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The first of the seven modules that constitute a key component of the international effort to turn the huge potential of nuclear fusion energy into reality has been successfully shipped from the San Diego area to overseas - and the other is about to go out this week.
General Atomics is manufacturing and testing the components that make up the central solenoid valve (the most powerful magnet in the world), which will be inserted into the huge ITER nuclear fusion project under construction near the town of Cadarache in southern France.
The ITER project hopes to make significant progress in the development of nuclear fusion energy, and its supporters claim that this technology can provide the world with an almost inexhaustible supply of clean energy.
The first module left the 60,000 square foot warehouse at the General Atomics Magnetic Technology Center in Poway in June. It was then towed by a special transport truck to the Houston Waterway for two weeks, and then transported across the Atlantic Ocean to Marseille, France, and arrived on July 25.
Next month, this 250,000-pound module will complete the journey to ITER (pronounced "eater") via another specially designed truck.
“This is truly a major milestone in the US ITER project,” James Van Dam of the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences at the US Department of Energy said by video Tuesday at an event at the Poway warehouse that featured remarks from energy officials and elected representatives .
The second module will be loaded on Friday and will travel to Houston and follow the same path as the first module to France.
"I don't want to say that this is a routine, because there is no routine like this, but now we are confident that our plan will work," said John Smith, director of engineering and projects at General Atomics.
All in all, seven modules will be shipped from Poway to France. The six will eventually be stacked on top of each other and placed at the core of the ITER project, allowing approximately 45,000 amperes of current to flow through the central solenoid valve. The seventh module will be used as a backup module to prevent problems with other modules.
Each module is 7 feet high and 14 feet in diameter, surrounded by a 3.6-mile-long conductor segment, with six layers of insulating tape, with a total length of more than 180 miles.
The central solenoid valve is designed to generate a powerful magnetic field to guide and shape the extremely hot, energy-generating plasma that looks like a cloud. When the hydrogen plasma reaches 150 million degrees Celsius (more than 300 million degrees Fahrenheit), fusion occurs.
This temperature is 10 times higher than the core temperature of the sun.
ITER is not a power plant. Rather, this is a research project aimed at paving the way for the development of facilities that can use fusion power generation. In fact, no commercial factory has ever been built, and fusion energy is only produced in a short period of time in the laboratory.
A consortium of 35 countries is contributing components and expertise to ITER. As part of its contribution, Japan has delivered about 26 miles of steel sheathed superconductors on the universal atomic module.
The ITER site covers approximately 445 acres and has been under construction since 2010 and has now been approximately 75% completed. The first test of the plasma is scheduled for 2025.
Nuclear fusion is different from the nuclear fission process of commercial nuclear power plants, such as the now closed San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant. Fission splits atomic nuclei to generate energy, and fusion causes hydrogen nuclei to collide and fuse into helium atoms, releasing huge amounts of energy.
Nuclear fusion led to the development of the hydrogen bomb. Since the 1950s, scientists and researchers have been looking for a way to use nuclear fusion as a source of electricity.
Proponents believe that fusion may be an ideal energy source because the required deuterium fuel is easily obtained from seawater, and its only by-product is helium. Fusion does not emit greenhouse gases.
"This will change the world," Van Dam said.
But integration also has critics. Skeptics sometimes repeat the old irony that fusion as a practical source of power always takes 30 years. Others question whether fusion can be used as a practical energy source, and some environmental groups oppose any type of nuclear energy.
The ITER project is expected to cost about $7 billion, but recent estimates indicate that the cost may eventually be 10 times higher, leading some critics to say that this price tag is diverting resources from other energy projects.
In May of this year, ITER Director General Bernard Bigot stated at a media briefing that the project will face higher costs and delays in testing due to the complexity of the global supply chain related to COVID-19. Bigot did not elaborate, but told reporters that he expects to conduct an assessment before the end of the year, which will include specific details.
Smith said that General Atomics’ work on the module has not encountered pandemic-related delays.
The United States’ contribution accounts for approximately 9% of ITER’s cost, but the United States will obtain 100% of the project’s data and intellectual property rights, which will prove very valuable for future fusion plans and power plant development.
Initially, ITER stood for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, but in recent years, organizers have tried to separate this name from thermonuclear weapons because the project does not produce the fissile material needed to make explosives. Instead, they now prefer to emphasize the Latin word "iter", which means "way."
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