Part One of Two Parts
I have blogged about nuclear fusion research in the past. The basic principle is the same as the process that keeps the fires in the sun burning. Light nuclei such as hydrogen or helium are forced to combine to form heavier nuclei, releases a great deal of energy. In order to accomplish this, the light nuclei need to be subjected to enormous heat and pressure. This has proven to be very difficult to do in practice. The payoff would be a source of energy that would generate no pollution, create little if any dangerous waste, be fueled by elements that are abundant and accessible, and be cheaper to build and operate than nuclear fission reactors.
Fusion power research has been going on since the 1940s but nuclear fusion has never generated any electricity for commercial purposes. There is an old joke that says useful nuclear fusion is always forty years away. Billions of dollars from all over the world are currently flowing into different fusion reactor research project.
The British have been working on nuclear fusion as part of the Joint European Tokomak project at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, U.K. since 1984. They have been making steady progress and have racked up a number of firsts with respect to temperature, pressure and creating a self-sustaining reaction. The JET is the biggest operational nuclear fusion test reactor in the world. It is based on using a electrical current to confine a superhot plasma to a donut shape. The future of the JET is uncertain since the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. When they formally leave in 2018, their participation in the JET program as part of their membership in the E.U. will also end.
Germany began the construction of their own fusion Wendelstein 7-X stellarator (W7-X) research reactor in 2008 at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald. The German reactor is based on what is called a stellerator where the plasma is confined by a complex system of magnetic coils. In early 2016, construction was completed and the first successful test was conducted. The temperature and duration of plasma confinement will be slowly increased until the confinement can be maintained for thirty minutes. The researchers hope to be able to reach their goal by 2025. The W7-X is not designed to actually produce excess energy.
The biggest fusion research project in the world is the ITER reactor being built in France by an international consortium in Cadarache, France, The ITER is a tokomak which is a reactor design that looks like a donut. The huge reactor is being built just to test the confinement of plasma and momentary return of energy. The researchers intend to generate five hundred megawatts of energy with the consumption of fifty megawatts for a period of twenty minutes. If successful, it could serve as a stepping stone to a commercial reactor. Billions of dollars have been spent on the project to date. Construction started in 2013 and it is estimated that it will be completed by 2021. Initial test runs will begin in 2025 and full scale operational tests are scheduled for 2035. There have been serious problems with the management of the project, partly due to all the different nations involved.
Please read Part Two
