Abstract
The Internal Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is supposed to be the next crucial step on the way (iter) to commercial energy generation by nuclear fusion. It is more a political technological project than a scientific technological one. Born in the twilight years of the Soviet Union, it became caught up in détente politics between East and West. Its (scientific technical) goal is to show that energy generation by nuclear fusion is in principle possible. For this rather modest goal, after 70 years of effort, a giant collaboration spanning more than half the globe and three-quarters of the world’s gross national project has been set up. ITER’s construction is now in full swing in the south of France, and this chapter describes the tortuous route towards this endeavour, the gigantic costs involved and the sheer megalomania it entails.
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Notes
- 1.
The IFRC was a permanent advisory body of the IAEA on plasma and nuclear fusion, made up of representatives of countries with major fusion programmes and meeting once annually.
- 2.
A summary was published by the INTOR Group as International Tokamak Reactor (Executive Summary of the IAEA Workshop, 1979) in Nuclear Fusion 20 (1980) 349–388.
- 3.
Some design work was carried out in the Soviet Union on a hybrid fusion-fission tokamak reactor of ITER-size, called OTR (standing for Opytnyj termoyadernyj reaktor (experimental thermonuclear reactor)) (see Velikhov and Kartishev 1989).
- 4.
- 5.
“The Soviet Magnetic Confinement Fusion Program: An International Future” available from https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/print/175351.
- 6.
ITER EDA Agreement, ITER-EDA Documentation Series No. 1 (IAEA 1992).
- 7.
The Department of Energy had consistently been asking for an increase of the fusion budget, but its attempts were frustrated by Congress. It had asked for an increase from about $370 million in 1995 to about $860 million in 2002 (an average of $645 million per year between 1995 and 2005), but Congress reduced it to a mere $230 million. In the original ITER agreement it was agreed that the EU and Japan would each bear one third of the cost, while the USSR and the US would share the other one third. With Russia bankrupt, the US would have to bear this one third on its own, which would consume its entire fusion budget and probably more.
- 8.
Russia remained a party but due to its difficult economic situation limited its participation. Canada had joined the project in the late 1980s, but as an associate member participating as a member of the European team.
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- 10.
This plasma volume, for that matter, is only slightly bigger than the volume of 2000 m3 foreseen in the ITER 1998 proposal.
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- 13.
This is a sensitive matter as CANDU power plants emit tritium, which is radioactive, into the environment.
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- 16.
See https://fire.pppl.gov/abraham_japan_010904.pdf (accessed 2 October 2019) for the US Secretary of State’s grovelling remarks to his Japanese hosts.
- 17.
For an extensive account of the whole unseemly proceedings, see Claessens 2020, pp. 48–54.
- 18.
In the original planning ITER would be decommissioned in 2027, which is now roughly the date at which construction is expected to be finished.
- 19.
Claessens 2020, p. 80ff, p. 120ff, who stresses the complexity and the engineering and logistical challenges of the project, as if he wants to hedge against any major mishaps with the excuse that it was obviously too great and too complex a task.
- 20.
- 21.
Physics Today, Politics and Policy, 16 Apr 2018.
- 22.
In full: Council Decision of 27 March 2007 establishing the European Joint Undertaking for ITER and the Development of Fusion Energy and conferring advantages upon it (2007/198/Euratom).
- 23.
The Joint Undertaking is called “Fusion for Energy” (F4E). It has an extensive website https://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/aboutfusion/ with links to the ITER organizations of the other participants.
- 24.
France contributes to ITER as a member of the EU, but as the host country for the project it has undertaken to provide the site for ITER (180 ha), carry out all preparatory work, install networks for electricity and water, build roads (it has spent an estimated €110 million adapting roads to accommodate transport of ITER components), establish an international school for employees’ children, and construct the ITER headquarters buildings. It is not clear if and where the costs for these facilities are included in the ITER accounts.
- 25.
This figure agrees fairly well with the value given by Claessens 2020, p. 115, but he then apparently is shocked by his own calculation as it is much higher than the official figure, and via a contorted reasoning he arrives at the conclusion that the actual figure must be somewhere between €13 and €41 billion, while he must have known that the EU alone has already spent more than his lower limit.
- 26.
Fusion machines all over the world have re-oriented their scientific programs or modified their technical characteristics to act either partially or totally in support of ITER. These machines are conducting R&D on advanced modes of plasma operation, plasma-wall interactions, materials testing, and optimum power extraction methods, contributing to the success of ITER and the design of the next-phase device (https://www.iter.org/sci/BeyondITER).
- 27.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/nuclear-fusion-project-leader-laments-uncontrollable-political-forces/; see also Dean (2013), a book that consistently lays the blame with the politicians, especially their reluctance to put up the money asked for.
- 28.
In a recent seminar M. Abdou of UCLA lamented that very important R&D identified in the 1970s and 1980s has not been done yet!! (Abdou 2019).
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- 30.
https://www.iter.org/mach/powersupply, accessed 6 June 2020.
- 31.
Claessens 2020, p. 74, states that the plant requires 110 MW, of which 40% is consumed by the cooling-water system, 30% by the cryoplant and 10% each by the tritium plant and building services.
- 32.
https://www.jt60sa.org/b/FAQ/EE2.htm, accessed 6 June 2020.
- 33.
https://www.iter.org/sci/Goals, accessed 6 June 2020.
- 34.
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Reinders, L.J. (2021). The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. In: The Fairy Tale of Nuclear Fusion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64344-7_10
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