The Hindu Business Line : The ITER fusion experiment — Solution to a looming energy crisis?

Leading scientists the world over are now pretty much in agreement that the world's first large-scale, sustainable nuclear fusion reactor, to be set up in France at an estimated cost of $10 billion, will prove crucial to meeting the world's future energy needs. But the project has had its share of controversy.

COMING as it does in the midst of great uncertainty about the global energy scenario, the recent announcement by the six-member consortium of the United States, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea and the European Union that Cadarache in southern France will be the site of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), provides a degree of reassurance.

Leading scientists the world over are now pretty much in agreement that the world's first large-scale, sustainable nuclear fusion reactor, to be established at an estimated cost of $10 billion, will prove crucial to meeting the world's future energy needs.

But the project has had its share of controversy. When the fusion project was first proposed in the 1980s, many scientists had argued that "big science" was diverting funding from the "little science" of individual researchers, responsible, in many noteworthy instances, for some significant scientific breakthroughs.

However, not much attention was paid to this argument as those in the know were uncomfortably aware of the imminence of a global energy crisis. Mr Peter Haug, Secretary-General of the European Nuclear Society, had summed up the position of policy-makers when he said that "oil and gas depletion will start in 2030 or 2035" and that most experts were agreed that renewable energy sources like wind or solar power would never provide more than 15-20 per cent of the world's energy needs because of technical difficulties. Coal is, of course, available in abundance — but it is not much of an option because of its environmental cost.

And then, again, as is unfortunately usual in such cases, although the physics of nuclear fusion was well established, the project logistics involved had proved tricky. Initiated by the consortium in 1988, the project had got off to a rancorous start with much bickering over the location of the reactor's design team.

A compromise was worked out, by splitting the team among Japan, Germany and the US — and then fresh wrangling broke out over the location of the reactor with the US, Japan and South Korea rooting for the Japanese site and the other three consortium members plugging for France. With the project now moving ahead, the consortium will begin work on drafting the accord dealing with the construction and operation of the reactor.

ITER officials say that that it should, in all likelihood, be signed by the end of the year and that work on the reactor will probably begin next year — although ground will be broken at the Cadarache site only in 2008. If all goes well, the reactor should be up and running in 2016. The project has a provision for the participation of countries besides those forming the consortium.

It is understood that India has expressed interest in taking part in the project. This is not necessarily good news: The final agreement covering the sharing of costs is expected to include provisions requiring participants who cause project delays to pay compensation. India can be counted upon to cause delays — if nothing else — and will almost certainly wind up with a hefty bill. What, exactly, is the ITER all about?

The ITER is a supra-national tokamak (magnetic confinement fusion) experiment designed to show the scientific and technological feasibility of a full-scale fusion power reactor and to build upon research conducted on devices such as TFTR, JET, JT-60 and T-15. The word `tokamak' is a transliteration of the Russian word derived from a group of Russian words which translate in English into toroidal chamber in magnetic coils.

Invented in the 1950s by Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm and Andrei Sakharov, the tokamak uses plasma current to generate the helical component of the magnetic field necessary for stable equilibria. The tokamak can be compared to another toroidal magnetic confinement device, the stellarator, in which all the confining magnetic fields are produced by external coils and there is a negligible current flowing through the plasma.

The ITER, intended to be an experimental step from the current state of plasma physics to electricity-producing fusion power plants of the future, will use a hydrogen plasma torus designed to produce approximately 500 million watts of fusion power sustained for up to 500 seconds.

It bears noting here that the project has attracted opposition from environmental bodies as well. Greenpeace, for instance, has described it as "madness" in that "nuclear fusion has all the problems of nuclear power, including producing nuclear waste and the risks of a nuclear accident."

Those organisations opposed to the project have further pointed out that the billions of dollars that will be spent on the ITER project could be better used to build 10,000 MW offshore wind-farms.

By current reckoning, the construction of the reactor will work out to about $5 billion, with its operational costs adding up to approximately another $5 billion over 20 years, according to ITER.

The criticism of the project has been limited, by and large, to environmental activists because most people in the developed countries are aware (in general terms, if not in minute technical detail) of the depletion of oil and gas, the unacceptability of coal as a source of energy — and of fusion's potential as a solution to the imminent global energy crisis.

However, even the most ardent advocates of fusion concede that the process is decades away from practical application.

According to a timeline published on ITER's Web site, a larger demonstration project will kick in around 2030 and a commercial fusion reactor in 2050.

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