Inside the world’s first nuclear reactor that uses the same nuclear reactions as the sun to power the Earth

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Euronews Next goes behind the scenes at the world’s largest nuclear fusion device, which aims to harness the same reactions that power the sun and stars.

In the heart of Provence, the brightest scientific minds on the planet are setting the stage for what is being called the world’s largest and most ambitious scientific experiment.

“We are building probably the most complex machine ever designed,” confessed Laban Koblenz.

The immediate challenge is to demonstrate the feasibility of using nuclear fusion, the same reaction that powers the sun and stars, on an industrial scale.

To achieve this, the world’s largest magnetic confinement chamber (tokamak) that generates net energy is being built in the south of France.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Project Agreement was formally signed in 2006 by the United States, the European Union, Russia, China, India, and South Korea at the Elysée Palace in Paris.

More than 30 countries are currently working together to build the experimental device, which is expected to weigh 23,000 tonnes and withstand temperatures of up to 150 million degrees Celsius when completed.

“In a sense, this is like a national laboratory, a facility of a large research institution, but it is actually a collection of national laboratories from 35 countries,” said Koblenz, ITER’s head of communications. He told News Next.

How does nuclear fusion work?

Fusion is a process in which two lighter atomic nuclei fuse to form one heavier atomic nucleus, producing a large release of energy.

In the case of the Sun, the hydrogen atoms in its core are fused together by enormous gravitational pressure.

Meanwhile, here on Earth, two main methods of generating nuclear fusion are being researched.

“One, you may have heard of the National Ignition Facility in the United States,” Koblenz explained.

“You take two forms of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, in very, very small, pepper-sized amounts, and you shine a laser at them. So you’re doing the same thing. The pressure is also pulverizing.” When heat is applied, an energy explosion E = mc² occurs. A small amount of matter is converted into energy. ”

ITER’s project focuses on a second possible route: magnetically confined fusion.

“In this case, we have a very large chamber, 800 cubic meters, and we put in a very small amount of fuel, 2 to 3 grams of fuel, deuterium, tritium, and we heat it up to 150 million degrees through various heating systems. ” said Laban.

“This is the temperature at which the speed of these particles is so high that instead of repelling each other with positive charges, they combine and fuse. And when they fuse, alpha particles are released, and neutrons are released. Masu.”

In a tokamak, charged particles are confined by a magnetic field, with the exception of high-energy neutrons, which escape and collide with the walls of the room, transferring their heat and thereby heating the water flowing behind the walls. .

In theory, the energy is harnessed by steam that drives a turbine.

“This is sort of the successor to a series of research instruments,” said Richard Pitts, section leader of ITER’s science department.

“Tokamak physics has been studied in this field for about 70 years, since the first experiments were designed and built in Russia in the 1940s and 50s,” he added.

According to Pitts, early tokamaks were small tabletop devices.

“Then little by little, they get bigger and bigger, because from our research on these small devices and scaling research from small to large to larger, it’s hard to generate net fused power from these things. “We need to build something as big as this,” he said.

Benefits of fusion

Nuclear power plants have been in operation since the 1950s and rely on the fission reaction, in which atoms are split in a nuclear reactor, releasing large amounts of energy in the process.

Nuclear fission has the distinct advantage of being a proven and established method, with over 400 nuclear fission reactors currently in operation around the world.

But while nuclear disasters are rare events in history, the catastrophic meltdown of Chernobyl reactor 4 in April 1986 is a stark reminder that nuclear disasters are not completely risk-free.

In addition, nuclear fission reactors must also deal with the safe management of vast amounts of radioactive waste, which are typically buried deep underground in geological repositories.

In contrast, ITER points out that a similar-sized fusion plant would generate electricity from a much smaller chemical input, just a few grams of hydrogen.

“The safety benefits are incomparable,” Koblenz said.

“There are only 2 to 3 grams of material. Moreover, the deuterium and tritium, which are the materials of the fusion reactor, and the non-radioactive helium and neutrons that come out are all used. Therefore, the rest is “In other words, the inventory of radioactive material is very, very small,” he added.

ITER project setback

Koblenz emphasizes that the challenge with fusion is that building these reactors remains very difficult.

“Trying to get something up to 150 million degrees, trying to get it to the scale you need it to be, etc. It’s just difficult,” he says.

Indeed, the ITER project has struggled with the complexities of this gigantic undertaking.

The ITER project’s original schedule set 2025 as the first plasma date, with full system commissioning scheduled for 2035.

However, component failures and COVID-19-related delays are changing system commissioning schedules and increasing budgets accordingly.

The project’s original cost estimate was 5 billion euros, which has increased to more than 20 billion euros.

“We have faced challenges in the past simply due to the complexity and the number of first-time materials and first-time components in a first-time machine,” Koblenz explained.

One significant problem involved misalignment of the welding surfaces of the vacuum chamber segments manufactured in South Korea.

“The one that arrived had enough misfits on the edges of the welds that the edges needed to be redone,” Koblenz said.

“In that particular case, it’s not rocket science. It’s not even nuclear physics. It’s just machining and making things happen with incredible precision, which was difficult,” he said. added.

Koblenz said the project is currently undergoing a resequencing process in hopes of getting it as close as possible to the 2035 goal of starting fusion operations.

“Instead of focusing on a pre-first plasma date, first mechanical testing in 2025, and a series of four stages to get to first fusion power in 2035, we just skip first plasma. .Please make sure that the test is done in a different way so that we can stick to that date as much as possible,” he said.

International cooperation

As far as international cooperation is concerned, ITER is something of a unicorn in that it has withstood the headwinds of geopolitical tensions among the many countries participating in the project.

“These countries don’t always align ideologically. If you look at the distinctive flag at Alphabet’s workplace, China flies next to Europe and Russia flies next to the United States. ” Koblenz pointed out.

“There was no certainty that these countries would make a 40-year commitment to work together. There was never any certainty that some kind of conflict would not arise.”

Koblenz attributes the relative health of the project to the fact that getting fusion up and running is a shared dream across generations.

“That’s what unites its strength. And that’s why it has been able to overcome the current sanctions that Europe and others have imposed on Russia in the current situation in Ukraine,” he added.

Climate change and clean energy

Given the scale of the challenge posed by climate change, it’s no wonder scientists are racing to find carbon-free energy sources to power the world.

But fusion energy is still a long way from being in abundant supply, and even ITER admits its project is a long-term solution to the energy problem.

Against the idea that fusion is too slow to fight the climate crisis in any meaningful way, Koblenz argues that fusion power may have a role to play in the future.

“What if sea levels really rise to the point where we need energy consumption to run cities? Once you start to see energy challenges on that scale, the answer to your question really becomes clear,” he said.

“The longer we wait for fusion to arrive, the more fusion we will need. So smart money is to get fusion as quickly as possible.” Nuclear fusion nuclear fusion nuclear fusion nuclear fusion fusion fusion nuclear fusion nuclear fusion nuclear fusion Nuclear fusion arrives. “

For more on this story, watch the video in the media player above.

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