Background
As carbon-based fuels grow increasingly scarce in the face of ever-growing demand, new and more sustainable sources of energy will be necessary to meet global energy needs. Fusion power has the potential to provide sufficient energy to satisfy mounting demand, and to do so sustainably, with a relatively small impact on the environment.
Nuclear fusion has many potential attractions. Firstly, its hydrogen isotope fuels are relatively abundant - one of the necessary isotopes, deuterium, can be extracted from seawater, while the other fuel, tritium, could possibly be created using neutrons produced in the fusion reaction itself. Furthermore, a fusion reactor would produce virtually no CO2 or other atmospheric pollutants, and its other radioactive waste products would be very short-lived compared to those produced by conventional nuclear reactors.
On 21 November 2006, the seven participants formally agreed to fund the creation of a nuclear fusion reactor. The program is anticipated to last for 30 years – 10 for construction, and 20 of operation. ITER was originally expected to cost approximately €5billion, but the rising price of raw materials and changes to the initial design have seen that amount more than triple to €16billion. The reactor is expected to take 10 years to build with completion scheduled for 2019. Site preparation has begun in Cadarache, France and procurement of large components has started.
ITER is designed to produce approximately 500 MW of fusion power sustained for up to 1,000 seconds (compared to JET's peak of 16 MW for less than a second) by the fusion of about 0.5 g of deuterium/tritium mixture in its approximately 840 m3 reactor chamber. Although ITER is expected to produce (in the form of heat) 10 times more energy than the amount consumed to heat up the plasma to fusion temperatures, the generated heat will not be used to generate any electricity.
ITER was originally an acronym for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, but that title was eventually dropped due to the negative popular connotations of the word "thermonuclear", especially when used in conjunction with "experimental". "Iter" also means "journey", "direction" or "way" in Latin, reflecting ITER's potential role in harnessing nuclear fusion as a peaceful power source.
Read more about this topic: ITER
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