ITER: The $65BN Power Plant of the Future

35 countries from around the world are working together to construct a 65 billion dollar machine in southern france that could revolutionize how we obtain energy they call it itter in november 1985 at the geneva superpower summit in switzerland general secretary of the soviet union mikhail gorbachev proposed a collaborative international project to develop peaceful fusion energy to u.s president ronald reagan discussions ensued and a year later an agreement was reached the eu japan soviet union and usa would jointly develop the international thermonuclear experimental reactor or itter in 1988 conceptual design work began and engineering design quickly followed then in 2001 the final design for itter was approved the interfusion reactor will be located on a 0.42 square kilometer site in southeast france just three kilometers east of kadarash the largest technological research and development center for energy in europe itter will be the largest tokamak device in the world a tokamak is a machine that has the shape of a taurus or a donut with a central chamber that contains the fuel itter will eventually use a mix of deuterium and tritium gases as fuel isotopes of hydrogen deuterium which can be distilled from seawater in significant amounts is virtually inexhaustible on the other hand tritium is very rarely found in nature and is therefore only produced artificially making it very expensive however scientists are working to mass produce it lowering its cost injectors will shoot high energy particles into the deuterium and tritium mix heating up the fuel eventually it will get to 150 million degrees celsius 10 times the temperature of the core of the sun at this point the deuterium and tritium particles will have so much energy that some of their electrons will escape and move around freely creating an electrically charged super hot soup of ions called plasma around the plasma will be 10 000 tons of magnets equivalent to 49 boeing 747s that will create a taurus-shaped magnetic field with a strength of 13 tesla that's 1 300 times the strength of a small bar magnet since plasma is electrically charged it will follow the taurus-shaped magnetic field lines staying contained inside the plasma it will be so hot that the repulsive forces between the particles will be broken and they will fuse together to form a new particle called helium-4 and a high-energy neutron this reaction is what powers all the stars in our universe keeping them burning for billions of years itar's nuclear fusion plasma will produce an incredible amount of thermal energy 500 megawatts 10 times more than was used to heat it at equal fuel mass it will produce four times more energy than the nuclear fission reactions that power current nuclear power plants and unlike fission reactors itter's radioactive waste will be very low to medium activity and short-lived with all radiation diminishing within just 100 years lastly a runaway reaction is impossible making it significantly safer than a fission power plant elevator's fusion science will be conducted in a highly complex tokamak system a central chamber will hold the 12.4 meter diameter donut shaped plasma around it will be blanket shields absorbing the energy from the neutrons while also protecting the rest of the machine from them along with diverters which will control the waste gas and impurities from the plasma around the blanket will be the vacuum vessel which will serve as a safety containment barrier around the vacuum vessel will be the magnetic coils and around them will be the cryostat ensuring an ultra cool vacuum environment iter will be highly complex however it will not be the first of its kind since the first tokamak in 1958 over a hundred small fusion reactors have been built however due to their sizes they all use more energy than they create the jet reactor in the uk produced a record 16 megawatts of thermal energy but used 24 in the process iter's 50 megawatt input and 500 megawatt output will be revolutionary unfortunately though as an experimental machine it will not convert any of its power to electricity however if all goes well with etter another reactor called demo will be constructed it would produce around 2 gigawatts of thermal power that would be absorbed by the walls of the reactor this heat would then be transferred into steam that through generators would be translated into 800 megawatts of electric power enough to supply 520 000 homes back in 2006 it was estimated that demo could make fusion energy available by 2033 nowadays though it would likely not be completed until the 2050s and even if it was built nuclear fusion would still have a long way to go the costs and innovation required to make fusion a competitive economic power source would be massive in addition like mentioned before itter will produce radioactive waste the high energy neutrons that hit the reactor wall transferring the thermal energy will also induce radioactivity on it and nearby components eventually this will create thousands of tons of radioactive material furthermore some scientists believe that building a tokamak is the wrong approach and that other designs are more logical lastly many believe nuclear fusion is just a dream and that it ears billions of dollars of funding should be invested elsewhere still though itter is quickly progressing in 2005 the project site was confirmed and in 2007 the inter-organization was founded in 2008 preparation for the construction site began and in 2010 excavation began then in 2013 construction of the massive iter complex started by 2017 the assembly hall was finished and construction was 50 complete throughout 2018 2019 and early 2020 the concrete support was formed and the cryostat began construction then on july 28 2020 french president emmanuel macron held a large celebration as assembly of the tokamak machine began over the next five years the tokamak will be installed and all the necessary facilities will continue construction in december 2025 itter will have its first planned plasma testing will continue and hopefully by 2035 it will begin using deuterium and tritium as fuel if all goes well demo will begin development by the 2050s we could have the first operational nuclear fusion power plant however there are still many obstacles phases funding issues and feasibility concerns that need to be solved for a while fusion power has seemed only 30 years away whether itor will finally break this cycle of delays and launch us into a new era of energy we will just have to wait and see if you enjoyed this video it would be amazing if you like and subscribe for more videos very similar to this one also remember to check out the comments and join the conversation thanks for watching and see you next time

Channel: Futurology

Views: 107,423

Keywords: iter, nuclear fusion, france, tokamak, nuclear power, megaproject, cadarache, eu, russia, usa, china, india, south korea

Id: JCpWPJrH7TA

Length: 8min 49sec (529 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020