_breakthrough/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/09/jets_swansong_yields_fusion_record/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/04/jt_60sa_tokamak_online/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/12/microsoft_helion_fusion_power/
[11] https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/4056
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/09/jets_swansong_yields_fusion_record/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/07/white_house_hopes_180m_will/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/12/microsoft_helion_fusion_power/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Optional
If you live in Europe, this is literally true.
Bummer
I was hoping to see fusion in my lifetime.
I guess I'll just have to hope that my daughter sees it.
Re: Bummer
Just look to the east every morning and west every evening
Re: Bummer
"Just look to the east every morning and west every evening"
Or up.
Re: Optional
Except I seem to recall a few years ago European politicians were confidently relying on having fusion providing a significant portion of electricity generation as a key part of the EU meeting it's 2050 zero carbon target
Re: Optional
[1]How Many Years Away is Fusion Energy? A Review
Historically, it has been a running quip that ‘fusion is always 30 years away. ... Thus arises the following question: is the age-long sarcasm of “fusion is always 30 years away” still valid in 2023? This paper answers this question through a literature review of researchers' expectations about when fusion energy will be “ready” for over the past 40 years.
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10894-023-00361-z
The power source of the future
Always was.
Always will be.
Still ensuring Europe should remain self-sufficient in it's supply of Plasma Physics PhD's for the foreseeable future*
*The only way they'll generate renewable energy is by putting them all on giant hamster wheels connected to alternators.
My experience
Even ignoring the technical challenges, projects organised & funded like this (of which there are many of different flavors) have a habit of having their milestones dissappear over the horizon as the underlying incentives are all about keeping the project (& everyone's jobs) going for as long as possible.
Actually delivering isn't the priority.
It shouldn't work like that but it inevitably does, which is great while you're riding that train but not so good for anyone wanting the end product.
Been there, done that.
World's largest tokamak?
More like the world's largest example of sunk cost fallacy. I'm willing to bet that at least one of the commercial fusion companies out there will have a net energy positive reactor, if not an operational plant connected to the grid, before ITER's first plasma. They really ought to cut their losses, and if they really want to keep spending billions of taxpayer's money, then come up with a new design based on current technologies, and focused on what would be most helpful to the commercial fusion efforts. The current design is too late and too dated to be much use to anyone.
Re: World's largest tokamak?
'I'm willing to bet that at least one of the commercial fusion companies out there will have a net energy positive reactor, if not an operational plant connected to the grid, before ITER's first plasma.'
So much so you are willing to invest your own cold hard cash?
Because that is what the private enterprise projects require and to be frank, the narrative coming out of them will tend towards the more wildly optimistic to attract that investment.
I see ITER more as a collaborative humanity project, hopefully with all the subsequent spin offs that past projects such as the race to the Moon have generated.
I don't think anyone believed the initial budget estimates and timescales, especially the involved States.
Good job there are other projects
Such as [1]this one by Tokamak Energy that look like they may actually be producing power in the 2030's. They have opted for a design more along the lines of the SMR fission technology that uses more small machines, making construction much, much easier.
[1] https://tokamakenergy.com/about-us-fusion-energy-high-temperature-superconducting-magnets/#roadmap
constraining mini-suns
Turns out this is difficult to do with magnets. Even really big ones. The real Sun has mastered a trick called gravity over a few billion years - that's how it keeps its fusion reactor going. But for gravity you need to have something really "vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big"... I mean, you may think it's a long way around that toroidal camera, but that's just peanuts...
The one with H2G2 in the pocket, thank you. --------->
50 vs 500
And don't forget that that's 50MW of power inserted into the plasma (not the power required to insert that power which is about an order of magnitude greater), and that the 500MW is thermal power (mostly in the form of neutrons) which somehow has to be harvested.
We're very far a way from any form of "break even" regardless of what the 50/500 headline suggests.
The greenhouse effect is so last century!
When(!) we finally get this mythical source of infinitesimally cheap power we can short-circuit the greenhouse effect entirely and just dump all our waste heat (from refrigeration/aircon or heating according to geography) _directly_ into the atmosphere.
Be careful what you wish for!
Optional
My money's on 30 years...