Taking bets on Nuclear Fusion - ITER Reactor

[a_unique_person]

Not that many of us will necesarily be alive when it is actually going, and then they will have to build a commercial one and that will have to work.

What are the chances it will work. According to Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iter), they seem to think they have it worked out, based on the British experimental reactor experiments.

[rjh01]

Well anything might work in 100 years time. It is one of those things that has been just around the corner for a long time.

[Darat]

Oh I reckon will have nuclear fusion in 10 years time... ;)

Actually I do think this is just a matter of technology which means that sooner or later (assuming we are still around) we will get a fusion reactor to work (and by work I mean as a generator of power).

ETA: And I voted: It will work, but not be commercially viable

[Yllanes]

I think it will work... eventually. I attended a talk a couple of years ago by a member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences, 83 at the time, who recalled people have been saying that fusion is '40 years away' since the early 1950s...

But I think now we are on the right track and in any case it's worth a try. It is expensive, yes, but Spanish readers may find it interesting that the ongoing work on the M-30 (an important road around Madrid) costs more than all of the ITER project.

And some of the problems have been surpassed, there is a lot of progress. For example, critics use to say that tritium (an isotope of hydrogen needed for the reaction) is very expensive an difficult to obtain. In fact, we only need enough to start the reactor. Once it's working we can surround it with Li. The gamma rays produced in the fusion reaction can turn this lithium into tritium, so the reactor would supply itself. (Li is, I think, as abundant as oil, but we need much less of it).

I chose the Planet X option because, while I think we will be able to use fusion energy in this century, we will not probably do it until its last quarter, so it is not something we should include in our short and medium term energy plans.

[andyandy]

i have absolute faith in science. if it can be done it will be done.....

:D

[Ziggurat]

Oh I reckon will have nuclear fusion in 10 years time... ;)

That's a pretty good bet, actually.

As long as you let me adjust the start date of that "10 years time" interval ;)

[trvlr2]

i have absolute faith in science. if it can be done it will be done.....

:D

Certainly. And done wrongly many, many times.:D

[Ginarley]

I voted it will work but not be commercially viable - at least not in the short-mid term. I suspect considerable further development of materials and construction will be needed after ITER gets running before any commercially viable system gets going.

I also think the "nuclear" tag is going to cause it no end of problems that don't exist - for example I guarentee that New Zealand will never adopt fusion reactors purely because of "nuclear" in the name lol.

[Rob Lister]

I voted that it will work but not be commercially viable...

Just another 50 or so years... :)

It is an engineering nightmare but, more to the point, it is a dirty machine (neutron wise). Once the greenies figure that out, they'll stop it dead in its tracks. Then again, they'd stop if for other reasons even if it were 100% clean...but I digress.

I love the concept but...damn, it's complicated!

[BillC]

I would love it to work... but I am a little pessimistic as to its economics.

Side note: I did some monitoring work for JET in the 1990's on the insulation quality and clamping strength of their toroidal field coils.

[davefoc]

I suppose I should have voted for planet x since I wasn't sure what the option I picked meant, but I voted for "work but not commercially viable"

Does that mean this plant will not be commercially viable.? It can't mean that since they aren't going to generate electricity with this plant. Does it mean that fusion plants will never be commercially viable? Does it mean that the plant will meet expectations but a commercially viable plant won't be built based on information gained by designing and running this plant?

I am uninformed as to the probabilities of the situation so even if I had understood the options I wouldn't have known what to vote for. But my sense of it is that someday in the distant future it is more likely than not that a working fusion plant will exist.

[Yllanes]

I also think the "nuclear" tag is going to cause it no end of problems that don't exist - for example I guarentee that New Zealand will never adopt fusion reactors purely because of "nuclear" in the name lol.

Yes and no. Before we get it to work we will have to go back to nuclear fission, because it's the only way to satisfy demand mid term, so those problems will have to be addressed before fusion.


It is an engineering nightmare but, more to the point, it is a dirty machine (neutron wise). Once the greenies figure that out, they'll stop it dead in its tracks. Then again, they'd stop if for other reasons even if it were 100% clean...but I digress.


The radiation can be shielded, I wouldn't call it dirty. Current nuclear energy is dirty in the sense that it produces a small amount of radioactive waste, but that will not be the case with fusion.

[Crazycowbob]

I think there's a fair chance they can make this work. After all, this isn't just another plasma experiment, they're actually moving this into a proof of concept phase, something the experts involved would most likely not do if they weren't confident they could make it work.

As for radiation concerns, the first runs will be on hydrogen, which will leave no long term radioactive debris, allowing workers the option to make major changes/repairs to it until it is switched to tritium. As for concerns for radiation after it is running on tritium, much of the waste (80% according to their informative webpage) that would be produced would have a relatively short half life, and very high critical mass, allowing it to not only be stored far more compacted than waste from Fission reactors, but also, after 100 years, be recycled.

[Ginarley]

Yes and no. Before we get it to work we will have to go back to nuclear fission, because it's the only way to satisfy demand mid term, so those problems will have to be addressed before fusion.

There is more than enough coal to last us for long enough to get fusion commercially viable - I am less certain of the raw uranium stocks unless we find a viable way to refine spent rods. for that reason I suspect coal fired electricity will dominate new major generation (along with hydro dams in china where the environment seems academic) while wind, solar, wave and tidal will keep adding at the margins. Having said that there are signs Australia is going to go down the Nuclear route. Its a fascinating and highly complex issue to follow.

[Yllanes]

There is more than enough coal to last us for long enough to get fusion commercially viable - I am less certain of the raw uranium stocks unless we find a viable way to refine spent rods. for that reason I suspect coal fired electricity will dominate new major generation (along with hydro dams in china where the environment seems academic) while wind, solar, wave and tidal will keep adding at the margins. Having said that there are signs Australia is going to go down the Nuclear route. Its a fascinating and highly complex issue to follow.
Coal works, but is very dirty. I'm not so sure there is enough coal to satisfy an increasing demand. And we shouldn't depend on one system only. There is, however, a lot of uranium. Another good point in favour of uranium is that most of it is in Australia, which is what I would call a stable country. Gas, oil, etc. are in less reliable places. Anyway, we are digressing a bit with this.

[scotth]

There is more than enough coal to last us for long enough to get fusion commercially viable - I am less certain of the raw uranium stocks unless we find a viable way to refine spent rods. for that reason I suspect coal fired electricity will dominate new major generation (along with hydro dams in china where the environment seems academic) while wind, solar, wave and tidal will keep adding at the margins. Having said that there are signs Australia is going to go down the Nuclear route. Its a fascinating and highly complex issue to follow.

Ummmm, we have ways to 'refine' spent fuel rods.

We used to refine spent rods. It is called reprocessing. It reduces the amount of nuclear waste produced by a fision plant many fold. It reduces the amount of raw ore required, as you indicate.

Jimmy Carter effectively ended U.S. reprocessing with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978. The problem is political not technical.

My understanding is that changes to this policy are in the works.

[daenku32]

ITER is nothing. I've got a cold fusion device in my storage unit. I built it using old parts from an Apple IIc and some coffee cans that were laying around. It runs on rain water, and powers my Sega Genesis. I tried to take pictures of it but the quantum radiation erased my CF memory card. I think I'll just have to keep it locked up so that the Commies cannot steal it and subvert our capitalist economy to collective goals.

..
Why are you looking at me like that?

[daenku32]

Ummmm, we have ways to 'refine' spent fuel rods.

We used to refine spent rods. It is called reprocessing. It reduces the amount of nuclear waste produced by a fision plant many fold. It reduces the amount of raw ore required, as you indicate.

Jimmy Carter effectively ended U.S. reprocessing with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978. The problem is political not technical.

My understanding is that changes to this policy are in the works.
Based on SciAm article some time ago about fast neutron reactors, the PUREX process will only recycle something like 5% (AFAIR) of spent fuel. Most of it still ends up in dumps.

PS. The same article did show the Fast reactors to burn up almost all of it for energy. I think that's something we should continue to research so we can get rid of as much existing radioactive waste as possible.

[DRBUZZ0]

Ummmm, we have ways to 'refine' spent fuel rods.

We used to refine spent rods. It is called reprocessing. It reduces the amount of nuclear waste produced by a fision plant many fold. It reduces the amount of raw ore required, as you indicate.

Jimmy Carter effectively ended U.S. reprocessing with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978. The problem is political not technical.

My understanding is that changes to this policy are in the works.



Yes it's definitely possible to refine and reuse spent fuel.

Actually the idea is rather simple (although the process is complex in practice).

Separate the spent fuel into it's components

Uranium - Contains mostly U-238 but also some unused U-235. Can be used for more fuel with enrichment or by adding more fissionable material

Heavy Isotopes - Plutonium/Americium ect - Can be reused as fuel.

Fission Products - Short lived ones aren't a big problem. They'll be gone before too long. Ones with reasonablly long half-lives, such as Cs-137 and Sr-90 can be seperated. A portion can be used for industrial purposes, cancer treatment, research ect. Remaining rendered into an inert material, such as a ceramic embedded in a glass-like compound. Disposal is not a big problem because in the end, the volume is rather tiny. Keep in a monitored faculty, burial in a secure location, or sub-seabed disposal. In a few hundred years they'll be harmless.

Any remaining non-radioactive stuff is not very hard to get rid of.



The problems:

1. The separation could yield high purity plutonium. So you don't necessarily want small unstable countries that have a coups every week or so doing this.




2. It's clean if you do it properly. But you have to really do it well. If you've ever worked with anything radioactive, you know the drill. You put a radioactive chemical in a beaker, and you have a contaminated beaker. Clean it up well...now you have contaminated water and contaminated rags. Wash out the rags well.... you now have reasonably uncontaminated rags, but even more contaminated water.... evaporate the water, and you are left with a contaminated evaporation dish. Also, the rags may not have been completely decontaminated.




Basically you either don't have nuclear energy. OR you have nuclear energy on a large scale, build the proper infrastructure, have properly equipped and closed-system faculties to reprocess the fuel.

If you spend the time and money it can and will work and can be economical and environmentally friendly in the process. But if you go about it half-ass about it, you'll never get the real benefits.

[marting]

Here's some information of fertile and fissile nuclear fuel resources from "Fuel Cycle Scenario Definition, Evaluation, and Trade-offs"

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1289/fuel-cycle-docs

The following shows the theoretical energy content of existing spent nuclear fuel. Consider oil reserves for comparison as they are readily understandable and because future high-temperature reactors may produce hydrogen, which could be used to reduce U.S. dependence on petroleum. The easiest source of energy to recover from spent fuel is the ~500 metric tons of plutonium; it has the energy equivalence of 6.6 billion barrels of oil, which is half of the estimated resources in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. More advanced recovery of energy from the existing spent fuel (~50,000 metric tons, including plutonium, uranium, etc.) would be twice the energy content of Saudi Arabian oil reserves. Still further, techniques using Generation IV fast reactors could also enable the recovery of existing depleted uranium; the energy content of roughly half a million metric tons of existing U.S. depleted uranium could avert the equivalent of more than 1,000 years of emissions from fossil fuel combustion (at current energy use rates) if new power plants are deployed that use depleted uranium as feed material. Thus, AFCI technology and Generation IV fast reactors could be employed to ensure that known domestic uranium resources are adequate well beyond this century to both sustain nuclear energy and reduce dependence on other energy sources.

[add]There is also a great deal of information on both proliferation issues and waste processing.

[rjh01]

The major problem with the above post is the cost of separating the various materials from spent nuclear waste. It is cheaper to mine fresh uranium than reprocess spent nuclear waste. Things may change in the future.

Another issue is that once you have plutonium + some intelligent people + money you can make a weapon.

[DRBUZZ0]

The major problem with the above post is the cost of separating the various materials from spent nuclear waste. It is cheaper to mine fresh uranium than reprocess spent nuclear waste. Things may change in the future.

Another issue is that once you have plutonium + some intelligent people + money you can make a weapon.




#1. might be cheaper to mine it, if you don't include the cost savings of disposal. Also, enrichment is always expensive.

#2. Yes, the plutonium could be used for nuclear weapons. However, plutonium is nasty stuff. You would need a fairly good setup to work with it. Also PU bombs are harder to build than U bombs.

#3. If you are saying that any process which yeilds plutonium is bad because the US/Brittan/Russia could make more weapons....you're a tad late. They already have plenty of material. The bigger concern would be in nations which do not have the resources to keep the system secure.

Of course...such nations, which are too instable to keep their materials secure are a problem with any nuclear energy technology.





My beef is not with people who think that current reactors need to be revised or that the system has holes in it which need to be addressed. I just really really hate the anti-nuclear crowed which will not even entertain the thought or nuclear energy of any type. You ever mention the idea of research on a new reactor type or fueling method and they'll be all over the place with pictures of Hiroshima and Chernobyle victims