Why the international experimental nuclear fusion reactor is in 'big trouble'

Effectively unlimited clean energy is the goal.

Let that sink in. Yes, ITER it self isn't ever going to be producing that energy but it is a step in the direction of that end goal.

How can 5 billion dollars extra be considered too much for that end goal? Especially given everything that has happened on the world stage in the last 4 years, and had dramatic effects on the project. Not to mention that the collective yearly budgets of the nations involved is higher than 10 trillion dollars.

Unlimited clean energy.

A personal view on this is also that a rising tide lifts all boats. If the slow moving, very expensive international government project causes more nimble private enterprise to see a way to get there first and get a slice of the budget cake then great!

Unlimited clean energy. It is worth it, IF we can get there.

Multiple sized eggs in different baskets is the best plan.

This article is garbage.

Which is to say, it is full of statements about ITER I've heard for decades at this point - namely, the illusive "industry will totally overtake ITER".

It's been said before, and it hasn't happened: someone announces a thing, declares scale up in 5 years, 5 years passes and they don't have anything - but at the time all the people super-keen to have "totally called it" and prove how smart they are take a pre-emptive victory lap celebrating the success of the private industry over government science, or ITER or something...just slightly misremembering that it hasn't happened yet. Then it doesn't happen.

This article is citing the US NIF as a potential competitor to ITER: it's not. In any possible way. Or to put it another way - the NIF took about 30 years to get to ignition. They are nowhere near Q > 1 (it's also basically not the goal of the facility - the facility is a nuclear weapons research lab first and foremost).

I will confidently make a prediction here: in 5 years Helion will be dead. Commonwealth Fusion Systems still won't have anything. Tokamak Energy won't have anything. The link in this article about private investment is to another article which is already 7 years old. The website[1] of Tokamak energy talks about fusion "in the 2030s."[1] General fusion are saying break-even by 2026.[2] Tri-Alpha-Energy are saying early 2030s[3] for "Da Vinci" (which I'm just going to assume is their power producing prototype since it's hard to tell from the website). Commonwealth Fusion Systems say they're building SPARC right now as a net energy machine, but as of 2024 they are still building it[4]. You know, the next thing will just be "net energy" as a quick to-do point.

Now...do I wish any of these company's ill-fortune? Not at all. I hope they succeed wildly and it turns out everything works great. We'll be several billion in research dollars ahead if someone cuts off ITER at the pass with a viable, cheaper reactor...but they haven't done it yet. You don't get to take a victory lap about their success when there aren't net energy fusion reactors out there. Because saying you can do it, and actually doing it are quite different - otherwise we'd have succeeded at fusion in the early 1970s when we were writing all the initial grant proposals, not spending the next decades learning about plasma stability, loss mechanisms and scaling rules. After all, people were very confident about Polywell fusion being the next big thing till...whoops, once you have the right model of what's happening it's pretty clear you can't get it to work.[5]

[1] https://tokamakenergy.com/about-us-fusion-energy-high-temper...

[2] https://generalfusion.com/

[3] https://tae.com/fusion-power/

[4] https://cfs.energy/technology#sparc-fusion-energy-demonstrat...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell

> "It was originally planned to line the tokamak reactor with protective beryllium but that turned out to be very tricky. It is toxic and eventually it was decided to replace it with tungsten... That was a major design change taken very late in the day.”

The toxicity of beryllium is well known... how did this design decision go through? Someone was asleep at the wheel.

ITER hasn't been the "International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor" for a very long time now. Why does it keep being called that? Even Wikipedia uses it correctly. I don't understand where people keep pulling that term from. Even high-profile publications like Scientific American keep using the old term.

Is it because fusion doesn’t work? That it’s 20 years and $100B of investment away from working and always will be?

I've been watching the promise of fusion power progress through my life and its been endlessly frustrating. Those involved continue to make unfounded claims and promises when the fact is that we simply don't know exactly how to make it work, or if it will work at all.

Successes in one piece of the puzzle, like 2022's success in fusing deuterium and tritium, are paraded around with claims that we just "solved" fusion. In reality the success was a proof of concept that contained fusion is possible, and that it was done while requiring more energy input then was created.

We're 14 years and $20 billion dollars into a project that was mean to take 10 years and $6bn. What have we learned? Plenty of small things certainly, but apparently they also believe to have learned all the unknowns and can now promise that it will only take 15 more years and another $40bn.

I don't buy it, and no one else should either. They don't know how long it will take or what it will cost. 15 years isn't how long the construction process for a now fully understood reactor will take, its a bunch of fluff time hoping its enough to figure out what they still don't know.

When do we say enough is enough and throw in the towel? Unlimited free, clean energy sounds great and all but it also sounds like snake oil. We would be much better off reducing our need for energy rather than continuing to chase a magic solution that we still don't understand how to build.

A good thing is others trying to build their own tokamak instead

The whole thing was designed to be a money sink from day one, draining money away from research that might actually succeed.