The continued promise of fusion power

Saturday 26 February 2011 12:39PM (view full episode)

ITER is an international program which aims to demonstrate the scientific and technical feasibility of fusion energy. The test site is in southern France. Governments representing more than half the world's population are supporting the project. There are a number of approaches to the challenge of producing electricity using fusion. The inertial fusion method uses lasers shooting against deuterium and tritium targets. ITER is a magnetic confinement system. Both are proceeding with promise. The first plasma products required for fusion are expected to be ready by 2019. Electricity for use in grids may still be 30 years away.

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Robyn Williams:Here at the AAAS meeting there is traditionally a gigantic exhibition, and it's as big as an aircraft hangar, as you can imagine. And one of the choice places is called ITER which is to do not with the publisher of a certain magazine in Australia, Ita Buttrose, but to do with fusion power, which has been based, as I understand it, in Europe as one of the most long-established experiments. With me is Ned Sauthoff, who you may remember from seeing on Catalyst. Was it four years ago, Ned?

Ned Sauthoff: Something like that. Jonica Newby came and we had a very, very good visit in Princeton, that was at Princeton University in the plasma physics laboratory.

Robyn Williams: Which is where they've done a tremendous amount of following up to the old tokamak model from what used to be called the Soviet Union.

Ned Sauthoff: Yes, there has been much development in the understanding of tokamaks. It started out with the T3 device in Russia and then the United States built one called the Symmetric Torus in Princeton which was followed by the Princeton Divertor Experiment, Princeton Beta Experiment, and then the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor which was the first device to burn deuterium and tritium which is the high octane fuel for a fusion reactor. And now we're taking what we learned there in order to design an experiment which will demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy.

Robyn Williams: Where are you based now?

Ned Sauthoff: I'm in Oak Ridge Tennessee where we host the US ITER project, which is one of seven so-called domestic agencies which are supporting the central ITER organisation in France.

Robyn Williams: And that's where the director-general is based. And your name sir?

Osaumu Motojima: My name is Osaumu Motojima.

Robyn Williams: Maybe as top man you can tell me about the rumour that I heard in the last year or so that your funds had been limited. Everyone's funds have been limited in the last year around the world for everything, but is ITER still viable?

Osaumu Motojima: I can say the necessary budget is finalised last summer. So your question related is a cost issue I think.

Robyn Williams: So in other words, you are viable.

Ned Sauthoff: We think we're very viable. We have the governments that represent more than half the world's population agreed to fund the construction, the operation and decommissioning of ITER. So we're ready to move.

Robyn Williams: Last year at the AAAS we talked about the laser experiment which was, if you like, the third example of fusion power. That was promising to do something in a year-and-a-half's time, which is about six months from now. Have you heard rumours about whether they are doing well?

Ned Sauthoff: I hear more than rumours, I hear facts. The 192 lasers that are part of the National Ignition Facility at Livermore are working, they have delivered power, and they are now shooting against the deuterium-tritium targets that are the eventual fuel for fusion. So I am very hopeful that inertial fusion energy, which they represent, will succeed. There are really two approaches; inertial fusion energy and magnetic fusion energy, and we believe that both are extremely promising and deserve to be pursued.

Robyn Williams: And of course deuterium is of almost unlimited supply in the ocean, isn't it.

Ned Sauthoff: Yes, it's something like 1/300 atoms of water in the ocean has deuterium. Unfortunately the other nucleus that you need which is tritium was first created during the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago...

Robyn Williams: And that's finite.

Ned Sauthoff: And it decays such that half of it goes away every roughly 12 years, so the original tritium is long, long gone. However, fortunately nature gave us a way to solve that problem, it gave us lots and lots of lithium, which was also created during the Big Bang, and if you have a fusion neutron hit a lithium nucleus, you can then breed tritium, which is the fusion fuel. And so you start out with a little bit of deuterium and tritium, you have them react, produce a neutron, that neutron then hits the lithium which is in the borders of the machine and breeds the tritium that you then reinject to sustain the reaction.

Robyn Williams: Going back to the model that you represent where you have, if you like, the activity of the Sun contained in a gigantic magnet to put it under control, are you up and running yet?

Ned Sauthoff: ITER is not up and running, but the construction project is up and running, and what we are doing at the moment is preparing pieces of hardware which will be provided by the United States to the ITER organisation in France where they will assemble, install and operate to enable a truly world-class research program.

Robyn Williams: When?

Ned Sauthoff: We believe that we will have the first plasma in 2019. And Professor Motojima is the man who is going to receive these products, put them together and turn it into an operating research facility.

Osaumu Motojima: Yes, 2019 is my target to complete the construction of the ITER project and produce this first plasma. So now the ITER project is in a really exciting phase.

Robyn Williams: Very exciting. Eight years time for the construction, when might you (after the trials) have energy online?

Ned Sauthoff: Well, we're taking it at a very prudent pace. The first step is to test the facility running regular hydrogen, and roughly 2026, 2027 we will convert to the high octane fuel of deuterium and tritium. We will then demonstrate that you can create a little sun on Earth wherein the plasma heats itself, a so-called burning plasma. That will then prove that fusion power is real, and now we have to address the engineering challenges, the first of which is the material out of which you would build the reactor. So we see that in parallel with ITER there will be materials development programs which will provide the materials which can be the design basis for the next stage which will be a demonstration power reactor.

Robyn Williams: So that's about 20 years time.

Ned Sauthoff: I guess 20 years to 30 years, right.

Robyn Williams: It's always 30 years, come on!

Osaumu Motojima: Fusion was a dream in the past, 50 years ago, but fusion science developed and in 50 years it's one million times improved. So what I want to say is fusion is not a dream, it's a target.

Robyn Williams: Indeed. And a final question, given the two systems, one we mentioned involving lasers and the other one yours involving magnets, how will they each contribute in different ways to a future world?

Ned Sauthoff: I think they will both succeed and I believe that this variety will give rise to an even better system. As you know, the Wright brothers didn't build a 747, however they got off the ground and provided the basis for the continued development of the aircraft industry. We hope that by pursuing a variety of approaches to fusion we can both demonstrate the feasibility of fusion and enable the development of a truly attractive energy source.

Robyn Williams: To provide how much for the world?

Ned Sauthoff: We hope that we will provide electricity for transportation, for houses, for industry. We don't see fusion as the only source but we believe it is an attractive source which should be part of an energy portfolio.

Robyn Williams: You heard Osaumu Motojima, the ITER director-general, and Professor Ned Sauthoff, ex-Princeton, now at the Oak Ridge laboratory in Tennessee.


Ned Sauthoff
US Iter Project Office
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge Tennessee USA
Osamu Motojima
President, The Japan Society of Plasma Science and Nuclear Fusion Research
Director General ITER


Robyn Williams
David Fisher

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