The ITER Project: Is Fusion the next step for clean electricity?

Introduction.

The ITER Project is an international project "to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power for peaceful purposes". The ITER nations are the European Union (represented by EURATOM – The European Atomic Community), Japan, the PRC (Peoples Republic of China), India, the ROK (Republic of Korea), the Russian Federation and the USA.

The long term goals of fusion research and the ITER project in particular is to harness the energy produced during the nuclear reaction of fusing light atoms to help meet our ever growing energy needs. This is particularly looking into the future as we need more sustainable energy sources that will have minimal effect on our environment. This research has made huge amounts of progress over the last decade and the fusion researching community is now ready to move their research on to the next step. The have come together to form the ITER project and have together designed the international ITER experiment. The aim of ITER is to show fusion could be used to generate electrical power, and to gain the necessary data to design and operate the first electricity-producing plant.

Objectives.

The ITER project will look at plasmas in conditions similar to those expected in an electricity generating power plant. It is expected to generate 500MW of fusion power for extended periods of time, which is ten times more than the energy input to keep the plasma at the right temperature for the reaction to take place. It will therefore be the first fusion experiment in the world to produce net power as opposed to using more to sustain and contain the reaction than it could produce. It will also be working on and testing a number of key technologies, including the heating, control, diagnostic and remote maintenance that will be needed for a real fusion power station to be a viable option for future power production.

The ITER experiments’ main aim is to demonstrate that prolonged fusion power production in a deuterium-tritium plasma. It will contain most of the technology expected to be needed for future fusion power plants however it will be of slightly smaller dimensions and will only have about one-sixth of the power output expected from the final reactors.

The ITER main aim "to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power for peaceful purposes" has been broken down into a number of specific technical goals after consulting the scientific community at large. These are all aimed at developing a viable reactor.

Firstly, ITER should produce more power than it consumes. This is represented by the value Q, which expresses the amount of thermal energy that is generated by the fusion reactions, divided by the thermal input to the reaction. JET (Joint European Torus), presently the largest tokamak (a machine that produces a doughnut shaped magnetic field) reactor in the world, has reached Q=0.65, near the point of “break even” (Q=1). ITER has to be able to reach Q=10 or Q > 5 when pulses are stretched towards a steady state. This is so that in the plasma reaction, most of the plasma heating will come from the fusion reactions themselves.

Tokamak Field

Secondly, ITER should implement and test the key technologies and processes needed for future fusion power plants - including superconducting magnets, components able to withstand high heat loads, and remote handling/control.

Lastly, ITER should test and develop concepts for breeding tritium from lithium-containing materials inside thermally efficient high temperature blankets surrounding the plasma.

Projects Current Status.

In June 2005, it was decided by the Parties to construct ITER in Cadarache, in the South of France. On 21 November 2006, a Joint Implementation Agreement was signed by the Parties, which established the international ITER Organization. The ITER Organization owns the ITER device and is responsible for all aspects of the project: the licensing procedure, hardware procurements mostly provided in kind by the Parties, the operation period, and ultimately for decommissioning of ITER at the end of its lifetime.

For the first half of 2008 ITER is completing its Safety Review and Public Enquiry and Vendor Design stages. They are starting the excavation of the site and building the PFC Fabrication Building.

Alternatives to Fusion power.

At our current rate of consumption fossil fuels will run out within the three centuries. There is only enough coal to last us 220 years, Gas to last 60 years and oil will run out in only 40 years. This does not take into account our continuously growing need for energy as our lives get more and more technology and fuel orientated.

There are other forms of clean energy production being investigated and implemented to try to remedy our growing energy needs along with looking after the environment. There are several other options for a renewable energy source; biomass, solar, geothermal, wind and tidal energy. Solar, biomass and geothermal energy currently provides only 1.6% of the world’s electricity. It will take many decades for these technologies to get any real hold on the energy market. Hydro power is the largest current renewable energy source; it currently supplies 17% of the world’s electricity. However, most of the suitable locations have already been exploited to provide this much electricity so most of the growth in the renewable energy market has to come from either the solar, biomass, geothermal or nuclear industries. As it will be many decades until solar, biomass or geothermal energy is able to supply enough power to give it a substantial hold on the energy market the nuclear industry has to step up and fill the void.

Financial Considerations.

As it stands, the ITER project is expected to cost over $5 billion over the next 10 years, and has already cost over $700 million in research and development projects to get it to the point it is at today. This is a great outlay by the ITER parties but the return of an energy source that is able to give us a huge net output of clean, environmentally friendly power is too great, and too important for them to ignore. If we do not develop an energy source such as this we will be unable to power many of the things we now take for granted in our modern lives.

Conclusion.

Nuclear fusion is a technology that will be able to give us a huge output of power for a very small amount of input. It will be costly to develop, but will yield better results than any other technology we have today.

References

Info:
The ITER organisation, retrieved December 20th from http://www.iter.org
The ITER organisation, retrieved December 20th from http://www.iter.org/fusioncd/fusion_en.swf

Media:
Tokamak Picture:
Wikipedia, retrieved December 20th from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Tokamak_fields_lg.png