What a monster.
Its going to take years just tracking the virtual leaks and outgassing problems. The vacuum chambers are too big to be fabricated and cleaned correctly. Then there is the problem that all Tokamaks have with the plasma physics of each Toke being a blank sheet when they startup. We've been playing with these things for fifty years now and we still don't understand them enough to make them work with any degree of certainty. I think fusion money on any scale should be spent on Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor programs at engineerin schools and as many Bussard projects as can be crammed down the DOE's labs throats. I think that the time is long past where we accept the "push" of the empire builders in the big labs. If Hirsch had followed his instincts when he was head of the DOE's fusion program we wouldn't be having an energy problem now.

This isn't a research project with the goal of producing a viable power reactor - it's a lifetime jobs program for PhDs. 12 more years just to finish the prototype?

WTF?

And then 10 to 15 years of tests, and then MAYBE build something?

There's something seriously wrong here.

JC,

Yep. We need to build lots of experiments. We may wind up with something like a MAgrid in the center with focusing grids in the "dead space".

Or something completely different.

You are right. The empire builders have taken over.

Fortunately the US Congress is starting to get it. The Europeans are not so lucky.

I agree about your vacuum point - all those joints. They will have to devote many days of the full output of a nuke reactor to cooking it out.

And they plan to coat the walls (sputtering?) with Boron to solve the first wall problem.

T. A. Heppenheimer's book "Man Made Sun" covers the early history of fusion:
http://www.amazon.com/Man-Made-Sun-Quest-Fusion/dp/0316357936/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200965106&sr=8-1
The history of fusion energy has been filled with empire builders from the beginning. This was the era of big science with big experiments, most of which rust in pieces in DOE graveyards. Yet in one of the most tragic cases Robert Hirsch walked into what was then AEC offices with a fusor and nobody paid any attention to it. Even later when Hirsch became head of the fusion program he couldn't get any of the empire builders to pay any attention.

The sad thing is that ITER is pulling a number of very good physicists and engineers out of the job market, making them scarce for other more realizable energy solutions, such as those based on advanced nuclear fission concepts (e.g., Molten Salt Reactor). Instead of focusing on something that can be brought to market in a relatively few number of years, we are stuck with a machine that will forever be the "energy of the future".

I wonder if you could compare fusion energy to the Longitude problem in the 18th century. It took John Harrison decades to make a working marine chronometer small enough for a ship. Between H3 (which is more like a regular clock) and H4 (an oversized pocket watch of the day), there was a huge shift in Harrison's thinking. The results were revolutionary.

ITER is like H1-H3. Huge, complex. It may actually work. Polywell is H4 and H5. Small, compact, keeps accurate time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison

Call me crazy, but if someone can provide a convincing concept to venture capitalists, something will get built.

And, if you can't convince people to invest in a concept, it is probably not worth pursuing.

"can you tell us what the Ultimate Question is?"

"No."

"They're gonna tear us to pieces."

"But I'll tell you who can...!"

"Who?"

"I speak of the computer to come after me, whose least parameters I am unworthy to design..."

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

mock,

Venture capitalists always come in after there is some success in a field.

What is needed now is people willing to throw their money away. Government is really best at that. Sadly.

I have suggested that throwing the money away more intelligently is the answer. It looks like the US Congress is listening. It looks like the EU is stuck on stupid.

M. Simon, ITER is an international project and the EU is involved. Check here:

http://www.iter.org/

CERN is also building the world's largest collider reactor. Check this video for details.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBa-w6GGuJE

The EU has plenty things wrong about it but they do see the wisdom in funding projects like these.

mishu,

I too see the wisdom of the EU putting all its fusion eggs in the ITER basket.

When America invents cheap fusion we will be able to sell it to the EU.

Europeans are paying for the privilege of buying from America. Which is a VERY good deal for Americans.

I don't know how to thank the Europeans enough. This little video show will have to suffice.

Mishu,
I have worked in a DOE research lab and seen how these things work, or don't. Tokes have a history that is long and full of machines that are failures in Europe, the Russian Federation, the US and Japan. I know what I am talking about when I say that this machine just another case of repeating the same mistake over again. It's as if the plasma Physicists say, "Well TFTR didn't work as well as expected, lets build the next one bigger and maybe it will work." I'm not sure what it says about some supposedly very smart people when they keep pounding the problem with ever bigger hammers when they need an easyout.
Looking at the second film again I saw things that made the vacuum engineer in me cringe. Moving pieces of a vacuum chamber on a barge open to atmosphere. Welding on dirty floors. Giant moving machinery with open bearings, motors and cable. In a vacuum chamber that has to maintain vacuum to 10exp-9 Torr.

I am enthused about the potential of the Bussard Reactor, and have my fingers crossed for good results this spring from the Navy-funded work.

But. Suppose IEC fusion proves out and works the way we hope it does. What then for ITER? Just because it has no hope of actually working in out lifetime does not mean that what these people are doing has no value. They are working on some truly hard (sub)-problems, and have come up with solutions or potential solutions for them. I am concerned that with the announcement of successful IEC fusion, all that work will be lost... like the knowledge about how to build the Saturn 5 heavy-lift booster was lost at the end of the Apollo program. Also, dumping that many scientists and engineers on the market at once might be a problem; remember the bad consequences of the SSC cancellation?

It's a small concern in comparison to the benefits of practical fusion in the near term, but it worries me somewhat. I think that instead of simply cutting all funding cold turkey, that an effort should be made to throughly document all progress made so far. To put the ITER project to bed properly.

Note: I am not a physicist or engineer in any way associated with ITER -- I am a software developer. It's just that even my abandoned projects sometimes have useful ideas that can be mined for new projects. (And yes, I have pack-rat nature, I hate to throw anything out. Sometimes it pays off.)

My approach would be to use gravity as the means for concentrating and containing the plasma to the degree necessary to sustain a fusion reaction. All we really need is the machinery to project a gravity beam of sufficient intensity. I think it could be ready by 2050. All I need is 15 billion Euros, up front. If I don't bring it in on deadline, they can sue my estate.

For the interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

The 500MW $15B ITER prototype machine, which will not (by design) produce a single watt of electricity. For $15 billion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO

That's the 2GW "DEMO" actual plant. They don't go into details, but based on tokamak physics it has to be a lot bigger (tokamak efficiences increase with size), and I'm guessing something on the order $100B as the cost. That means it will cost about an order of magnitude more than current energy sources. If we ever have to rely on tokamaks as any percentage of our power production base, we are in serious trouble. And it will be 30+ years before DEMO's built, assuming it finishes on schedule.

We really need a serious paradigm shift if we're going to have useful fusion tech. I hope Bussard was right, because from all appearances tokamaks are far too expensive to ever compete with fission.

You know, magnetic confinement is a boondoggle. Farsnworth had neutrons from a tabletop rig in the 1950s but they pretty much stonewalled him. That was (and is) a working reactor that even college kids can build. Electrostatic confinement (Hirsch-Farnsworth fusor) is the only reasonable choice. This is another example of controlling your basic resources to milk you for all you can spend.

What's with 2050? That's when they say the sexbots will be ready too.

Does everything have to happen when I'm 96?

I suspect a conspiracy of some sort.

J Carelton, I get your point, but I think your analogy breaks down real quick.

The Saturn 5, as well as the Lunar Lander and the Command Module were state of the art that worked as advertised. They all were truly glorious.

If Hirsh had gotten funding and built a working IEC device in 1979, our understanding of Plasma physics would have taken huge leaps by 2008. QED ships would be plying the local solar system. It would be glorious.

Tokes wont work, they are not glorious.

I would offer to you that the shift of labor has already started, Livermore gave up Dr Nebel to Polywell.

If the fuse gets lit and Polywell gets Manhattenized, then it may be that 2 or 3 devices will need to be built concurrently. At that point I could see many Toke folk jumping the fence to Polywell.

All the Toke research will not be lost, but honestly... you worry.

Comparing the Apollo program to the ITER is just not fair to the folks who worked on Apollo.

Roger Fox: No, that was me making that comment. Don't you hate it that some blogs put the comment signature at the top, and some at the bottom... and then don't mark the grouping very clearly? It can be a big source of confusion.

The bottom is the logical place to put the comment line, but putting it at the top is becoming more common in blogs - it allows forum regulars to skip past known verbose people (*cough*Carol Herman*cough*) quickly.

So yeah, Eric, you might consider putting a <hr> between comments, to mark things off more clearly... Oh, while we are at it, and your site search is broken, too. :-)