Posted on 08/01/2004 9:48:34 AM PDT by ckilmer
US to halt nuclear fusion project
17:04 30 July 04
NewScientist.com news service
Amidst a prolonged stalemate over where to build the world's largest nuclear fusion facility, the US is halting work on a homegrown fusion project. The decision caused concern among researchers at a fusion meeting earlier this week.
The US is pinning its hopes on ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), which aims to lay the groundwork for using nuclear fusion as an inexhaustible and clean energy source.
But the project has been stalled since December 2003 because its six members - the US, the European Union, China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia – cannot agree on where to build the facility. The EU, China, and Russia favour the French city of Cadarache, while the US, South Korea, and Japan back the Japanese town of Rokkashomura.
The deadlock has persisted even after both the EU and Japan sweetened their offers in June, each agreeing to pay half of ITER's estimated $5 billion construction costs to host the reactor. And rumours have spread that some parties might splinter off to build the reactor on their own.
Now, the standoff has lasted so long that the US has reached a deadline on another fusion project. The deadline was set in 2002 by a committee advising the US Department of Energy (DOE) to proceed with a smaller project called FIRE (Fusion Ignition Research Experiment) if ITER negotiations had stalled by July 2004.
No backup
Planning for FIRE was actually begun in 1998, when the US Congress directed the DOE to pull out of ITER. Since then about 50 researchers have been working on a "preconceptual" design for FIRE. But the approximately $2 million annual budget for this will come to an end in September.
In 2003, the US rejoined ITER, and now the DOE says FIRE will not serve as an alternative even if ITER falls through.
"We do not have a backup plan," Anne Davies, director of the DOE's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, told New Scientist. "We are focused on making ITER work. If ITER doesn't work, we are going to have a lot of reassessing to do."
Davies said FIRE's use of copper magnets - instead of superconducting ones like ITER - was "dead-end" technology that would not lead as quickly to the goal of a fusion power plant.
She added that Congress would probably balk at building the $1 billion FIRE reactor without international partners, and that such partners might not want to sign onto a project whose plan was already so well established.
Square one
FIRE's design team leader Dale Meade, a physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, agrees that ITER should take top priority.
But during public comments at a meeting of the DOE's fusion energy sciences advisory committee near Washington, DC, this week, he urged the government to reconsider its decision to scrap FIRE as a backup.
"I was reminding them we were ready if called upon," he told New Scientist. If ITER negotiations fail, he says, "we might have to take a step back, but we don't want to go all the way back to square one".
Earl Marmar, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has reviewed the FIRE design, says it is a viable alternative to ITER. If FIRE were pursued, he says, it would be best to do it with international participation, but he says ITER has proven how difficult that can be.
"ITER has been technically ready to move forward for at least a couple of years - it's really been a political holdup," he told New Scientist. "We're all hopeful ITER will succeed, but we're also rather impatient."
Maggie McKee
A site for a fusion project. May I suggest Iran, Syria, or North Korea. Oh, you want a controlled reaction. How about Cape Cod right next to the wind farm that won't get built.
At least China was not one of the options.
I think fusion energy is a joke.
chinese are not players here.
is that a professional opinion? for example do you do physics?
We waste 100 of billions of dollars on highway pork alone. In two years CERN is going to give the EU a lock on High Energy Physics (with $600 million of our dollars, I might add.)
This is exceedingly bad news. This is the beginning of the end of our leadership in science, all because of ignorant and short sighted politicians on both sides of the aisle.
The French will stall until they get it. They will be come leader in the field based on our monies. I knew this would happen. We really need to get out if this and return to the historic pattern on US only energy research Armour nation interest. That is how we got our great scientific and technical leadership of the Cold War. The rot started with the cancellation of the Super Conducting Collider, really took off with the $50 billion boondangle (and technical transfer) of the ISS and now we arrive to the point that we are canceling our research plan to support Europes. It is all so stupid and needless. Or politician have given up on the nation. Years ago we would have not even considered such a thing. How decadent we have become.
If Kerry wins he will certainly give this over to the French.
They say it is "just politics" but it is really about the American taxpayer not getting fleeced. This new disgust me, I had thought better of the DOE under Bush.
Oh yes they are, Big players. They are a part of ITER.
that wind farm was to be out in the ocean. that's likely not a good place to put a fusion reactor. I wouldn't recommend N. Korea Libya et al either.
This should have been done 20 years ago. Ask your elected representative why this hasn't been done. Watch a confused look flash across his face.
Nearly three decades ago I went on a tour of PPPL. The scientist leading the tour said that they were telling congress that they expected to build a working power station by the year 2000. I also once visited a national lab where there was a mothballed fusion test facility where over 350 million dollars had been spent before the plug was pulled. The combination of immense costs and the lack of ability to say for sure when practical results will be achieved, even within multiple decades, makes fusion power a tough sell.
I like your thinking on that. To be series, placing anything in France would be a hugh mistake unless the beeber was stuned to go critical.
We are on the same page.
We would need a program on the order of the Manhattan Project in order to develop it any time soon. I have a feeling no one is willing to spend that much money on any project.
well if that's the case...umm. didn't know that. well china is not one of the options for citing the reactor.
hmm the more I think about this thing the more I wonder if there isn't a better/smarter/faster/cheaper way to do this work.
reminds me of string/super string theory. many many brainy guys working on it for decades yet nothing practical precipitates from the work.
We need to pull out of ITER and go our own way. No international partnerships
CD
I agree with you. The Space Race was beneficial to the US in making us compete scientificially with other nations. We can go this alone too. Especially something of such significance.
Fusion has been tough because it has been a never-ending series of problems and clever solutions. None of the big designs have been breakthrough to the brass ring. By limiting the projects, we limit the number of people thinking about fusion. We are limiting ourselves; it is no wonder fusion power is still decades away.
Oh! Now I get it. Ha ha ha.
Good, now we can use the money for windpower.
Another very good idea to become energy-independant that I'm surprised doesn't get any real press is for our culture to make better/smarter use of the Internet. If a person doesn't have to drive to work every day - if children didn't have to ride to school every day - I bet we could cut our fuel costs by 60%. It would also go a long way towards immunizing us not only from the threat of terrorism, but from the common cold as well!
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