[syhprum (OP)]

Why is there no comment on ITER as yet?

[Heliotrope]

Because it's only just been announced.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6165932.stm

[ukmicky]

BBC News
"The green lobby is opposed to the Iter project. It believes the benefits have been oversold and the difficulties and waste production issues underplayed.

Roger Higman, policy coordinator for Friends of the Earth, told BBC News: "We face a very real energy crisis over the next 50 years which is to do with climate change; that we have to stop using coal, oil and gas.

"The question we would ask is: isn't the money that's being spent on fusion better spent on proven technologies rather than chasing a dream that even its proponents say will take a hundred years before it's going to providing any of our energy answers?"

How glad i am the scientists from the past and present don't listen to the stupid arguments from people like the green lobby. we would still be travelling by horse and cart if they had there way.

[syhprum (OP)]

Never did I think I would agree with a green but I agree that we must pursue well tested power generating technologies not of course the windmills and eco fuels beloved of the green lobby but well tested nuclear fission plants.
All fuel production costs lives, there is a terrible toll amongst coal miners and oil production workers but the most trivial nuclear power station mishap gets great publicity.
Much is made of the nuclear waste problem (most of it generated by power stations that were primarily designed to produce Plutonium for bombs).
What of the atmosphere contaminating CO2 and radioactive Uranium spewed out by coal burning plants a much larger danger then anything nuclear plants produce.
There are well advanced plans for long term underground storage of nuclear waste but they are always held up by political considerations, let us have fusion research by all means but it is an illusion to think it will make any contribution to the climate problem.

[daveshorts]

Putting money into nuclear fusion is basically a blue skies research project rather than something that will solve our problems tomorrow. It is a bit like putting money into CERN. The money spent on it wouldn't build many windmills globally anyway. To do that you need to do something major with the economics, like putting on a global carbon tax, making environmentally friendly technologies more attractive.

Now whether Duterium-Tritium tokamak fusion is a sensible way to spend your research budget, that is an entirely different question.

[syhprum (OP)]

I cannot see fusion power plants running at 100,000,000 °C ever being a useful source of power the engineering problems of fission plants running at maybe 800°C are bad enough, I think of it as just a national prestige project like Apollo or the ISS

[Heliotrope]

I cannot see fusion power plants running at 100,000,000 °C ever being a useful source of power the engineering problems of fission plants running at maybe 800°C are bad enough, I think of it as just a national prestige project like Apollo or the ISS

They're already running at those temperatures.
The temperature has nothing to do with it being a useful source of power or not.
Fission is utterly different to Fusion.
Fusion requires those temperatures so if you want fusion you design machines to operate at them.
The engineering challenges are considerable but are in no way outside our abilities or designs.
And it's hardly a national prestige project considering how many different nationalities are involved :
"The current participants to the project are the European Union (represented by EURATOM), Japan, the People´s Republic of China, India, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the USA."

Fusion is one way of generating large amounts of clean power.
The demands of societies in the decades to come will far, far outstrip current supply and also outstrip the capability of current technologies to supply it. Therefore a new method of power generation is required.
Fusion is one of those new technologies.

[Heliotrope]

ITER info :

http://www.iter.org/a/index_nav_1.htm

[erich]

I thought your readers would be interested in looking at these energy technologies:

Aneutronic Fusion: Here I am not talking about the big science ITER project taking thirty years, but the several small alternative plasma fusion efforts.

There are three companies pursuing hydrogen-boron plasma toroid fusion, Paul Koloc, Prometheus II, Eric Lerner, Focus Fusion and Clint Seward of Electron Power Systems

Vincent Page (a technology officer at GE!!) gave a presentation at the 05 6th symposium on current trends in international fusion research , which high lights the need to fully fund three different approaches to P-B11 fusion
 
He quotes costs and time to development of P-B11 Fusion as tens of million $, and years verses the many decades and ten Billion plus $ projected for ITER and other "Big" science efforts.
 
 
 
And:   
Should Google go nuclear

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606

If anyone could make the Farnsworth Fusor work it probably would be Google.
 
 


Regards,
Erich

[chris]

I am wholeheartedly behind ITER and what it stands for. The fusion movement have made great progress in recent years and ITER promises to yield useful output power. I suspect that people were similarly dubious of the potential of fission, or even steam, when they were first proposed.

Fusion is based on sound principles, and we know it works because it powers the sun. Admittedly we don't have the gravitational power of the sun to help us so we need temperatures in excess of 100 million degrees, but that minor point aside, there's no reason why it can't work.

The figures speak for themselves: A 1000 MW fusion reactor would consume about 300kg of deuterium and about a tonne of lithium in a year. This would yield enough power to run several million homes. The waste products would be helium (a useful gas) and some relatively low level short half life (100 years or so) radioactive material. The equivalent from a coal fired power station would "cost" 1.5 million tonnes of coal and pump out 4.5 million tonnes of CO2.

This is not an avenue we can afford to ignore, in my opinion.

Chris

[neilep]

In my opinon I agree that we have to move forward. We just have to. We must continue to strive to test our ingenuity not just to test new ideas but also to fine tune and push the limits of existing technologies to the absolute limit....but must not ignore new ideas and concepts.

Going green is great, but not at the cost where we become stagnant.

[mark73]

Nuclear Fusion: new idea!
Comparations with chlorophyll and nuclear fusion:

solar energy --> chlorophyll --> chemistry energy (glucose)
Initial Energy --> torus --> nuclear fusion

newbielink:http://coseinteressanti.altervista.org/nuclear_fusion_mod.pdf [nonactive]
newbielink:http://coseinteressanti.altervista.org/nuclear_Fusion_Render.jpg [nonactive]

[Don_1]

  we would still be travelling by horse and cart if they had there way.

It just might be that we return to this one day.

[DoctorBeaver]

All fuel production costs lives, there is a terrible toll amongst coal miners and oil production workers but the most trivial nuclear power station mishap gets great publicity.

You are not comparing like with like. Deaths due to accidents in mining or oil production are not comparable to those in the actual generation of electricity. How many deaths have there been in coal/gas/oil-powered generating plants compared to nuclear plants? And how many in the mining of material for nuclear power stations against coal mining or oil/gas production? Then you would have to take into account the number of people involved in all of these before you could compare figures directly.

Anything nuclear strikes an emotive chord in the mind of most people so anything concerned with nuclear power production will inevitably get greater publicity. Blame the media for not adequately redressing the balance.

What of the atmosphere contaminating CO2 and radioactive Uranium spewed out by coal burning plants a much larger danger then anything nuclear plants produce.

Good point, well worth making. Are there any figures for the amount of Uranium expelled?