US finds new love of fusion

[Susan L Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

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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