It looks like the ITER project is costing more than anticipated (construction cost doubling), and its schedule will be delayed (5 year slip to 2025 before the first experiments validating fusion would come). And even then, according to this article, a commercial reactor capable of producing power is decades away.
See the following:
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090527/ ... 9488a.html
Dave
Delay to ITER schedule and cost ballooning
-
David Rosignoli
- Posts: 148
- Joined: Thu Mar 04, 2004 9:57 am
- Real name: David Rosignoli
Re: Delay to ITER schedule and cost ballooning
This project gets more ridiculous every year. LOL
-
Dan Tibbets
- Posts: 578
- Joined: Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:29 am
- Real name:
Re: Delay to ITER schedule and cost ballooning
Hmm.. Sounds like NASA and the Orion spacecraft. Lots of hand waving , but short on developement specifics and with a moving target to aim for.
The mainstream Tokamakers' need to feel some urgency or they might be left in the dust by other approaches that have some (claimed) advances- and they cost alot less. Specifically FRC and Polywell, and then there are the Buck Rogers crowd with lasers. And somebody may finally listen (I dought it) to the fission /fusion hybird protagonists.
Dan Tibbets
The mainstream Tokamakers' need to feel some urgency or they might be left in the dust by other approaches that have some (claimed) advances- and they cost alot less. Specifically FRC and Polywell, and then there are the Buck Rogers crowd with lasers. And somebody may finally listen (I dought it) to the fission /fusion hybird protagonists.
Dan Tibbets
-
Richard Hull
- Moderator
- Posts: 15027
- Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
- Real name: Richard Hull
Re: Delay to ITER schedule and cost ballooning
OOOPS! Barring the lucky donkey I often speak of, my prediction of no fusion energy on the grid until 2075 or later seems on track. I knew it would not happen in my lifetime. It now is looking grim for happening in the lifetime of anyone reading this today, no matter how young you are.
Richard Hull
Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
-
Chris Bradley
- Posts: 2930
- Joined: Fri May 02, 2008 7:05 am
- Real name:
Re: Delay to ITER schedule and cost ballooning
Actually, I think that's stunning news. The cost and timescale thing is by-and-by, that was always going to ballon.
But the "Scenario 1...the only practical way forward...built without ...neutral beams of fuel into the machine, and some radio-frequency devices designed to further heat the plasma."
These aren't things eaily added afterwards...in other words, this seems to be saying ITER will NEVER be a fusion device!!! It will be, merely, a plasma demonstrator. Is this what it is saying?
But the "Scenario 1...the only practical way forward...built without ...neutral beams of fuel into the machine, and some radio-frequency devices designed to further heat the plasma."
These aren't things eaily added afterwards...in other words, this seems to be saying ITER will NEVER be a fusion device!!! It will be, merely, a plasma demonstrator. Is this what it is saying?