France to get fusion reactor

fishbob

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fishbob
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PARIS, June 28 - An international consortium announced Tuesday that France would be the site of the world's first large-scale, sustainable nuclear fusion reactor, an estimated $10 billion project that many scientists see as crucial to solving the world's future energy needs.
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Maybe I spend too much time fishing, and physics is not my field, but I don't recall any announcements of successful production of a sustainable, controlled fusion reaction. Any handy references or sources?
 
Yeah,

but they're also going to have to build a fission reactor to power it. ;)
 
I think you are right; no truly sustainable fusion reaction has been achieved. ITER is supposed to be the next step, and achieve a truly sustained reaction, and hopefully act as a prototype for the first fusion reactor to actually generate electricity. ITER's website has a (very) little bit of info on this.
 
Wow. One bad mistake could make one hell of an impression on France...
 
The Jet Tokamak in Oxford did produce a small amount of energy for a very short while. Read more here. I've actually seen the reactor personally on site, quite impressive.

The Jet Tokamak was build solely for research purposes. The ITER is built not to produce energy but to show and test how to build a commercial fusion reactor. A commercial reactor will probably be up and running in 35 to 40 years ( but don’t take my word for it).
 
Anders said:
The Jet Tokamak in Oxford did produce a small amount of energy for a very short while. Read more here. I've actually seen the reactor personally on site, quite impressive.

The Jet Tokamak was build solely for research purposes. The ITER is built not to produce energy but to show and test how to build a commercial fusion reactor. A commercial reactor will probably be up and running in 35 to 40 years ( but don’t take my word for it).
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Hmmmm, maybe.

But I find myself coming back to my first point. This I pulled from your link:

Q: How much electricity has been consumed by JET to this point?
A: I cannot put a number on the amount of electricity consumed by JET I am afraid, although, suffice to say it is a lot!! Each JET pulse uses ~700MW of electricity (used to directly heat the plasma and also to provide the magnetic fields required to keep the plasma confined).
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It also states that each pulse generates 5-10 MW. France had better start buildng that extra conventional reactor.:)
 
Drooper said:
Hmmmm, maybe.

But I find myself coming back to my first point. This I pulled from your link:



It also states that each pulse generates 5-10 MW. France had better start buildng that extra conventional reactor.:)
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What they do in cases where a ◊◊◊◊ load of electic energy is needed, is to build a large capacitor, load it up slowly and realease when needed. For france, 700 MW is not that much. And I think that would be in pulse form, not continous energy for hour upon hour.
Added: ITER will produce energy but it will be cooled away, not put on the grid.
 
Anders said:
What they do in cases where a ◊◊◊◊ load of electic energy is needed, is to build a large capacitor, load it up slowly and realease when needed. For france, 700 MW is not that much. And I think that would be in pulse form, not continous energy for hour upon hour.
Added: ITER will produce energy but it will be cooled away, not put on the grid.
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The math remains the same, 700 in, 10 out. Doesn't matter how you spread it, this sandwich so far falls peanut butter side down. That's not to say they won't eventually reach unity and beyond (to unity, and beyond!!!) but 35-40 years is still optimistic IMO. Just as it has been every decade for the past five decades at least. But in fifty years, I'm pretty sure well only be another fifty years away from realizing this dream.

P.S. Please don't take this post as me being critical of the program. I think it is one of the more worthy projects out there. I just don't have much optimism about results in my life or the life of my kids. Nothing wrong with doing something for the grandkids though.
 
Anders said:
Added: ITER will produce energy but it will be cooled away, not put on the grid.
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I like that.

First: spend a gazillion on building the first ever "commercially viable" fusion reactor, generating no pollution or harmful waste products.
Second: keep it off grid, it's only practical purpose is to heat the globe.

You just gotta love them French...


Mosquito (had to say it, don't spoil it by requiring me to read anything about it)
 
The pulse is used to 'ignite' the reactor and only lasts a few seconds. From that point, once the critical conditions of plasma density, temperature and confinement time are satisfied, the reaction is supposed to become self-sustaining.

(Although don't hold your breath for just a while).

JET would draw pulses of electricity from the National Grid (which had to be accepted on a GO/NO-GO basis from the National Control Centre), and also used flywheel generators to provide the higher-power short-lived pulses.

Like Anders, I've also visited the site on a couple of occasions -- it's pretty impressive.
 
BillC said:
The pulse is used to 'ignite' the reactor and only lasts a few seconds. From that point, once the critical conditions of plasma density, temperature and confinement time are satisfied, the reaction is supposed to become self-sustaining.

(Although don't hold your breath for just a while).

JET would draw pulses of electricity from the National Grid (which had to be accepted on a GO/NO-GO basis from the National Control Centre), and also used flywheel generators to provide the higher-power short-lived pulses.

Like Anders, I've also visited the site on a couple of occasions -- it's pretty impressive.
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I too would like to visit the site. I'm impressed as heck with the design. While I can't figure out exactly how they intend to efficently/safely tap the energy fast enough to prevent overheating while still maintaining the necessary plasma thread, I'm glad they are trying. Good things will come of this even if one of the good things never turns out to be a sustainable earth-based fusion power source. I just wish they had picked Japan instead.
 
I think the quest for fusion power is a good example of the eternal optimism (aka sheer bloody-mindedness) of scientists at times.

I have seen somewhere a graph showing the progress over the last 50 (?) years into fusion research. I'm trying to locate it on the internet, so far without success. Essentially, the aim is to get into the top right corner of the graph -- the region representing net energy gain. The early attempts at fusion look laughable in comparison, barely off the origin. Yet each advance has pushed the science a little further towards the top right. ITER is likely to be one more step in the right direction.

And the fusion researchers keep banging their heads against a brick wall in the hope that they might one day break it down. Perhaps one day they will.
 
BillC said:
And the fusion researchers keep banging their heads against a brick wall in the hope that they might one day break it down. Perhaps one day they will.
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Assuming the equiv. of a big rock doesn't come down from space and kill us all off, I'm certain we will eventually achieve this goal. We know it's possible under certain circumstances (i.e. the sun and stars) so the trick is to make it possible under different circumstances. When they succeed it may not look anything like the current design, but the best way to move from the current design to the final design is to design something in the first place. As long as the costs are reasonable, and reasonably shared, I'm a go on this one.
 
Rob Lister said:
When they succeed it may not look anything like the current design, but the best way to move from the current design to the final design is to design something in the first place. As long as the costs are reasonable, and reasonably shared, I'm a go on this one.
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So, it ain't rocket science - but good old trial and error. I can live with that.
 
Fusion power will happen. We know its possible (see Sun), break-even has been achieved in a non-Sun environment, and there is no reason to expect that power production cannot be achieved in a non-Sun environment.

We, including myself, have constantly heared that "its just around the corner", which after 20 years gets a bit frustrating. But the physics is sound. It's just the necessary engineering which is hard.

Creating conditions comparable to the core of the Sun, safely and effeciently, on little planet Earth is, unsurprisingly, just a tad difficult.
 
Mosquito said:
You just gotta love them French...
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Although the reactor is going to be built in France, it is in fact a multi-national project, not a French one. This is why there was so much arguing about which country to build it in (either France of Japan in the end - France won mainly because most of the scientists involved were already there)

(had to say it, don't spoil it by requiring me to read anything about it)
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:D

Rob Lister said:
I just wish they had picked Japan instead.
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Why?
 
Mosquito said:
Second: keep it off grid, it's only practical purpose is to heat the globe.
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This is very common in any testing or development power plant (though I didn't realize that ITER was supposed to actually produce an output), as a plant with the kind of load profiles expected from testing operations would only add instability to the grid, and likely not any useful power for a significant length of time.
 
DaveW said:
This is very common in any testing or development power plant (though I didn't realize that ITER was supposed to actually produce an output), as a plant with the kind of load profiles expected from testing operations would only add instability to the grid, and likely not any useful power for a significant length of time.
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I didn't WANT to read anything factual about this! You guys are messing up my perfectly comfortable stereotype of the French!


Mosquito - very disappointed
 
A functioning fusion reactor has been thirty years away since I was old enough to read science and tech articles- about 1965.

In thirty years, oil will probably cost around $600 a barrel in today's money.

It will be used as a fuel by the military and by politically incorrect politicians.

Natural gas will be largely replaced by synthetic ("town gas") made from recycled waste.
And from coal.

Retire rich. Buy coal mine shares now. If you can find any.
 
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