A project as ambitious as the space station but with much more important implications for the future of energy and mankind has just taken a step forward.
The ITER project, a multinational effort to harness and produce Fusion Energy, could be the solution to all of humanity's energy needs in the future.
The site of the project, in the Cadarache forest in Provence, will attempt to replicate the nuclear power of the stars.
34 nations are taking part in the effort. The nuclear reactor that would deliver this type of new energy could do so in a way that is cheap, sustainable and more importantly, safe.
Fusion reactors could end the global climate threat, if implemented in a timely fashion.
The news this week is that the project has been approved for a design of the fusion reactor's blanket, which will contain the super-heated nuclear fuel.
The huge structure is also past the stage when 493 seismic bearings have been set in the ground to protect the reactor from temblors.
In the next few years, a million individual components will arrive at the site from all over the world. They will be assembled into the a building nearby.
This project, as some call it, has biblical proportions. It will in essence replicate the same process that is observed in the Sun. Nuclear fusion reactions are the way of the future, no more, no less.
With this kind of reactor, an incident such as happened in Japan recently will be impossible.
This kind of technology will also end the world's reliance on fossil fuels burning.
However, the building and testing of the reactor will take nearly two more decades, some project.
The idea of making nuclear fusion a reality that began with former Russian president Gorbachev, who offered the knowledge Russia had gained in nuclear fusion as a bargaining chip in the detente between the US and Russia, at the time when Reagan was building its Star Wars program.
The agreement to cooperate on the projects stems from that time, in 1985, when M.me Thatcher also a signatary, agreed to cooperate on nuclear fusion using the Russian 'tokamak' reactor. The 'tokamak' is a revolutionary device that could hold the super-hot fusion fuel by creating a 'magnetic bottle' within the reactor's doughnut shaped vacuum vessel.
The Iter in essence is a tokamak reactor, but on a larger scale.
A timeline of the tokamak reactor is detailed below:
1929: Scientists use Einstein’s equation E=mc² to predict release of large amounts of energy by fusing atomic nuclei together.
1939: German-born physicist Hans Bethe, pictured, demonstrates that nuclear fusion powers stars.
1950: Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm in the USSR propose a “tokamak” fusion reactor.
1956: Tokamak programme begins in strict secrecy.
1969: Tokamak results declassified, astounding Western scientists.
1973: Design work begins on Joint European Torus (Jet), a tokamak-type reactor in Europe.
1983: Jet completed at Culham, Oxfordshire, on time and to budget.
1985: USSR proposes an international fusion-energy project.
1988: Design work begins for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, later known as simply Iter. 1992: Design phase begins for Iter.
1997: Jet produces 16 megawatts of fusion power, the current world record.
2005: Cadarache, France, chosen as Iter site.
2021-22: “First plasma” scheduled, when ionised gases will be injected into the Iter tokamak.
2027-28: Iter “goes nuclear” with injection of tritium.
2030s: First demonstration fusion reactor to produce electricity for grid.
2050s onwards: First commercial nuclear fusion power plants.
1939: German-born physicist Hans Bethe, pictured, demonstrates that nuclear fusion powers stars.
1950: Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm in the USSR propose a “tokamak” fusion reactor.
1956: Tokamak programme begins in strict secrecy.
1969: Tokamak results declassified, astounding Western scientists.
1973: Design work begins on Joint European Torus (Jet), a tokamak-type reactor in Europe.
1983: Jet completed at Culham, Oxfordshire, on time and to budget.
1985: USSR proposes an international fusion-energy project.
1988: Design work begins for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, later known as simply Iter. 1992: Design phase begins for Iter.
1997: Jet produces 16 megawatts of fusion power, the current world record.
2005: Cadarache, France, chosen as Iter site.
2021-22: “First plasma” scheduled, when ionised gases will be injected into the Iter tokamak.
2027-28: Iter “goes nuclear” with injection of tritium.
2030s: First demonstration fusion reactor to produce electricity for grid.
2050s onwards: First commercial nuclear fusion power plants.
Source: the Independent UK 4.27.13
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