It's official.... ITER is off and running.

[wacki]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4629239.stm


I honestly thought the day would never come.

It's been 19 Years and 211 Days Since the Start of ITER Discussions.


It still sucks that the US has such a little role in this.

[sam h]

Wacki,

Do I take it that they think this thing will really be capable of producing energy through fusion, but the trick is to refine the technology for high-volume production? Or is whether this thing will work to begin with still very speculative?

[Zygote]

[ QUOTE ]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4629239.stm


I honestly thought the day would never come.

It's been 19 Years and 211 Days Since the Start of ITER Discussions.


It still sucks that the US has such a little role in this.

[/ QUOTE ]

"With 10 billion [euros], we could build 10,000MW offshore windfarms, delivering electricity for 7.5 million European households," said Jan Vande Putte of Greenpeace International.

This plan would only offset the real problem to a later date. Though, I have no idea what chance of success ITER actually has.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
Wacki,

Do I take it that they think this thing will really be capable of producing energy through fusion, but the trick is to refine the technology for high-volume production? Or is whether this thing will work to begin with still very speculative?

[/ QUOTE ]

There are multiple ways of producing fusion

There is JET which has strongly suggested that fusion production is feasible:
http://www.jet.efda.org/

According to this brochure:
http://www.jet.efda.org/documents/brochures/energy.pdf

ITER is supposed to PRODUCE 700 MW of power and demonstrate the feasibility of production level fusion.

There is also this machine(a different technique):
http://www.sandia.gov/media/z290.htm

which is low cost and low risk fusion that has had a very high success rate and very high growth rate in output.

proof HERE (http://www.sandia.gov/media/images/jpg/Z03.jpg)

In my mind, fusion is very viable. Although we don't "know for sure" there are very very strong suggestions. ITER will let us know for sure. So, we have about 10 years of construction before we might actually "know if it's possible". Even then Smalley thinks the technology is more than 25 years way before it becomes commercially viable.

Considerning how huge the energy business is it amazes me that it took this long before 10 billion could be spent by the entire planet on research.

[MelchyBeau]

The company I work for is designing parts for a Laser Fusion Reactor. Just so you know ITER uses magnetic confinement for fusion. Even if ITER doesn't work, it doesn't mean fusion is done for.

The fusion project we are working with is the NRL Laser Fusion Energy Program.

We have other programs online right now, There is also the Z machine, which is at Sandia running.

Z Machine Info (http://www.aip.org/pnu/2004/split/702-1.html)

There are quite a few issues with magnetic confinement that are going to be a problem that the Laser Fusion program doesn't run into.

Melch