Posted on 12/19/2003 10:55:45 PM PST by FairOpinion
WASHINGTON : France and Japan stepped up lobbying ahead of Saturday's decision by the major nuclear powers on where to put an experimental nuclear fusion reactor as part of the multi-billion dollar ITER project.
The choice between the French town of Cadarache and Rokkasho-mura in northern Japan is to be made at a ministerial meeting at Reston, Virginia, in the Washington suburbs.
The reactor is expected to cost about 10 billion dollars but French officials estimate the project could bring 30 billion dollars to the economy of the chosen venue over 30 years.
The ITER consortium -- which hopes to find a limitless energy source from nuclear fusion -- is made up of the European Union, Japan, Canada, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States, which quit the project in 1998 but returned in January as President George W. Bush changed his energy policy.
The European Union is backing France, after the Spanish town of Vandellos withdrew in November, but the United States could play a decisive role in the decision.
A French government envoy, Pierre Lellouche, said "very intense" talks were being held at a high level Friday before the meeting on the reactor venue.
France's Research Minister Claudie Haignere and the European Union Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin were expected in Washington on Friday night to join the lobbying. French officials said that if no concensus is reached Saturday, it may be put off until January.
A Japanese diplomatic source, meanwhile, said bilateral meetings were being held Friday with the United States, the European Union, South Korea and Russia ahead of Saturday's decision.
"We are still very hopeful," the source said.
ITER -- Latin for "the way" -- aims to be a test bed for what is being billed as the clean, safe, inexhaustible energy source of the future. The project is not expected to generate electricity however before 2050.
The Japanese site has many assets: proximity to a port, a ground of solid bedrock and a nearby American military base which means that Rokkasho-mura already has the services available to accommodate foreign researchers in a comfortable environment.
The French bid offers an existing research facility and a more moderate climate.
In the past, nuclear energy has derived from splitting atoms of radioactive material to unleash a controlled chain reaction whose by-product is heat.
But more than half a century of experience in fission has thrown up serious problems, ranging from the nightmare of Chernobyl to the perils of transporting nuclear material and storing dangerous long-term radioactive waste.
Nuclear fusion takes the opposite approach, seeking to emulate the Sun.
The solar crucible takes the nuclei of two atoms of deuterium, which is the heavy form of hydrogen, and fuses them together to form tritium (the other isotope of hydrogen) and in so doing releases huge amounts of energy.
There is a virtually limitless source of deuterium in the world, because it can be derived from water; as for tritium, it is not a natural element, but can be easily made by irradiating it with lithium at high pressure.
That is the theory, and getting from there to a workable prototype plant of commercial size is what ITER is all about.
For all the allure of nuclear fusion as a boundless energy source, and the promise that, unlike nuclear fission, it offers no environmental headache, the technical hurdles remain immense.
Among the many problems are how to efficiently confine the plasma cloud in the magnetic field so that charged particles do not slip out, and the energy cost in pumping up the plasma to such high temperatures.
So far, no one has achieved a long self-sustaining fusion event. The record, achieved by European scientists at Cadarache on December 4, is six and a half minutes, releasing a thousand megajoules of energy.
Can anyone think of a SINGLE reason, why we should let France get the $10B, instead of Japan?
Japan proved itself to be our friend, and France proved to us time and time again, that it is our enemy.
The deal is that we are puting up $500,000 initially. The host country has to front a majority of the facility construction costs ($3 BIL+) and yearly operation costs ( aprox. $500,000) In view of this it may have been smart for the US not to have bid on hosting the project. It could well turn out that the EU might not be able to meet its obligation over the years, the design may not be that commercial and remote computing may diminish the research value of hosting this thing. Look for immense cost overruns over the 35 to 40 year life cycle of this project. We can also build up our own "cyber infrastructure" here for this project, and that directly benifits other research groups in the US that are not related to this project. There is a good chance that in a few years we can "leapfrog" this work without having to bear the sunk cost of the ITER facility. It may prove in the long run that this was a shrewd decision by the administration.
We should remember that the DOE funds its own fusion research project here in the US that are completely seperate from this deal. It is my feeling that the EU already has CERN and that that should be enough. Let the Japanese have it. It will be interesting to see how this goes. My guess it that France gets it, but I will shout for joy if Japan lands it.
On the basis of security alone, Japan should get the nod. Not only is France full of Muslims who reproduce like rats and Frenchies who hardly reproduce at all, but Japan is not a particularly hospitable environment for terrorists. The Japanese have no qualms about "profiling" and, as a result of 9-11, they did for airport security what Chicken Norm Mineta has refused to do-- profiled and pulled anyone who even looks like a Muslim out of line for serious questioning. As a result, normal people can still arrive at the airport 20 minutes before a domestic flight and get on board.
It looks like a promising technology, but not without its problems -- at least, for now. We'd be well-advised to get to work on this now, before Russia and the OPEC 5 completely dominate world petroleum.
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