* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: ITER

Blobrana · L

Japan quake rocks fusion project

The world's largest fusion experiment is finally beginning to take shape. Workers at a vast site in southern France have dug the 17-metre-deep pit that will house the ITER reactor, and will soon install 500 pillars of steel-reinforced concrete that should protect the machine during an earthquake. But even as they toil, a quake halfway around the world has struck a blow to the project.
The 11 March earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, one of seven partners in ITER, severely damaged key facilities for testing the reactor's components. Unless repairs can be made or work reassigned quickly, the damage could cause a delay of "perhaps several years", according to Osamu Motojima, ITER's director.
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Blobrana · L

A new type of high-frequency ion source developed at Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching near Munich has been chosen to heat the plasma of the ITER fusion test device. This was now decided, after a unanimous recommendation was made by the international body of experts responsible for changes of plan. "For IPP this is a great success crowning many years of development work", as division head Dr. Eckehart Speth was happy to announce.

The ITER (Latin for "the way") test device is the next major step in international fusion research. Construction of the device is to commence at Cadarache, France, in the coming year in a cooperation comprising seven partners Europe, Japan, USA, Russia, China, India and South Korea. With a generated fusion power of 500 megawatts ten times as much as will be needed to heat the plasma beforehand ITER is to demonstrate that an energy-yielding fusion fire is possible.

Like the sun, a fusion power plant is to derive energy from fusion of atomic nuclei. For this purpose the fuel an ionised low-density gas, a "plasma" has to be successfully confined in a magnetic field cage without touching the vessel wall and heated to temperatures of over 100 million degrees. In ITER about half of this is to be accomplished with "neutral particle heating": Fast hydrogen atoms injected into the plasma transfer their energy to the plasma particles on colliding with them. Todays devices can thus attain many times the suns temperature at the press of a button. The ITER large-scale device, however, imposes new requirements on the established procedure: For example, the particles have to be three to four times faster than hitherto so that they can penetrate deep enough into the voluminous plasma.
In view of these increased requirements the heating method developed at IPP affords appreciable advantages over the solutions available to date. The new source an achievement for which the team around Dr. Speth was awarded the Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Helmholtz Association in 2006 is, for example, particularly robust and needs little maintenance. Since 2002 IPP has been further developing the original version of the source, successfully operated in IPPs ASDEX Upgrade experiment since 1995, to make it satisfy ITERs requirements. The results achieved on three test rigs at IPP have now convinced the ITER team: "New technique takes time to assert itself", as Dr. Speth puts it. But the development work has not come to an end with the decision now taken. A further test rig for a source half the size of that for ITER is to be built shortly at IPP. This is to check whether the particle beam can meet the requirements for ITER. The system in the original size is then to be investigated by Italys ENEA fusion institute at Padua.

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Blobrana · L

Stable plasma for ITER
IPP develops world-best code for stability calculations/Tokamak theory with Stellarator assistance
For the enterprise of future fusion power stations must succeed to include the hot fuel well thermally insulated. The magnetic cage used for it must be as durable as possible therefore.
And it is just with the particularly interesting "advanced" modes of operation planned for the ITER international fusion test reactor that perturbing instabilities are expected: So-called external kink modes could severely reduce the fusion yield attainable with ITER. Possible remedies have now been investigated by Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP) on behalf of the EU. The new Starwall computer program developed for this purpose can be regarded as the best of its kind in the world - credit being due to the expertise of the stellarator specialists at IPP that has gone into the making of this tokamak code.
The objective of the world-wide efforts expended on nuclear fusion is to develop a power plant which, like the sun, derives energy from fusion of atomic nuclei. To ignite the fusion fire the fuel, a hydrogen plasma, has to be heated to temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees. The next major step in this research is the ITER (Latin for "the way") international test device. It is to deliver in lasting pulses a fusion power of 500 megawatts - ten times as much as is needed to heat the plasma. Construction of the device is to commence next year at Cadarache in France.

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Computation of the kinking instabilities for ITER: To see are the rivers, which the deforming plasma (lila dyed) in the gefaesswand broken through by numerous openings causes.
Credit: IPP

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-- Edited by Blobrana at 16:10, 2007-06-21

Blobrana · L

A $12 billion worldwide attempt to generate power from nuclear fusion was signed into existence today by ministers from the project's seven international partners--China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project has been 2 decades in the making, and with today's signing, construction of the reactor in southern France can begin next year.

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Blobrana · L

The various parties involved in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project Wednesday initiated an agreement on construction of the world's first nuclear fusion reactor. The agreement was initiated in Brussels by representatives from Russia, the United States, Japan, China, South Korea and the European Union, and gives the go-ahead for practical work on the project to start.

France’s deal won over Japans to host the experimental fusion reactor.
It is expected to produce clean and safe energy by 2016 for 20 years - in Caradache in the south of the country.

http://www.iter.org/index.htm

Blobrana · L

France has been awarded the contract to build the 10 billion-euro nuclear fusion reactor, in the face of strong competition from Japan.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter) will be the most expensive joint scientific project after the International Space Station.
The Iter programme was held up for over 18 months as parties tried to broker a deal between the two rivals.

"[i[It is a big success for France, for Europe and for all the partners of Iter" - statement issued by the office of French President Jacques Chirac.

Date: Jun 22 18:33 2005

Nuclear fusion as a future abundant energy source would receive a boost if G8 leaders agree on the site for the world's first fusion test reactor, according to Carlo Rubbia and Robert Aymar , two nuclear scientists.

Carlo Rubbia is an Italian nuclear scientist who shared the 1984 Nobel physics prize.

Group of Eight members France and Japan have been competing for the right to build a fusion reactor -- a project called ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) and expected to cost 10 billion euros over 20 years.
Nuclear fusion mimics the way the sun produces energy and could potentially provide a nearly inexhaustible supply of low-cost energy using seawater as fuel.
Global warming, a problem experts say could be eliminated if nuclear fusion becomes the favoured energy source, is on the agenda at the July 6-8 summit of rich nations in Scotland -- meaning the ITER project could be up for discussion too.

"ITER will be decided ... I suspect it will be at the G8 meeting in Scotland" - Robert Aymar, director-general of the Swiss-based European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

ITER -- also Latin for "the way" -- is backed by the United States, the European Union, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea with India and Brazil expected to join soon.

"These countries at the political level have realized that there is a potential and there is a need and they are trying to make this effort".

The fusion reactor project had been ready for launch already in 2003 but the U.S.-led war in Iraq, opposed by among others France, got in the way of a decision on location.

The US President then wanted to reward Japan for its support on Iraq.
EU officials have said they believe Cadarache in the south of France will be the site of ITER.
Nuclear and solar power look like the only viable solutions for the world's growing energy needs without exacerbating global warming.
Though, a quarter of earth's population - 1.6 billion people - have no electricity.

Conventional nuclear power, obtained through fission instead of fusion, would eventually disappear.
Nuclear fission plants, in which uranium atoms are split in a process creating hazardous radioactive waste such as plutonium that can be used in nuclear weapons, currently produce around 15 percent of the world's electricity.
Fusion reactors would "remove some of the great concern that we had in the past" such as the Chernobyl disaster.

Scientists have not yet mastered the fusion process but are "confident that the goal will be achieved" - Robert Aymar.
A commercial fusion reactor would probably not come on stream until around 2050.