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While there are many hopeful alternatives to “big fusion” which may promise to be cheaper, is it not true that ITER is the most credible path to commercial-scal

by ttul 7y ago

While there are many hopeful alternatives to “big fusion” which may promise to be cheaper, is it not true that ITER is the most credible path to commercial-scale fusion power?

ChuckMcM 7y ago
I've been watching the progress of the Wendelstein 7-X (https://www.ipp.mpg.de/4550215/11_18 https://www.ipp.mpg.de/4550215/11_18) which has been making steady progress month after month, year after year. At the current pace they will demonstrate net power fusion before ITER does. Extrapolation is always risky though so it isn't something one should count on.
- Tossrock 7y ago
  The Wendelstein 7-x is not designed to ever reach ignition. It's a (very large, very cool) research reactor studying stellarator geometry. Ignition will require a yet larger device, and barring any disasters, ITER should definitely get there first.
  - ChuckMcM 7y ago
    I understand that, these are the bits that I like about the project: "Then, it will remain to be seen whether Wendelstein 7-X can also fulfil its optimisation goals during continuous operation – the essential advantage of stellarators." ... "Although Wendelstein 7-X is not designed to generate energy, the device is intended to prove that stellarators are suitable for use in power stations." And from the ITER Goals statement (https://www.iter.org/sci/Goals https://www.iter.org/sci/Goals) "ITER will not capture the power it produces as electricity, but as the first of all fusion experiments in history to produce net energy... it will prepare the way for the machine that can." My take away from that, is that if both machines fulfill their goals, then building a power station that uses the technology would be the next step. I expect two things to be true; First, the 7-x will prove out its goals before ITER does, and second given that the stellerator design is significantly less complex than the tokamak design, it will be realized as a test power plant before the tokamak power plant is.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Wendelstein will never produce power. It’s basically a plasma experiment.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Wendelstein can't produce power by design. That would require neutron shielding. It's a pure research device.
Iv 7y ago
We don't know. ITER is the big-scale, brute-force approach. People suspect there may be smart ways to do better with less, but until either succeed that's anyone's guess. ITER is a tokamak. That's one approach. There is also the inertial confinement approach, that more efficient LED lasers have made an interesting contender. There is the stellarator approach, aka the "smart tokamak" experimented in Germany. Another one is the Z-pinch, used in Z machines, which seem to focus more on nuclear weapons research but that could potentially be a way towards usable fusion. What makes ITER a likely candidate is solely its funding. I wish we funded the others to a similar amount. And in each approach, there are also several ways of doing things.
sien 7y ago
It's questionable. ITER's design comes from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Hight Temperature Superconductors (HTS) have changed the game. HTS tape has only been available for about a decade. The cube of magnetic field is proportional to the energy gain in a Tokomak. See this video at at 46 minutes to get the equation, watch more to understand why people are now doing this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk Tokomak Energy and Commonwealth Fusion Systems among others are looking at smaller reactors that use High Temperature Superconductors. Also have a look at Helion Energy. Also note that the Chinese are starting to put serious money into fusion research. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-nuclearpower-fusion/china-targets-nuclear-fusion-power-generation-by-2040-idUSKCN1RO0NB https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-nuclearpower-fusion...
- ikeyany 7y ago
  Having worked on that tokomak, I can confirm that the Chinese are not playing around when it comes to funding long-term science initiatives. The US should be doing some serious soul searching about its priorities...where is the collective national vision of tomorrow?
- piva00 7y ago
  Reading this article one thing that pops in my mind is: we have spent more money collectively to fund the LHC in CERN as we have funded ITER. As much as extremely good science has came out of this experiment it boggles my mind that we have spent less in the search for the next breakthrough in energy generation, something that ALWAYS has catapulted technology and development of humanity. Why?
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    The fusion effort is based on a set of assumptions that might have seemed reasonable in the 1950s when the effort got started, but are no longer realistic. Fusion assumes the problem with nuclear power is that uranium is scarce, so the cost of nuclear energy would be dominated by fuel cost. In such a scenario, where reactors themselves are cheap, it makes sense to make a more complex expensive reactor to save on fuel. This was also the motivation for breeder reactors. But this isn't how it worked out. Fuel is a small part of the cost of nuclear fission power. The cost of building and maintaining the power plants, and disposing of them at the ends of their lives, turned out to dominate. In that scenario, making larger, more complex, more expensive reactors just so one can burn deuterium and lithium is totally bass-ackwards. The collapse of the fission breeder program should have been a sign that fusion wasn't going to work either. They were both based on the same incorrect idea of how things were going to go.
pfdietz 7y ago
ITER is not on a credible path to commercial scale fusion power. It's simply too large, complex, and expensive.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  From what I have gathered from interviews with fusion scientists ITER will still provide a lot of data for other designs which makes it worthwhile.

by ttul 7y ago

While there are many hopeful alternatives to “big fusion” which may promise to be cheaper, is it not true that ITER is the most credible path to commercial-scale fusion power?

ChuckMcM 7y ago

I've been watching the progress of the Wendelstein 7-X (https://www.ipp.mpg.de/4550215/11_18 https://www.ipp.mpg.de/4550215/11_18) which has been making steady progress month after month, year after year. At the current pace they will demonstrate net power fusion before ITER does. Extrapolation is always risky though so it isn't something one should count on.

Tossrock 7y ago
The Wendelstein 7-x is not designed to ever reach ignition. It's a (very large, very cool) research reactor studying stellarator geometry. Ignition will require a yet larger device, and barring any disasters, ITER should definitely get there first.
- ChuckMcM 7y ago
  I understand that, these are the bits that I like about the project: "Then, it will remain to be seen whether Wendelstein 7-X can also fulfil its optimisation goals during continuous operation – the essential advantage of stellarators." ... "Although Wendelstein 7-X is not designed to generate energy, the device is intended to prove that stellarators are suitable for use in power stations." And from the ITER Goals statement (https://www.iter.org/sci/Goals https://www.iter.org/sci/Goals) "ITER will not capture the power it produces as electricity, but as the first of all fusion experiments in history to produce net energy... it will prepare the way for the machine that can." My take away from that, is that if both machines fulfill their goals, then building a power station that uses the technology would be the next step. I expect two things to be true; First, the 7-x will prove out its goals before ITER does, and second given that the stellerator design is significantly less complex than the tokamak design, it will be realized as a test power plant before the tokamak power plant is.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
Wendelstein will never produce power. It’s basically a plasma experiment.
adrianN 7y ago
Wendelstein can't produce power by design. That would require neutron shielding. It's a pure research device.

Iv 7y ago

We don't know. ITER is the big-scale, brute-force approach. People suspect there may be smart ways to do better with less, but until either succeed that's anyone's guess. ITER is a tokamak. That's one approach. There is also the inertial confinement approach, that more efficient LED lasers have made an interesting contender. There is the stellarator approach, aka the "smart tokamak" experimented in Germany. Another one is the Z-pinch, used in Z machines, which seem to focus more on nuclear weapons research but that could potentially be a way towards usable fusion. What makes ITER a likely candidate is solely its funding. I wish we funded the others to a similar amount. And in each approach, there are also several ways of doing things.

sien 7y ago

It's questionable. ITER's design comes from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Hight Temperature Superconductors (HTS) have changed the game. HTS tape has only been available for about a decade. The cube of magnetic field is proportional to the energy gain in a Tokomak. See this video at at 46 minutes to get the equation, watch more to understand why people are now doing this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk Tokomak Energy and Commonwealth Fusion Systems among others are looking at smaller reactors that use High Temperature Superconductors. Also have a look at Helion Energy. Also note that the Chinese are starting to put serious money into fusion research. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-nuclearpower-fusion/china-targets-nuclear-fusion-power-generation-by-2040-idUSKCN1RO0NB https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-nuclearpower-fusion...

ikeyany 7y ago
Having worked on that tokomak, I can confirm that the Chinese are not playing around when it comes to funding long-term science initiatives. The US should be doing some serious soul searching about its priorities...where is the collective national vision of tomorrow?
piva00 7y ago
Reading this article one thing that pops in my mind is: we have spent more money collectively to fund the LHC in CERN as we have funded ITER. As much as extremely good science has came out of this experiment it boggles my mind that we have spent less in the search for the next breakthrough in energy generation, something that ALWAYS has catapulted technology and development of humanity. Why?
- pfdietz 7y ago
  The fusion effort is based on a set of assumptions that might have seemed reasonable in the 1950s when the effort got started, but are no longer realistic. Fusion assumes the problem with nuclear power is that uranium is scarce, so the cost of nuclear energy would be dominated by fuel cost. In such a scenario, where reactors themselves are cheap, it makes sense to make a more complex expensive reactor to save on fuel. This was also the motivation for breeder reactors. But this isn't how it worked out. Fuel is a small part of the cost of nuclear fission power. The cost of building and maintaining the power plants, and disposing of them at the ends of their lives, turned out to dominate. In that scenario, making larger, more complex, more expensive reactors just so one can burn deuterium and lithium is totally bass-ackwards. The collapse of the fission breeder program should have been a sign that fusion wasn't going to work either. They were both based on the same incorrect idea of how things were going to go.

pfdietz 7y ago

ITER is not on a credible path to commercial scale fusion power. It's simply too large, complex, and expensive.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
From what I have gathered from interviews with fusion scientists ITER will still provide a lot of data for other designs which makes it worthwhile.