Nuclear fusionITER fusion project will start with hydrogen

Plasma-driven experiments will start at the ITER in 2018 — but these experiments will be literally lighter than originally planned, using hydrogen rather than heavier tritium and deuterium. The tritium and deuterium experiments will have to wait until 2026.

Scientific American’s Katherine Harmon writes that although fusing hydrogen is easier, the deuterium-tritium reaction has proved to be the most “efficient” in lab experiments (meaning the most energy is released at the lowest temperature), so it is the target combination. Temperatures will still need to be about 270 million degrees Fahrenheit (150 million Celsius) for the reaction to get going.

Fusion, the same process our sun uses to make energy, fuses together atoms using hot plasma, rather than breaking them apart, as in fission, or joining them at room temperature (as in cold fusion). Its proponents say it is a safer and greener source of energy that would produce little hazardous waste.

Manufacturing for the reactor’s components is already under contract, notes World Nuclear News. A South Korean company has started making some of the twenty-eight tons of niobium-tin wire it will supply for the reactor’s magnets.

ITER’s price tag is $13.8 billion, but it may well double by the time it is built, Nature reports. France and the EU will jointly pick up half of the tab, and the other six partners will be providing the rest. The project, which had its first design more than 20 years ago, seems to be on the cusp of liftoff, but, writes the Principal Deputy Director-General Norbet Holtkamp, “the details of the plan remain to be hammered out.”