US to halt nuclear fusion project

NewScientist.com ^ | 17:04 30 July 04 | Maggie McKee

[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

[Quix]

Smokescreen. Noise.

Other options have been proven to some, for a long time.

When the puppet masters will allow them out is another issue.

[Southack]

"Sure about that? How sure?"

Reasonably sure. OK, deuterium for fusion is slightly more plentiful than uranium...but in these days of breeder reactors I don't see the big ta do about Fusion.

I'm also comfortable with atomic piles for fission as being safe, so I don't see a safety advantage with fusion.

So to me, the only clear advantage that fusion offers over fission is in reducing nuclear waste...a garbage collectors' problem.

Why spend Billion$ for the trash man?!

5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires

[Physicist]

The big picture is that Fusion energy offers only one advantage over fission: no nuclear waste.

Not true. Fusion energy offers unlimited fuel without any dependence on foreign sources. The same cannot be said about fission. The reserves of fissionable materials are comparable to the reserves of oil, but most of them are in foreign countries. The reserves for fusion power are effectively infinite and effectively ubiquitous.

[CasearianDaoist]

A billion a year is chump change. We have to dismantle the entitlement state and seriously fund R & D in this country. The total Federal budget including defense research (basic and applied) is only around $136 billion a year. There is probably that much wasted in Welfare and Medicaid fraud alone. During the Cold War entitlements and general government spending made up about 35% of the Budget while Defense and Research made up roughly 65%. Those figures are now reversed. We cannot affords nearly 300 billion in Highway Bill pork or nearly a 100 billion in farm support (which voes not mainly even go to small farmer anymore anyway.)

The only way that we can possible compete in this world is to be far in advance in science and technology of any other nation or block of nations. We must radically rethink our whole approach to this issue and build a nation consensus.

We did this 45 years ago and this gave us the leadership we have now. We can do it again if we have the will. The major stumbling block is the Democrat party and the Left. 45 years ago they were not a problem - the problem was not internal, it was with the soviets. We could build up projects and programs and not have them taken apart when a new administration came to power.

If we do not act soon we will end up like a country such as Brazil or Argentina. The Euros understand what must be done and are making plans. So are the Chinese and the Indians. We are not facing reality. A billion a year? we ought to spent that buch on computing facilities for fusion research.

[RightWhale]

I would agree with that. At the same time the opponents are not just Leftists. There is a lot of resistance on the Right. Even here on FR. They say things like 'where in the Constitution does it say the Government should be spending tax money this way.'

But the country is losing its leadership role in science, and that is the one advantage we have these days.

[103198]

I must respectively disagree.

Using breeder technology (which has been stymied in the US but not in France for example), fission fuel sources can last for thousands of years, if not more. There are a multitude of fuel cycles that can not only dramatically extend the U235 cycle but also present a logical way to burn waste materials.

Fusion reactors will produce radioactive waste too due to 14+ MeV neutron activation. Due to the activation schemes, the activation materials and half-lives will be different than fission reactors though.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against fusion reactor development or research, but from my early '70s nuclear engineering classes I've learned that fusion is still in the future while fission is something that we need to use for more energy production that we do today. 103 reactors is not enough and we're not planning on building any more. We and the world has a serious energy problem with the problems in the middle east (oil), China (all energy), the US growth, and the environment (I can tell you about my coal-fired plant methymercury induced problem if you want).

[Southack]

"Not true. Fusion energy offers unlimited fuel without any dependence on foreign sources. The same cannot be said about fission. The reserves of fissionable materials are comparable to the reserves of oil, but most of them are in foreign countries. The reserves for fusion power are effectively infinite and effectively ubiquitous."

I'm not certain that I follow what you are trying to say. Oh sure, dueterium is slightly more plentiful than uranium, but uranium is found in abundance in the SouthWestern U.S. as well as in Alaska...and in these days of breeder reactors, I'm not even sure that raw uranium reserves are a big deal, either.

I think that you'll find that processing dueterium from sea water is comparable to mining uranium in costs, too.

So I don't see a large advantage to fusion over fission. Both use fuels that are in abundant supply, and both methods provides comparable amounts of energy at comparable levels of safety.

Fusion simply leaves behind less waste. What's the big motivation there?!

5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires

[Southack]

"103 reactors is not enough and we're not planning on building any more."

We certainly need to build more. We will have 1 more nuclear plant built here in Alabama in the next 10 years.

One.

That should be twenty-one...but instead, it's just 1.

5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires

[Dat]

We at FR should set up a charitable organization for the exploration of fussion technologies., or lobby the government to include a section on U.S. tax forms to accept donations for basic research. Get the president to promote it as a way to ensure American dominance of science. Any money made from the successful application of technologies from such a program could be redistributed to the donors in amounts proportional to their contribution to the program.

[103198]

I'm not certain that I follow what you are trying to say. Oh sure, dueterium is slightly more plentiful than uranium, but uranium is found in abundance in the SouthWestern U.S. as well as in Alaska...and in these days of breeder reactors, I'm not even sure that raw uranium reserves are a big deal, either. I think that you'll find that processing dueterium from sea water is comparable to mining uranium in costs, too.

Don't forget that Uranium is also found in sea water and in a large enough quantities to "mine." Using nuclear desalination plants, especially in the west where water is needed, nuclear plants could be used to provide electrical power, water, and fuel.

[DannyTN]

"the US, the European Union, China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia – cannot agree"

We shouldn't be doing advanced physics reasearch with China in any event. How stupid are we?!!! And no way should be put it in France, because they will immediately surrender it.

This is something the US should probably do own it's own.

[Physicist]

I certainly think that the U.S. should immediately undertake a radical effort to build fission reactors. Commercial fusion is decades away, and something must fill the gap until then. But everything I've read indicates that, while the U.S. has a "lot" of fissionable materials in the ground, it just isn't enough for the U.S. to achieve energy independence over the long term. (Likewise, the U.S. has a "lot" of oil reserves.) If you can point me to a credible source that says otherwise, do so.

It may be expensive to extract deuterium from seawater; the issue is that we won't have to buy the deuterium from another country. Oceans we got.

There is no technical reason why the U.S. must be energy-independent, and certainly the economic reasons are all against it. The politics of not being energy-independent, however, have become intolerable. The key to making peace in the Middle East is to make oil worthless. (Fusion, or fission for that matter, is only half of that battle, I might add.)

[Southack]

I think that I can agree with most of what you are saying above. I'm unclear about the validity of your claim that uranium in the U.S. isn't enough for our energy independence, but I'll suspend my disbelief for the moment.

Certainly we should be building fission plants today. The West needs desalination and we all need the electricity. I'm aware of no state other than my own in which any such nuclear plants are even on the drawing board, however...and we're just looking at building one in the next ten years.

If what you say is accurate, however, then we do need to pursue fusion research for that point in our future in which you show that our uranium runs out.

But do we have to perform such research with France and China?? That leaves a bad taste in my mouth...

5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires

[RightWhale]

The key to making peace in the Middle East is to make oil worthless.

Columbus' goal was to find a trade route to India and/or China that didn't have to go through the ME. The ME was rendered irrelevant as a result, although the trade route he was looking for turned out to be blocked by a land mass. Let the region be irrelevant again.

[G Larry]

In my 1980 Master's paper on Energy for 2005, I was pushing a growth/transition plan that would have us on a course for Fusion by Laser Implosion.
Flowing Lithium mirrors were a little tricky.

[RightWhale]

As a physics major, I of course agree we should step up the funding to physics.

[Don Joe]

I'll see your "should have's" and raise you an Orion Project.

McLuhan had it dead to rights: The future ain't what it used to be.

Oh, well. At least it creates an opening for those of us who chose to write SF. There's a market for what should be, and realistically, it will never be met, other than by those selling ink.

[staytrue]

I studied it 20 years ago. It is extremely difficult to make more energy than you put in. Plus, you also get a lot of free neutrons flying around which will turn your mechanism radioactive, so this is not as "clean" as you might think.

[staytrue]

The sun is about 1 million times the volume of earth. You would need to scale the sun's reaction down 1 million times just to get to a plantary size reactor, let alone scaling it down to the size of normal power plant.

[Frank_Discussion]

Thank you, King.

Drop fusion research? Oy, how dissapointing...