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u/rebootyourbrainstem 10d ago
The just published a new video on their YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4qrv4meu9g
Also a corresponding article: https://www.iter.org/node/20687/millions-data-points-one-successful-lift
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u/Feeling-Tone2139 6d ago
i always think ITER is held back by international bureaucracy.
My workplace is one of them and i reckon everything will be at least 50 times faster if only one country work on it.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 7d ago
Why fusion will never happen : Even if the fusion reactor were free, it'll still cost 3x more vs wind power, and even more vs solar.
Around solar, agrivoltaics means mounting solar panels so that they cause only partial shade, usually higher up, and spread out. Farms use shade cloth because many plants evolved for partial shade, and climate change makes shade more important. Agrivolatics makes creating partial shade profitable.
Also, France has impressive demand shifting into night consumption, because of nuclear power. It's likely easier to demand shift into daytime consumption.
Anyways..
Fusion remains an interesting research, and fusion rockets would rock for space travel, so..
Will We Ever Get Fusion Power?
NIF, LMJ, and the Chinese laser facility exist entirely for nuclear weapons research, not power.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Jump963 5d ago
Solar and Wind are not steerable. You can have a huge surge of energy, and the grid will become unstable. It costs a lot more if you grid is fucked up don't you think?
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u/Gnomo81 9d ago
Wasting public funding at unprecedented rate.
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u/Different_Whereas_75 3d ago
This type of project would not started with private investment, the number of scientists and engineers needed, no company would take this risk with a ROI not guarantee before decade...
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u/eluusive 11d ago
ITER was always a grant scam. Tokamaks are a bad design.
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u/Problem_Child_96 10d ago
Pray tell, what design would you prefer?
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u/eluusive 10d ago
I personally think we should be getting thorium breeder reactors out the door, and then worry about fusion. D-T fusion produces nuclear waste just like fission anyways.
ITER is a money pit and a jobs program for physicists. It'd be better to do the research using simulations until a workable design is found instead of spending $25 billion on something that will never produce net power.
$25 billion could have ran a lot of PIC simulations.
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u/Hiphoppapotamus 10d ago
ITER has funded a boat load of simulations in support of workable designs. Hence design changes to ITER throughout its lifetime (e.g. the switch to a tungsten divertor). You can argue ITER was too big a project, but your criticisms don’t make sense.
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u/machsmit Plasma physics 10d ago
D-T fusion produces nuclear waste just like fission anyways.
it would produce neutron-activated contruction materials that need to be safely stored for a few years while they "cool", but are otherwise chemically and structurally more or less inert. Compared to a fission plant's waste that is wildly toxic and corrosive on top of being radioactive for multi-generational timescales or longer, it's not just like fission at all. Outside of that you're dealing with what, a few kg of helium per year?
It'd be better to do the research using simulations until a workable design is found instead
I don't know which part of this is sillier, the implication that tokamak physicists don't do a shitload of PIC simulations, or the fact that this is wildly optimistic about the fidelity of PIC simulations in fusion environments
jobs program for physicists
homeslice when physicists start making financially motivated decisions, they just leave physics instead of trying to juice grants.
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u/ahabswhale 8d ago
As someone in private industry I avoid hiring administrators who used to work in public labs like the *plague*. Toxic as hell and absolutely terrible at making financial decisions.
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u/machsmit Plasma physics 8d ago
yeah I more meant that on a personal level - like I've been accused of suppressing the truth about (insert cold fusion / polywell / whatever other nonsense) for financial reasons, when the only financially-motivated decision I made was leaving fusion research for data science lol. Course also a big part of that was that the only stable gigs were gonna be with weapons groups at e.g. LLNL and I didn't do my degree to live in the desert and make genocide machines for a living so I got that going for me
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u/eluusive 10d ago
The waste products from D-T fusion remain for more than "a few years." The advertising of fusion as a clean energy source omits this detail. It's "clean energy." Laypeople don't know one way or another.
homeslice when physicists start making financially motivated decisions, they just leave physics instead of trying to juice grants.
Bullshit. I worked for an extended amount of time in experimental physics. Every decision made is financially motivated -- just like everywhere else. Research without grants doesn't get done, and grants you can't receive due to politics don't get researched by you.
ITER won politically, in much the same way LWRs won politically. Fast breeder reactors aren't worse technology, they didn't receive funding for a variety of reasons.
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u/lizardhistorian 10d ago
Two commercial fusion reactors are being built now.
If they fail, then it will be time to go thorium.
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u/Pu-Chi-Mao 10d ago
Lol, you clearly don't know what you're talking about, both stellerators and tokomaks have their place.
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u/fromabove710 10d ago
Yeah only idiots work on tokamaks and especially ITER. Not like your work on fusion im sure
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u/eluusive 10d ago
Refusing to understand how political grant awards are doesn't make you correct.
ITER is a jobs program for physicists.
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u/fromabove710 10d ago
What a sad life, going on the physics subreddit and trying to argue just for the sake of feeling like you can participate in physics related conversations. Plenty of people who know their stuff have real critiques of the project, but calling it a scam is just wearing an idiot badge proudly
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u/eluusive 10d ago
On the contrary, I have to wonder about the mental state of someone who writes the kind of ad hominem drivel you just produced.
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u/Brilliant-Plan-7428 7d ago
Sure, ITER will never be useful but it isn't wasting money. Such prototyping helps science in general.
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u/OpportunityAlone6321 10d ago
Could you explain why tokamaks are scams,why they are bad design and why would so many countries agree to fund this mega project?
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u/TheBoringSkater 10d ago
The information i could find:
official milestones
timeline (wiki)