Fusion News: The New Yorker- A Star in a Bottle
The ITER, proposed in 1985, now an international collaboration is located in an Alpine forest in the South of France. Even though the ITER’s true cost is incalculable but it will solve the world’s energy problems for the next thirty million years and save the planet from environment catastrophe.
ITER’s headquarters, a five-floor edifice, was erected two years ago. An undulating wave of gray concrete slats shade its floor-to-ceiling windows. Its interior is simple: whitewashed walls, polished-concrete floors. The building’s southern façade overlooks a work site, more than a hundred acres of construction on the opposite side of a berm. By the time the reactor is turned on—the formal target date for its first experiment is 2020—the site will be home to a small city. Nearly forty buildings will surround the machine, from cooling towers to a cryogenics plant, which will produce liquid helium to cool the superconducting magnets. A skywalk extends from the second floor of the headquarters to the berm, where a capacious NASA-style control room will one day be built. For now, the bridge ends in a pile of ochre dirt, and the only way to the vast expanse of construction is via a circuitous drive.
The ITER was thought to be ready by 2010 but has been delayed due to the ITER organization, management, geopolitical arguments and political underpinnings. Stefano Chiocchio, ITER head of design integration, must be sure not to miss any details before construction because he is building before having a machine.
As Chiocchio saw it, many design conflicts arise because of the project’s political underpinnings. Changes to one component often make others (built in other countries) more expensive, and the ensuing arguments are difficult to resolve. From the outset, each Domestic Agency vied to build the machine’s state-of-the-art components, so that its industries could gain the know-how; as a result, the design and the manufacture of the most sophisticated parts have been split apart in ways that are politically expedient but are at odds with engineering prudence. A single manufacturer should build ITER’s vacuum chamber, a high-precision device that must operate with perfect symmetry. Instead, it will be constructed in nine segments, two in Korea and the rest in Europe. The design calls for certain features to be welded, but the Europeans decided to use bolts, which are cheaper. The Praetorian Guard, with little more than the power of persuasion, must insure that the device is whole.
The field of fusion has experienced setbacks and accomplishments. But with the supply of uranium consumed in about a century there is a need for more efficient energy source. As reported by the New Yorker in the article, “A Star in a Bottle:”
Janeschitz told me, “When Benz invented the car, I am sure many people were saying, ‘I will just take my horse—it is a lot simpler.’ The truth is, most of the large tokamaks have been working for decades, and none have been retired for technical problems.” Moreover, the design of a commercial reactor would inevitably be a lot simpler than ITER, because it would not need to retain the flexibility of an experiment. With an Apollo-like commitment, Janeschitz told me, fusion’s remaining problems could be worked out within a lifetime. But the funding would need to come in significant amounts, and mostly at once, not dribbled over decades. As he sketched out his vision, he alluded to an aphorism by an early Soviet tokamak pioneer, a quote that practically echoes among the halls of ITER’s headquarters: “Fusion will be ready when society needs it.”
