Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Professor Ian Chapman, chief of the UK Atomic Energy Authority is worried the Brexit negotiation standoff between Britain and the EU poses a threat to the vast multi-decade, multi-billion dollar ITER Nuclear Fusion project.
Nuclear industry acts on ‘no deal’ Brexit as MPs plot Euratom rebellion
The UK’s nuclear chief says leaving Euratom is an “existential threat” to the industry, as MPs plan to amend the EU exit bill.
By Faisal Islam, Political Editor
The British nuclear industry is activating plans to relocate some nuclear material and components around Europe, Sky News understands.
The move comes in anticipation of a failure to replace the UK’s existing trading arrangements with Europe and the globe before Britain leaves the EU in March 2019.
Executives are now planning for potential legal barriers to the highly controlled movement of nuclear parts and materials into and out of the United Kingdom after Brexit.
Leading figures speaking privately to Sky News have complained of “no visibility” that full arrangements will be in place by 2019 to replace existing arrangements under the Euratom nuclear safety treaty and related third country treaties – and are “planning for a world where that doesn’t happen”.
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In the Article 50 letter, the UK signalled its desire to leave Euratom at the same time as leaving the European Union.
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The industry was also adamant that there is a serious issue about the supply of medical isotopes, a byproduct of the continental European nuclear industry, critical for cancer treatments.
The Government has dismissed fears over their supply as “scaremongering” but industry figures pointed out that their supply and transport is governed by the rules of the Nuclear Common Market and they are materials mentioned in the annexe of the Euratom treaty.
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Professor Ian Chapman chief of the UK Atomic Energy Authority told Sky News: “Leaving Euratom is absolutely an existential threat for us as an organisation, about two thirds of my turnover comes from the European Commission.
“So we have to find a resolution so we can continue to do the world-class cutting-edge science that we do here.”
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There is something terribly Soviet about the ITER project. The project timescales are measured in decades, for example the first Deuterium Tritium burn is not scheduled to occur until 2035, assuming the deadline doesn’t slip.
If ITER scale projects turn out to be the only path to viable nuclear fusion, assuming it ever works, fusion will remain uneconomical for the foreseeable future.
Fortunately there are a number of smaller teams, including several US based private companies, which are exploring potentially far more affordable approaches to achieving commercial Nuclear Fusion.
US based IPP Fusion, a small maverick startup whose unconventional approach to confining Fusion plasmas has created a lot of excitement recently, is no fan of ITER.
September 23, 2013
Open letter on fusion
We, the undersigned scientists, urge that the United States, the European Union and Japan fund a much broader fusion energy research effort, expanding the program to include a large number of promising devices and fusion fuels in order to maximize the chances of getting economical fusion power as soon as possible.
The present international fusion effort is focused almost exclusively on a single device, the tokamak, and a single version of that device, the ITER experiment. We believe that near-exclusive focus is a mistake. We do not yet know if ITER will lead to an economical fusion generator. We do not yet know which of the many fusion devices now being researched will work, which will be fastest to achieve or which will produce the most economical energy. So a focus on a single experiment is not the surest and fastest way to fusion power.
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We therefore strongly urge the US Congress and the European and Japanese parliaments to immediately hold hearings on the direction of the international fusion program, looking at the wisdom of a much broader-based program. Such hearings could be the first step to legislation allocating an additional at least $300 million per year to research on alternative fusion approaches, devices and fuels.
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Read more: https://lppfusion.com/open-letter-on-fusion/
Upsetting the ITER team is not a reason to change course on Brexit. Even if the ITER project finally delivers better than breakeven power, in 2035 or beyond, the sheer cost and longevity of the ITER project in my opinion will mark ITER as the gravesite of commercial nuclear fusion, not the herald of a new age of unlimited clean energy.
The only hope for viable commercial fusion in any of our lifetimes is for small teams of mavericks like IPP to explore the road less travelled.
IPP’s explanation of their approach to Nuclear Fusion. Note I am NOT specifically endorsing IPP Fusion. Their approach seems promising, but the history of Fusion research is littered with promising ideas which never delivered.
Brexit is in the hands of an incompetent government that seems to not want to split. The recent election that converted a majority into a gonadless coalition with a parochial Ulster party to cling to life crippled itself even more. Remember the gov was campaigning to stay! It needed a Nigel Farage, hated though he be (probably a necessary condition), to get this done.
Give the wimpy, entitlement half no hope of clinging to the EU teat. ITER is another “forever employer” scientist welfare project in which the activity is chatter like the project listening to the stars to detect intelligent life and finding crickets. Is anyone hammering, bolting, wiring… or is it all filling the blackboard with undergrad hieroglyphics and jetting about with horn-rimmed glasses and well starched white coats.
When you set yourself half century goals, you don’t believe you will get there. A US Manhattan Project with a Third Reich of purposeful, capable wolves chewing at your @55 is the model. Or Kennedy making and keeping to a schedule an “impossible” feat of landing on the moon a decade plus a year or two after Sputnik 1.
European political economy killed the capability for grand projects in science over a half a century ago. Only the US (and it came close to drowning in the same Champagne) and Russia have this capability now. I rejoiced over Brexit because I thought the old spark was still alive – please let it be so.
..”poses a threat to the vast multi-decade, multi-billion dollar ITER Nuclear Fusion project.”
A project which is a clear attack on taxpayers wallets and guaranteed to never produce anything greater than bureaucracy.
One can only wish that the Brit-Exit would collapse such a blackhole.
To compare past technologies,imagine the steam engine or internal combustion engined vehicles if they were “invented” by such bureaucracies.
Or better yet.. The Wheel.
The ITER project is one of the greatest scams in the history of science, rivaling the AGW fraud.
It hasn’t wasted near as much money, nor has anyone died because of ITER yet.
La SOLUCIÓN SIMPLE esta mas cerca de lo que se imaginan.
ITER is shown to be a huge waste of money with false claims of its COP
See http://news.newenergytimes.net/2017/10/06/the-iter-power-amplification-myth/
It turns out the energy gain will not be 10 times as claimed, but 1.6 at best and probably < 1.
All ITER is good for is lifetime jobs for several hundred scientists and technicians.
Unlike Rossi, LPPFusion publishes its results in peer-reviewed journals. Not a guarantee of success, but we are transparent about what we are doing. And we do need a lot less money than other approaches. We are still raising that $2.5 million mentioned to complete the scientific research. Getting to a prototype generator ready to roll down the line will take a lot more–$50 to $100 million, but still a tiny fraction of ITER. Check our website in a few weeks–we will be posting interesting news.
LPPFusion is on track to achieve net energy in 18 months or less. They already have achieved requisite Temperature and Confinement time to achieve aneutronic fusion energy that’s generated without boilers and turbines, and thus 20 times cheaper than conventional energy systems. A slightly re-configured design using beryllium cathodes are now being installed, followed by introduction of the pB11fuel.
Currently LPPFusion is #5 on the fusion leader board, even without the final design implementation. Notice that currently China has the most powerful fusion reactor a/k/a “EAST”.
Fusion race:
http://lppfusion.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ntauT-chart.png
How it works:
Reaching ignition:
Complete Album of Videos
Device video:
LPPFusion is a shoe-string operation that’s crowd funded and shortly will be open to small investors.
” sarastro92 October 14, 2017 at 11:34 am” That equation does not equally apply to the various efforts, as the temperature needed is different for each reactant pair. Deuterium-Tritium reactions such as ITER function at a lower temperature than Proton-Boron11 (LPPFusion, TriAlpha) reactions.
Also, I want to point out that D-T reactors (ITER) yield a strong high energy flux of neutrons. Therefore, the reactors will eventually have many of the waste disposal problems of fission reactors. Certainly far less radioactive material, but some. The P-B11 reaction yields three alpha particles but no neutrons.
Dan,
The problem with neutron absorption is entirely radioactive isotope production! If the reaction produces a stable isotope no one worries, but generally if a nucleus in the valley of stability is hit with a neutron, it is pushed well off the valley floor and something has to give to get it back to stability. The nucleus is going to eject an electron or positron to get the p-Z ratio right (beta+/- radiation), or eject an alpha particle to get to the valley. After either emission there is likely to be emission of one or more gamma rays to get the nuclear shell alignments right.
Neutron absorption is rarely non-radiation producing. I don’t know where these fusion activists get off claiming such! (fewer isotopes produced – maybe, but even the fusion result isotopes are going to be giving off at least gamma radiation as the new nuclear shell arrangements settle in and there is likely to be emission of an electron or positron to get to the valley of stability. )
Dan and Owen,
The waste disposal problems of fission are different than fusion. On average, the atomic weight of most of the fission products is about half that of the fissioning elements. That puts them in the area of the periodic table of transition elements, with the tails of the distribution being those utilized by biology, such as calcium/strontium and potassium and sodium. They tend to have short half-lives. The long-lived plutonium and residual uranium isotopes could be extracted from the brew, but President Carter signed an executive order prohibiting re-cycling.
Fusion is expected to produce light elements that will be short-lived, and less likely to be incorporated into biological organisms. Thus, the containment problem is less demanding, and as you point out, there is far less radioactive material produced for the same amount of energy production. The biggest problem will probably be the neutron absorbing/heat transfer blanket, such as lithium. We have managed to kluge ways to cope with the waste products of fission for over 50 years; fusion should be a lot easier to deal with.
Clyde,
I wholeheartedly agree. Waste rods from fission could “easily”* be reprocessed into new rods and a relatively small amount of highly radioactive isotopes as waste. The political will to allow it is the only thing stopping this. Most (read ALL) spent fuel rods aren’t removed because they are out of U or Pu to divide, but because they have too many daughter products sucking all the neutrons out of the flow and killing the reaction efficiency.
*easily as in the typical college textbook that leaves proof of the main thesis of the whole book as an exercise for the student. There is a boatload of engineering work stuck in that easily term!
LPPFusion has reached temperatures of 3 billion degrees C… well within the realm for aneutronic reactions.
Owen in GA,
The French have been reprocessing spent fuel for decades. It isn’t like we need to invent something new!
Carter’s rationalization for prohibiting the USA from reprocessing was to prevent terrorists from intercepting shipments. However, they potentially have a source in France (and Russia). It is a little bit like trying to eliminate a feral cat population by sterilizing all the male cats that can be caught. If you miss a small fraction of the males (even one!) then the effort is for naught. Now that I think about it, it is also analogous to making it extremely difficult for law-abiding citizens to own guns. They aren’t the problem! As long as there are criminals on the streets, there will be people willing to supply them with arms, along with the drugs they are smuggling in.
Got to think about your future.
Gary Pearse
As I recall, membership of the Common Market was in the hands of an incompetent government that seemed to not want to join.
Predictably, little has changed.
As a politically naive very young man in the 70’s, I believe I voted to join the Common Market, although I knew how politically naive I was, so probably didn’t vote at all; on the grounds that I hadn’t a clue what was going on.
However, as an older, slightly more politically aware man, I voted Brexit simply because joining the Common Market specifically excluded a political union.
Indeed, in much the same way remainers demand a re-vote because they had been lied to (even as a young man I recognised politicians lie, so how naive are they?) we old codgers got the opportunity to rectify our original mistake; of believing the Common Market wouldn’t morph into a political union. Unsurprisingly, we too were lied to, but we had to wait 40 years for the opportunity to address that lie.
So lets give the youth of today the same chance to address any mistake made by the majority of the country voting to leave. They only have to wait 40 years.
By the way, my admiration for UKIP went from zero to around seven out of ten when I actually read their manifesto and realised they weren’t racist, homophobic, xenophobic or any of the other accusations made against them. I don’t hear the left hurling accusations of anti Semitism at our current labour party, despite considerably more evidence.
UKIP also have a robustly sceptical view on climate change and I harboured admiration for Nigel Farages personal qualities as a debater, far more straightforward and honest than our incumbent PM, or most of her predecessors.
There seems to be considerable confusion about what the article is saying. Prof. Chapman is in
charge of the EU funded tomak in Oxford (the JET project). The ITER tomak is funded by a wide range of countries including the USA and Japan as well as the EU. Britain leaving the EU will have a major impact on the JET project but almost no impact on the ITER since that is not a EU project.
ITER has always been a boondoggle. It would be good for a few hundred million to fund the alternative approaches and give them 3 years to demonstrate success.
+1
sarastro92, I have followed Eric Lerner’s work from the start as we lived in the same area, as in Lawrenceville is very close to Princeton. There is no doubt the man is driven. And yes, his team looks good. You seam to think that plasma density in not a big deal. It is a very, very big deal. LPP thinks the problem can be solved with a bit of engineering. I’m not so sure. This is new ground. Using Boron is the way to go but, the task is much more difficult. You appear to have an emotional attachment to LLP’s progress. Just remember that emotion and science don’t work well together. I do hope LPP is successful and you are you disappointed.
Thanks for the sermon Ric. If you review Lerner’s lecture posted above (“Reaching Ignition”), he’s quite candid that nothing is guaranteed. It’s also quite clear that Lerner and his tiny team have been extremely diligent in understanding all the variables in play to solving the density problem. Lerner’s theory is that impurities in the reactor chamber cause the plasma to evolve asymmetrically, and never cohere sufficiently to capitalize on the fusion scaling laws expected to be in play.
Lerner and his colleagues are just now beginning to implement a short-term agenda that I mentioned above and that he elaborates in the video (beryllium electrodes, pre-ionization heating, baking out, reconfiguration, loading the pB11 fuel)
Will it work and strike gold? All I stated above is that “Perhaps by the Spring 2018 we’ll see if the density can be reached for ignition.”
By April or May 2018 Lerner will probably have a good idea whether he’s on the right track, whether the impurity theory is valid and if the proposed fixes work. So far the intermediary steps have generated good results in the right direction.
This is not an impossible dream that’s perpetually deferred 35 years in the future. So Hell yeah I’m enthusiastic yet nothing is guaranteed. But your dour pessimism is not warranted either nor is it particularly “realistic”.
Eric Lerner and his team have studied the density problem in great detail and have an agenda to address the challenge. He elaborates in the video posted above (“Reaching Ignition”). All I stated is that we’ll know if he’s on the right track next April or May. Maybe he’ll strike gold or maybe he’s back to square one. So far the intermediary experiments have reinforced the “Impurities Theory”.
Having followed fusion energy for decades myself I can say that Hell, yes… this is damned encouraging. he moment of truth isn’t perpetually 35 years ahead. Your dour pessimism is not particularly realistic and justified. But we’ll see pretty soon how this plays out.
If the problem is FUSION, why do scientists not unite to understand the nature of the fusion formation? If science has not yet explained what magnetism is and how and why it arises, it is certain that they will never know what fusion is. Such attempts to derive energy from “hardened” hydrogen atoms in various relationships and forms will never yield results, because there is no known cause for the atoms to approach and form energy. . And what is the energy and how it gets from subatomic particles, it does not understand science.
Here, I will give you all the basis for understanding this enigma.
When matter is formed by AETHER, which fills the whole universe and in it is “submerged” all matter, the state of matter forms the energy state of the matter in the form of gluons formed by annihilation of an electron-positron pair. Gluon with Aether has a backward “family relationship” in the form of magnetism. How to get this energy state of matter in the form of gluon? and where there are gluons in matter and how to separate them. ? Science thinks atomic nuclei should be compressed to the extent that they merge and then heat release will occur, but they try to achieve this by high temperature and pressure using lasers. ERROR!
There are two other ways to get free energy, because it has infinity in the universe. Only our sun can heat about 500 lions of planets like Earth, 150 million kilometers on the surface of the radius of the radius.
It is much easier to get energy from Aether-gluon !! A further explanation is worth more