To: "homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [Homestead] Making a sun on earth
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 10:22:31 -0700
France to Host World's First Nuclear Fusion Plant
By REUTERS
Published: June 28, 2005
Filed at 9:32 a.m. ET
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Science's quest to find a cheap and inexhaustible way to
meet global energy needs took a major step forward on Tuesday when a
30-nation consortium chose France to host the world's first nuclear fusion
reactor.
After months of wrangling, France defeated a bid from Japan and signed a
deal to site the 10-billion-euroexperimental reactor in Cadarache, near
Marseille.
The project will seek to turn seawater into fuel by mimicking the way the
sun produces energy. It would be cleaner than current nuclear reactors,
would not rely on enriched uranium fuel or produce plutonium.
But critics argue it could be at least 50 years before a commercially
viable reactor is built, if at all.
``We are making scientific history,'' Janez Potocnik, the European Union's
Science and Research Commissioner, told a news conference in Moscow, where
the multinational partners in the ITER (International Thermonuclear
Experimental Reactor) project were meeting. They also reached preliminary
agreement on how to fund one of the world's most expensive scientific
experiments.
A nuclear fusion power station is the 'Holy Grail' for scientists trying to
find a viable alternative to the world's depleting stocks of oil and gas.
The search took on new significance as crude this week reached a record
price of $60.95 a barrel in some trading.
Next week, a summit of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations in
Scotland is to discuss climate change, widely blamed on burning fossil
fuels for energy.
DECADES OF RESEARCH
Unlike fission reactors, which are used in existing nuclear power stations
and release energy by splitting atoms apart, ITER would generate energy by
combining them.
Power has been harnessed from fusion in laboratories but scientists have so
far been unable to build a commercially viable reactor, despite decades of
research.
The 500 megawatt ITER reactor will use deuterium, extracted from seawater,
as its major fuel and a giant electromagnetic ring to fuse atomic nuclei at
extremely high temperatures.
One of the biggest challenges facing scientists is to build a reactor that
can sustain temperatures of about 100 million Celsius (180 million F) for
long enough to generate power.
``I give it a 50:50 chance of success but the engineering is very
difficult,'' said Ian Fells of Britain's Royal Academy of Engineering.
``If we can really make this work there will be enough electricity to last
the world for the next 1,000 to 2,000 years,'' he said.