Posted on 06/28/2005 5:19:54 AM PDT by Alex Marko
MOSCOW (Reuters) - France is to host the world's first nuclear fusion reactor, the project's multinational partners agreed on Tuesday, bringing closer a technology backers say could one day provide the world with endless cheap energy.
France beat off a rival bid from Japan to host the 10-billion-euro ($12.18 billion) experimental reactor at Cadarache in the south of the country, according to an agreement signed by the partners after a meeting in Moscow.
The ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project is backed by China, the EU, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. It seeks to mimic the way the sun produces energy, potentially providing an inexhaustible source of low-cost energy using seawater as fuel.
Unlike fission reactors used in existing nuclear power stations, which release energy by splitting atoms apart, ITER would generate energy by combining them.
"After long discussions and a great deal of joint work, the participants chose the site of Cadarache in France," Russia's atomic energy chief Alexander Rumyantsev told reporters.
"Today we are making history in terms of international scientific cooperation," the EU's Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik said in a statement.
"Now that we have reached consensus on the site for ITER, we will make all efforts to finalize the agreement on the project, so that construction can begin as soon as possible," Potocnik said.
Japan and France have wrangled for months over where the reactor should be built while other partners have clashed over funding, causing repeated delays in the project.
ITER began in 1985. Decades of research, however, have yet to produce a commercially viable fusion reactor.
The EU supported the French bid to have the reactor built in Cadarache. Tokyo had sought to have it built in the northern Japanese village of Rokkasho. The other partners have also been at odds over which of the two should host the reactor.
"It is a big success for France, for Europe and for all the partners of ITER," said a statement issued by the office of French President Jacques Chirac.
France has been a big producer of nuclear energy since the oil shocks of the 1970s and has 58 nuclear reactors, the most in the world after the United States. (Additional reporting by Brussels newsroom)
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
I'm glad we're not the only country that has to pay for pork barrel politics. We had the Shuttle and the Spacestation and almost had the super conducting super collider.
A practical fusion reactor has been "just around the corner" for the past 40 years or so.
That being said, I loath the fact that much of the nuclear and high energy physics research is now off shore.
Cancellation of that project was one of the biggest losses to science in the past 50 years IMHO.
That might be true if the world's luddites and chicken littles are refrained from saddling production with unnecessary cost upon unnecessary cost.
France beat off...
Hmmm.
Yeah, but if this works, they'll probably have several containment failures before they get it right.
Do you really want to be anywhere nearby when they have to vent million-plus degree plasma into the atmosphere? Better that France gets to have that "privelege". Especially since I can't think of any suitable region of France that isn't fairly heavily populated... :)
I think the Shuttle was beneficial for awhile when it also served a military role, but its usefulness ended some time ago. I think you'll get some disagreement on the SSC, too. But you're right about the ISS, nothing but a $100 billion money pit.
As for fusion, that's definitely worth pursuing.
We need a breakthrough on how to glue those little buggers together.
There are also people that think the space shuttle and the space station were very important scientific instruments.
See post #4 :-)
Uh, the French are involved. What do *you* think the torus construction quality is going to be????
From what I have read, that would not happen. It would just go out.
I will defer to physicist here though.
Yuppers! :-)
The tunnels were all dug, a lot of the equipment was on site, and personell were hired. It was truly a tragedy IMO.
It it turns out to be possible to contain 30,000,000 degrees and extract anything usefull out of it and that you are extracting more than you are putting in. I just really really doubt it.
Those are not instruments IMHO. They are vehicles and/or platforms for instruments.
Hubble is a scientific instrument.
Semantics. Instrument = tool. Almost everything qualifies.
In a way I guess. Hmmm... wrench in one hand, HgCdTe detector array in the other. I would not call the wrench an instrument. The detector array I would.
I am in my car with an UV detector logging UV from the Sun in real-time. Is the car an instrument or just a vehicle carrying one? I would consider it a vehicle. Same with the Shuttle.
it was a mistake to not build the super collider. We could have done that along with japan, australia, canada and the uk.
We also should have built the fusion reactor.
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