Latest Update on ITER's First Plasma: 2025 and Beyond

[tade]

Do any of you have news on when ITER is scheduled to achieve the first plasma that the whole world is waiting for?

Last I heard it was 2025, but since they have a new head, they might speed things up a bit.

 

[Vanadium 50]

2025 is the best guess after the new management was put in place. (And even that looks optimistic)

 

[etudiant]

Just based on the level of activity observed during a visit late last year, a decade may be optimistic. Urgency is entirely lacking. Few workers on site, not on weekends, with breaks for press briefings at completion of even minor construction milestones. Support elements such as the power management transformers and the magnet production plant, responsibilities assigned to the US and India respectively, were produced on schedule and are now just sitting on site in limbo, until the rest of the facility catches up.

 

[tade]

Just based on the level of activity observed during a visit late last year, a decade may be optimistic. Urgency is entirely lacking. Few workers on site, not on weekends, with breaks for press briefings at completion of even minor construction milestones. Support elements such as the power management transformers and the magnet production plant, responsibilities assigned to the US and India respectively, were produced on schedule and are now just sitting on site in limbo, until the rest of the facility catches up.

Hopefully the new head, a bigot, well makes things faster

 

[Vanadium 50]

His name is Bigot. He is not, so far as I know, a bigot.

 

[the_wolfman]

Hopefully the new head [...] well makes things faster

One thing to keep in mind is that ITER is the 2nd largest non-military international organization ever (the largest is the UN). There are non-trivial cultural differences between the different members states (China, EU, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the USA). In many ways ITER is both a scientific experiment and a diplomatic experiment. There is a huge cost incurred by the diplomatic aspects of the project.

I think it's universally agreed that the project delays and the budget overruns are bad. However, there are real disagreements among the member states as to how big of a problem these issues are and how best to move forward.

The USA has put a lot of pressure on ITER to reform, and I think we will see some improvements. However, ITER has to balance the American viewpoint against the viewpoints of the other 6 member states. And ultimately ITER has no power to force any of the member states (including the USA) to comply with any changes that they try to implement. I personally have tempered expectations as to how meaningful the reforms will be.

 

[gmax137]

The updated calendars for First Plasma and for subsequent full power operation in deuterium-tritium (originally scheduled for 2020 and 2027) were reported to the ITER Council in November 2015 following an eight-month, project-wide internal assessment. The schedule, and associated budget and staffing resources, will now be the object of an independent review mandated by the Council.

The Council plans to complete its review and reach agreement on the overall schedule through First Plasma by its next meeting in June 2016. The ITER Organization will be able to report detailed schedule information at the time.

https://www.iter.org/faq#collapsible_7

 

[tade]

His name is Bigot. He is not, so far as I know, a bigot.

Haha oops, I was sleepy when I typed. I wanted to say "a Mr. Bigot".

 

[jimgraber]

Oak ridge perspective on ITER:

http://knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/2016/04/16/the-iter-decision/There will be a House of Representatives hearing tomorrow (April 20) at 10:00 am Washington time. ITER Director General Bigot is expected to testify.

https://science.house.gov/legislation/hearings/energy-subcommittee-hearing-overview-fusion-energy-scienceThere will be an extraordinary ITER council meeting on April 27 to discuss new schedule reports and proposals.

On May 2 the US department of energy is expected to recommend whether or not te US stays in ITER.

ITER is scheduled to publically release its proposed new schedule during its regular June Council meeting.

It looks to me like we should learn a lot about the new ITER schedule over the next two or three months.

 

[tade]

ITER is pretty messed up currently. I hope the US will have enough faith to not pull the plug.

 

[rootone]

ITER is pretty messed up currently. I hope the US will have enough faith to not pull the plug.

What has gone wrong?.
Last I heard the construction of the prototype was going ahead, but yeah bureaucratic delays.
I don't think any other participating nation has considered 'pulling the plug'.

 

[jimgraber]

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016...iter-fusion-project-s-new-schedule-balks-cost
Here is the latest news on the ITER schedule.

 

[etudiant]

Thank you, Jim Graber. This is an important update.
It essentially pushes the earliest date for useful results 20 years into the future. I'd bet on other, private efforts beating ITER to the prize.

 

[tade]

Thank you, Jim Graber. This is an important update.
It essentially pushes the earliest date for useful results 20 years into the future. I'd bet on other, private efforts beating ITER to the prize.

but they said 3.5 years, not 10 years from 2025. idk why its 2035

 

[etudiant]

but they said 3.5 years, not 10 years from 2025. idk why its 2035

The quote was 'an extra 3.5 years', which suggests several years of shakedown operations post 2025 are believed necessary in any case before the targeted power generating levels are reached.

 

[Vanadium 50]

The 2014 report blasted the project culture as coming up with unrealistic plans. "Give us another $5B - more than the original total project cost - and we will finish only five years late" is not a realistic plan if the agencies don't have the $5B.

The report also criticized a lack of urgency on the part of management. And why should they have a sense of urgency? Jet-setting between Barcelona and the French Riviera. Life is good.

 

[tade]

The 2014 report blasted the project culture as coming up with unrealistic plans. "Give us another $5B - more than the original total project cost - and we will finish only five years late" is not a realistic plan if the agencies don't have the $5B.

The report also criticized a lack of urgency on the part of management. And why should they have a sense of urgency? Jet-setting between Barcelona and the French Riviera. Life is good.

haha, it might backfire and then they'll be out of a job

 

[etudiant]

haha, it might backfire and then they'll be out of a job

Sadly, you may be right.
Fusion research is actually making excellent progress, the performance as measured by plasma temperature and confinement time has improved about a million fold since the beginnings during the 1950s, but consistent overselling has gradually drained the patience of the political backers.
The best estimates today are that another 10-100x improvement will be enough to allow a fusion power facility to work, two orders of magnitude more beyond the six already achieved.
ITER may collapse before it reaches the finish line, but I think we are close enough that someone will pick up the challenge.

 

[mheslep]

Sadly, you may be right.
Fusion research is actually making excellent progress, the performance as measured by plasma temperature and confinement time has improved about a million fold since the beginnings during the 1950s, but consistent overselling has gradually drained the patience of the political backers.
The best estimates today are that another 10-100x improvement will be enough to allow a fusion power facility to work, two orders of magnitude more beyond the six already achieved.
ITER may collapse before it reaches the finish line, but I think we are close enough that someone will pick up the challenge.

What does "work" mean in this context? To self sustain a plasma from fusion? Possibly. But if work must mean a fusion plant with no more cost than a fission plant, then I don't see the path to get there even with 100x improvement in temperature-confinement time.

 

[etudiant]

What does "work" mean in this context? To self sustain a plasma from fusion? Possibly. But if work must mean a fusion plant with no more cost than a fission plant, then I don't see the path to get there even with 100x improvement in temperature-confinement time.

Good point, just because the device produces enough excess power to be more than self sustaining does not make it economically viable.
ITER is only supposed to show proof of feasibility, with a prototype commercial fusion facility to follow, maybe by 2050. Given some of the Tokomak design issues, the practical fusion reactor may be quite different. The private initiatives such as the TriAlpha effort seem more challenging but also more plausible.

 

[tade]

What does "work" mean in this context? To self sustain a plasma from fusion? Possibly. But if work must mean a fusion plant with no more cost than a fission plant, then I don't see the path to get there even with 100x improvement in temperature-confinement time.

But the dangers of fission plants add to their social cost

 

[russ_watters]

But the dangers of fission plants add to their social cost

Not as much as most people think.

 

[rootone]

It depends on whether the cost of long term waste storage and reprocessing is included as a social cost.

 

[tade]

Not as much as most people think.

what about meltdowns and fallout?

they are rare but render much land inhospitable when they occur, and cause cancers

 

[russ_watters]

It depends on whether the cost of long term waste storage and reprocessing is included as a social cost.

Storage is tricky because though while the cost is quite real, it is largely a political cost. In the US anyway though, most of the required storage money has already been collected from the utilities (customers) and then misappropriated by the federal government:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act#Nuclear_Waste_Fund

what about meltdowns and fallout?

they are rare but render much land inhospitable when they occur, and cause cancers

There have been two significant accidents (multiple meltdowns at Fukushima). They were terrible, but so far the loss of life has been pretty small. The number of cancers is likely in the thousands or tens of thousands. But that would be a couple of orders of magnitude below the societal cost of nuclear's primary alternative, coal, which kills tens of thousands of people annually in addition to the looming impact of global warming which has yet to be comprehended and for which coal power is one of the primary causes.

 

[etudiant]

Storage is tricky because though while the cost is quite real, it is largely a political cost. In the US anyway though, most of the required storage money has already been collected from the utilities (customers) and then misappropriated by the federal government:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act#Nuclear_Waste_Fund

There have been two significant accidents (multiple meltdowns at Fukushima). They were terrible, but so far the loss of life has been pretty small. The number of cancers is likely in the thousands or tens of thousands. But that would be a couple of orders of magnitude below the societal cost of nuclear's primary alternative, coal, which kills tens of thousands of people annually in addition to the looming impact of global warming which has yet to be comprehended and for which coal power is one of the primary causes.

That seems to be somewhat Pollyannaish imho. If the wind had not blown most of the initial contamination out to sea, it would have contaminated the Japanese heartland, including Tokyo, to mandatory evacuation levels. The USS Reagan's experience is proof of that.
I believe it is also the reason for Merkel's decision for Germany to exit nuclear. It is wonderfully cheap, but can easily fail very gracelessly.
Nuclear plant siting and design sometimes disregards identified hazards, for instance a repeat of the Storegga slide would repeat the Fukushima experience at multiple French and UK nuclear sites. While the last big slide was some 8000 years ago, that risk is still there, not factored in anywhere.

 

[mheslep]

...

There have been two significant accidents (multiple meltdowns at Fukushima). They were terrible, but so far the loss of life has been pretty small. The number of cancers is likely in the thousands or tens of thousands. But that would be a couple of orders of magnitude below the societal cost of nuclear's primary alternative, coal, which kills tens of thousands of people annually in addition to the looming impact of global warming which has yet to be comprehended and for which coal power is one of the primary causes.

Loss of life at Fukushima due to radiation was not small but zero. No measurable cancer rate change either, nor expected in the future. See UNSCEAR, WHO reports. The harm from the accident lies with the evacuation (which did kill some sick and elderly) and the high cost of the loss and cleanup of the reactors themselves.

 

[Salvador]

I think it would be fair to assume that, due to the very unpredictable nature of cancer and the exact factors involved in a person developing one, we have next to zero chance of predicting if a person who has cancer got it from being exposed to some small to medium radiation at some point due to either an accident at a nuke plant like Fukushima or any other source, given that his exposure was limited and the contamination wasn't brought into the body via food or water or air.

 

[Astronuc]

The thread drifted off topic from the ITER schedule (and technology/timeline) to discussions about fission vs fusion, safety and waste matters. While the last three topics are legitimate for discussion, please try confine the discussion to ITER, the technology, the construction/timeline, and program management/logistics.

 

[Toast]

The date for first burning DT plasma is currently scheduled for 2032-2035 (most recent scheduled released in April 2016)

However prior to this date there will be many other plasma experiments including DD and DT with different ratios

Technically one could hang a light build in ITER now and claim first plasma

The most significant event to look out for is the burning plasma with a positive energy release

I know it is a long wait but this is a huge and incredibly important challenge

 

[mheslep]

...

I know it is a long wait but this is a huge and incredibly important challenge

Yes fusion is important. Many things are important. Sex and reproduction are important, though this does not mean all R&D for the important should necessarily be turned over to a multinational consortium with a consistent record of falling behind schedule and little by way of completed results before clamoring for funding to start follow on projects.

 

[Toast]

Yes fusion is important. Many things are important. Sex and reproduction are important, though this does not mean all R&D for the important should necessarily be turned over to a multinational consortium with a consistent record of falling behind schedule and little by way of completed results before clamoring for funding to start follow on projects.

Not all the R&D has been turned over to ITER. There is loads of non ITER related fusion R&D going on

However if you are not happy with the distribution of funding you could start up your own fusion research company and compete for funding like these people did

http://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/
http://www.trialphaenergy.com/
http://www.generalfusion.com/
http://www.helionenergy.com/

 

[mheslep]

Not all the R&D has been turned over to ITER. There is loads of non ITER related fusion R&D going on

However if you are not happy with the distribution of funding you could start up your own fusion research company and compete for funding like these people did

http://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/
http://www.trialphaenergy.com/
http://www.generalfusion.com/
http://www.helionenergy.com/

True, but most does at its cost of $20B. Also, as the ITER funding is governmental, I have another option besides starting my own project. Vote and lobby to divert the funding elsewhere.

 

[Toast]

True, but most does at its cost of $20B. Also, as the ITER funding is governmental, I have another option besides starting my own project. Vote and lobby to divert the funding elsewhere.

Yep good point you could lobby the government to divert money from ITER to your own program. I believe the US has government reviews fairly often to see if they still want to stay involved. http://www.firefusionpower.org/

Out of interest where would you rather see the money spent?

Or perhaps just increase the fusion budget and fund both projects?

 

[mheslep]

I'd have competing national projects. Competition between researchers always seems to have produced the most significant advances.

 

[Salvador]

Much like competition between rival countries and superpowers had much to do with us now having a history of space exploration and other good things that first were done as a purely demonstration of force.There is a fine line in these events that if kept correctly can produce wonderful outcomes if done wrong can lead to war.

As for fusion it's more of a must have for our sustainable future than anything else.I wonder what kind of technological approach each of these companies given in the links use ?
Many like the tri Alpha seem to use something different than a tokamak and not IEC eitherMaybe we need a thread that would combine the most recent companies and their tech that their using so that one could follow more easily to what is going on, also some of the experts here could come in with some opinions about the likelihood of one of them becoming closer to net energy than the other.
Otherwise it's really hard to follow because all these companies produce modern and attracting welcome videos made by PR and marketing specialists that focus more on the image of the company and attracting investors than the real scientific background and problems each of these approaches face.

 

[Toast]

Fusion research has was originally carried out in secret by individual nations. However it was realized that separate nations were coming across the same problems and decided to join forces to make better progress on the common challenges. Declassification of fusion research happen in the 1958 Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva.

By combining the results for several experiments it was possible to find a scaling rule that can be used to extrapolate from existing reactor performances to a reactor that achieves break even or net energy production.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/092037969290016W

Graphs like this one from http://www.nap.edu/read/10816/chapter/5 can be produced

The extrapolation suggests that a large radius reactor would be required to achieve net energy production.

The required size was bigger than anything else and individual nations decided to team up to build this next step reactor. Building such a reactor as an individual nation would not only be expensive for the individual country but also difficult in terms of providing the technical skills and manufacturing facilities.

Teaming up as a group of nations might bring some bureaucratic and logistical difficulties but it was seen as the best option. Countries involved in ITER are sharing the component design and manufacture and aim to gain technological experience for the future.

Following on from ITER and using the results to further extrapolate the next reactor on the roadmap would be a demonstration power plant capable of producing electricity and self-sustaining in tritium fuel. Some countries are looking to take on this challenge on their own.

 

[tade]

ITER is supposed to have a major meeting this June, when is it going to be?

 

[jimgraber]

I think it is June 17, but I do not know for sure.

 

[the_wolfman]

ITER is supposed to have a major meeting this June, when is it going to be?

JIm is correct. The ITER Council Meeting is Jun 17-18.

The website http://www.firefusionpower.org/ is a great resource for finding information relevant to fusion such as news, meetings, reports, white papers, etc.

 

[mfb]

I'd have competing national projects. Competition between researchers always seems to have produced the most significant advances.

I would happily spend $1/year extra taxes to get another ITER (the actual costs are below $1/year and person), but that won't happen. Two projects for the same overall price would have meant two significantly smaller, less ambitious projects, probably failing the main idea of ITER, the positive energy balance.

First plasma is now planned for 2025, see the recent press release.

 

[Freemann]

Just based on the level of activity observed during a visit late last year, a decade may be optimistic. Urgency is entirely lacking. Few workers on site, not on weekends, with breaks for press briefings at completion of even minor construction milestones. Support elements such as the power management transformers and the magnet production plant, responsibilities assigned to the US and India respectively, were produced on schedule and are now just sitting on site in limbo, until the rest of the facility catches up.

You hit the point. I really wonder if the ITER community, with the exception of the US, really pays attention at such a critical aspect of the project. In my view, 3 critical aspects are mining the success of the project:

1. Stockpiles of tritium, vital as start-up inventory for the first fusion reactor(s) are peaking and in less than 2 decades will start to decrease fast, i.e. there may not be enough tritium to start a power plant if such delays in the planning, design and constrution are also present in the first demonstration power plant as they are for ITER. And as it is always said, ITER is a "key step" for the demonstration plant, so delaying ITER year after year jeopardized the whole endeavor.

2. who has not heard the typical joke about "fusion is the energy of the future... and it will always be" or "50 years ago we were also only 10 years long to reach fusion", etc.? fusion will start to loose credibility exponentially if every 2 years the "first plasma" is delayed another 5...

3. renewable energy (mainly wind and solar) are getting close to the so-called grid-parity, i.e. (solar is at the "break-even" of grid parity, off-shore looks closer, in-shore it is already)- With a market-entry of fusion in... 50 years? the conditions to be economically attractive will be harsh, so the odds that fusion will be born already dead are high.

A sense of urgency is therefore needed in the whole fusion community... unless the whole thing is just about funding research centers, universities and science in general, which is sadly my feeling since some years ago.

 

[quarkle]

I have worked in the Indian fusion community, and closely with people with ITER-India. From their perspective, the major reasons why ITER is proceeding so slow:

• People and politics. By politics I mean power struggles among people, not governmental politics. Each country and organizations has its own politics and when 20+ countries together to do something, it gets extremely convoluted and slows down everything. That also lead to a lot of stupid technical decisions. For example, they finalized engineering drawings before doing any neutronics studies which is a rather odd thing to do.
• Not all countries have easy access to all the software and code used, like MCNP. They are expected do to their share of work anyway. Another roadblock.

Again this is just what I could gather from common knowledge from the fusion community in India. Not to be taken as absolute fact.

 

[mfb]

Each country and organizations has its own politics and when 20+ countries together to do something, it gets extremely convoluted and slows down everything.

It works fine for projects like the LHC experiments. Not without any issues, of course, but it works without major delays. International collaborations can work.

 

[mheslep]

It works fine for projects like the LHC experiments. Not without any issues, of course, but it works without major delays. International collaborations can work.

Well it is known how to build yet another synchrotron, though the LHC is the largest. Higgs might not have been found but the LHC itself was eventually going to work.

Nobody knows for certain yet how to build a fusion reactor with net gain, so that the ITER design might never work. In large uncoherent groups chasing highly uncertain outcomes, many ill-considered opinions and self-indulgent agendas can ride high.

 

[mfb]

The LHC is a larger version of the Tevatron (factor 7 higher energy, factor 4 longer). The ITER is a larger version of JET (factor 4 in volume).
But I was talking about the experiments. ATLAS, CMS and LHCb are way more complex than any previous detector.

 

[quarkle]

I'm not comparing the technical complexity, here (though that definitely plays a part), but the sheer diversity and number of people and countries involved in ITER is is much much larger. The logistics are a nightmare. Also, we need a whole lot of new physics development, techniques, tools, databases and software that didn't exist before. And access to all these things by everybody involved. Politics can restrict this access. Anecdotally, for instance, I see huge delays in work completion simply because most people/organisations in India are unable to get MCNP licenses. They haven't really addressed those issues.

 

[mfb]

The ATLAS and CMS collaborations involve thousands of people from about 40 countries each, LHCb and ALICE are a bit smaller but still in the 4-digit range. Radiation hard electronics used there and irradiated components for testing are subject to various national and international laws, I guess ITER has the same issue.

The LHC experiments produce raw data of >100 Terabytes per second, most of it never leaves the detector - as you can guess, there is tons of dedicated hardware and software developed for the experiments to handle that huge amount of data.

 

[mheslep]

There are of course many instances of large international collaborations, and none of them to my knowledge have been successful in building a device with a stated specific outcome (5 mins net power) where the physics of the device is uncertain or unknown. Dedicated software, hardware, complexity, these do not require resolution of uncertain physics in the device itself.

 

[mheslep]

ITER first DT fusion schedule slips to 2035. As of 2010, the DT fusion schedule was 2027.

An updated schedule for the Iter fusion project has been approved by the Iter Council, which represents the countries taking part in the project. Under the new schedule, first plasma is now slated for 2025 and the start of deuterium-tritium operation is set for 2035...

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-New-schedule-agreed-for-Iter-fusion-project-2111164.html