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The world's largest nuclear fusion project, ITER, postpones its opening until 2033. Design changes and new timelines promise to revolutionize the production of unlimited, clean energy
The ITER board made official a widely known secret: the world's largest and most expensive nuclear fusion reactor, crucial to the future of energy, has postponed its opening by a decade. There is a new development plan, which includes important design changes.
What is ITER and how can it revolutionize energy?
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is a pharaonic scientific nuclear fusion project, in which 35 of the world's largest economies participate. The European Union contributes 40% of the financing, while China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States contribute the remaining 60%.
The reactor is under construction in Cadarache, in the south of France. It is based on the Tokamak design, a toroid-shaped device that uses a powerful magnetic field to confine hot plasma to extremely high temperatures (about 150 million degrees Celsius), making it possible to fuse hydrogen nuclei and release clean, energy. virtually unlimited.
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ITER is a scientific project that seeks to demonstrate the integration of systems necessary for large-scale nuclear fusion operations. It will be the largest tokamak in the world, capable of confining a volume of plasma of 840 cubic meters in a flow measuring 6,2 meters in diameter.
A new schedule
Um such an ambitious project faces all kinds of difficulties, and ITER has known for years that it would not be able to meet the objectives of the plan planned since 2016, neither in terms of deadlines nor budgets. However, it was only now that they decided to stop the snowballing with design changes and a new reference plan.
The old plan envisaged completing the assembly of the reactor and obtaining the first plasma in 2025, with a brief low-energy test. The new plan postpones this to 2033, but with a full-length trial to make way for a research operations phase from 2024.
The new plan also postpones the attainment of full magnetic power from 2033 to 2036. And the start of the final phase of operation from 2035 to 2039.
Design changes
The new baseline also provides the time needed to implement changes to the reactor design. The most important change is that ITER will use tungsten instead of beryllium in the first wall, the one directly facing the plasma.
No fusion reactor uses beryllium, and ITER admits that this choice was a mistake. Tungsten is most relevant for future demonstration machines and commercial nuclear fusion devices in 2060.
Reasons for delay
At a council press conference, Pietro Barabaschi, director general of ITER, blamed the delay on:
- The covid-19 pandemic, which impacted the project with staff reductions, factory closures and delays in shipments and inspections
- Component availability issues and suboptimal quality in reactor design
- Internal culture problems and an overly optimistic timeline for assembling the reactor and obtaining plasma
The new plan prioritizes the installation of critical components from the beginning and delays obtaining plasma by almost a decade, but in exchange for a reactor better prepared for ITER operation.
Objectives and challenges
The main objective of the ITER project is to achieve a fusion efficiency of Q≥10 at 400 second intervals.
This means that the reactor will have demonstrated its viability if it is capable of generating 500 MW of thermal fusion power using just 50 MW to heat the plasma. In the long term, ITER expects to achieve Q≥5 on a continuous basis.
The ITER complex began to be built in 2013. The initial budget was close to 6.000 million euros, but the total price is expected to exceed 22.000 million euros. Other estimates place the cost at between 45.000 and 65.000 million dollars, making it one of the most expensive international projects in history.
Image | ITER
Endless financial hole. They spend billions, then say they need to spend more billions. They get nowhere. China will have nuclear fusion first. Once again, Europe disappoints with the lack of responsibility and assertiveness of the people involved.
This technology really is a bottomless pit lol, but there's no point talking about China and not saying that these guys basically have carte blanche to spend whatever they want as long as they continue to develop continuously and produce results, even if they are tiny.