22 votes

World’s largest nuclear fusion experiment clears milestone: ITER on track to begin operations in 2025

6 comments

  1. [6]
    Eylrid
    Link
    Where does ITER stand on the path to fusion net power generation? Is it likely to produce net positive power, or is it an experimental step with net positive power not coming until some future...

    Where does ITER stand on the path to fusion net power generation? Is it likely to produce net positive power, or is it an experimental step with net positive power not coming until some future reactor down the road?

    2 votes
    1. [5]
      Ember
      Link Parent
      It's supposed to return 10x the input power, 500 MW from 50 MW input. But interestingly, it's not even going to try to produce electricity. From it's website: Wikipedia says its successor, DEMO,...

      It's supposed to return 10x the input power, 500 MW from 50 MW input. But interestingly, it's not even going to try to produce electricity. From it's website:

      ITER will not capture the energy it produces as electricity, but—as first of all fusion experiments in history to produce net energy gain—it will prepare the way for the machine that can. [1]

      Wikipedia says its successor, DEMO, is actually going to capture the power.

      7 votes
      1. [4]
        sqew
        Link Parent
        This is the sad problem of fusion as a power source. It can probably work (although that's obviously not guaranteed), but it's been so consistently underfunded that it'll take us another twenty...

        This is the sad problem of fusion as a power source. It can probably work (although that's obviously not guaranteed), but it's been so consistently underfunded that it'll take us another twenty years to find out whether it's worthwhile.

        Just like it's been for the last 20 years, power-generating fusion is always a decade away... :(

        4 votes
        1. [3]
          spctrvl
          Link Parent
          Yeah, it's kind of nuts that something as important as a working fusion reactor, funded by counties representing the world's dozen biggest economies, has managed to secure a whopping $20 billion...

          Yeah, it's kind of nuts that something as important as a working fusion reactor, funded by counties representing the world's dozen biggest economies, has managed to secure a whopping $20 billion over several decades, which is like a week and a half of the US military budget. Even notoriously stagnant human spaceflight programs are lavishly funded compared to fusion research.

          But fusion still might be closer than you'd think. In the years since ITER was designed, we've gotten access to superconductors that can operate at much higher temperatures, and handle much higher magnetic fields, and power density scales with the fourth power of magnetic field strength. The upshot of this is that MIT has designed a reactor that can provide ITER performance at about a tenth the cost and size, called ARC. And considering it's an improvement upon the design of the tokamak by a public research institute, instead of a startup tinkering with a dead reactor concept from the 50's, I'm rather more confident in their ability to deliver. Considering ITER isn't even scheduled to start D-T fusion until 2035 (!), I'm fully expecting it to get leapfrogged.

          7 votes
          1. [2]
            sqew
            Link Parent
            I really hope that it does get leapfrogged and that we see more investment. With all the advances in magnet technology and other areas, I'm really excited to see what designs like the Wendelstein...

            I really hope that it does get leapfrogged and that we see more investment. With all the advances in magnet technology and other areas, I'm really excited to see what designs like the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator and others like the MIT ARC design you mentioned can pull off.

            3 votes
            1. spctrvl
              Link Parent
              Yeah, stellarators are neat. Based on what we know now, they seem like the second best path to fusion, behind tokamaks, and I'm interested in what increased magnetic field strength can do for...

              Yeah, stellarators are neat. Based on what we know now, they seem like the second best path to fusion, behind tokamaks, and I'm interested in what increased magnetic field strength can do for them, as the 7-X still uses traditional superconductors. The rest, I'm not holding out too much hope for, but it would certainly be a pleasant bolt from the blue if, say, general fusion's piston driven fusion reactor turns out to work.

              2 votes