TPO – ITER, a $28 billion fusion reactor in France, has completed the installation of the last magnetic coil. But this reactor will not be operational until 2039.
Tokamak was photographed during assembly in 2021. (Photo: Alamy)
The project’s scientists announced the world’s largest fusion reactor was finally completed, But it will take another 15 years to be operational.
The fusion reactor of the International Fusion Energy Project (ITER) was originally planned to begin full testing of the in 2020. Currently, scientists say the reactor will be operational as early as 2039. This means that fusion energy, of which ITER’s tokamak is the pioneer, is unlikely to be born in time to become a solution for theclimate crisis.
The world’s largest nuclear reactor is the product of cooperation between 35 countries including countries in the European Union, The United Kingdom, China, India, and the United States.
ITER contains the world’s most powerful magnet, capable of generating a magnetic field 280,000 times stronger than the magnetic field that protects the Earth. The impressive design of this reactor is quite expensive. It was originally expected to cost about $5 billion and launch in 2020, but has now been delayed several times and the budget has increased more than $22 billion, with an additional $5 billion proposed to cover additional costs. These unforeseen costs and delays are the cause of the delay in getting into operation, at least another 15 years.
Scientists have been trying to harness the power of nuclear fusion—the process by which stars burn. for more than 70 years. By combining hydrogen atoms to produce helium under extremely high pressure and temperature, Main-sequence stars convert matter into light and heat, producing huge amounts of energy without producing coughing greenhouse gaseslong-term radioactive waste.
However, recreating conditions such as those inside the cores of stars is not a simple task. The most common design for fusion reactors, tokamak, works by heating plasma (one of the four states of matter, consists of positive ions and negatively charged free electrons) before holding it inside a reactor chamber with a strong magnetic field.
However, keeping the chaotic and superheated plasma rolls long enough for nuclear fusion to occur is challenging. Soviet scientist Natan Yavlinsky designed the first tokamak reactor in 1958, but since then no one has been able to create a reactor capable of creating more energy than it absorbs.
One of the main obstacles is processing the plasma hot enough to fuse. Fusion reactors require very high temperatures (many times hotter compared to the sun). The sun’s core has a temperature of about 15 million degrees Celsius.