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US finds new love of fusion
US finds new love of fusion
By Robert C. Cowen
>From the March 20, 2003 Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0320/p15s02-stss.html
At a time when the United States is widely condemned as being
unilateralist, there's good news in its foreign affairs. America is
rejoining the international project to control thermonuclear fusion -
the power source of the stars - to make electricity here on Earth.
By 1998, Canada, the European Union, Japan, and the US had each spent
several hundred million dollars on plans for a project in which, working
along with Russia, they would build an International Thermonuclear
Experimental Reactor (ITER). The US considered the projected $10 billion
cost and the project construction plan unrealistic. Congress forced the
US team to pick up its marbles and go home.
Since then, the other ITER partners have redesigned the machine and cut
its projected cost in half. A US Department of Energy study has called
that estimate "credible" and the projected 10-year construction schedule
"generally reasonable." ITER has become what President Bush now calls
"an incredibly important project to be part of." China, which has
reached the same conclusion, is also joining the project at this time.
The US reconciliation comes at a crucial time for ITER. The partners are
ready to pick a site and start machine construction. Canada, Japan, and
Spain each want to host the facility. If the US is to benefit from this
research, it must get back into the game now.
This also is a critical time for the long - and sometimes quixotic -
quest to harness fusion power. Energy is released when hydrogen atoms
are crushed together strongly enough for the nuclei to fuse. Stars do
this easily, thanks to the enormous pressures and temperatures in their
cores. On Earth, some fusion scientists use laser beams to crush
hydrogen fuel pellets. ITER takes another tack: Its machine will use
magnetic fields to confine low pressure hydrogen fuel in a
doughnut-shaped tube while heating the fuel to many tens of millions of
degrees.
Scientists have pursued magnetic fusion for half a century with many
frustrating results. Its hot electrically charged particles refuse to
stay put while the gas writhes like a recalcitrant snake or otherwise
escapes magnetic confinement. This has made magnetic fusion a receding
goal. That situation has changed. As Richard Hazeltine at the University
of Texas in Austin and Stewart Prager at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison, have explained in an overview article in Physics Today that
progress in understanding many of these confinement problems has been
substantial and, in some cases, "revolutionary." They conclude that
magnetic fusion is poised for significant progress and ITER is a machine
well suited to do the job.
The US now spends some $250 million a year on fusion research. It is
ready to commit around $50 million annually to the $5 billion ITER
project - down from $80 million a year before its 1998 walkout. Bush
calls it an "opportunity to blaze new paths," which "makes sense for
America."
--
.....................................................
Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director
Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee
102 Robertsville Road, Suite B, Oak Ridge, TN 37830
Toll free 888-770-3073 ~ www.local-oversight.org
.....................................................
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