Joint project with EU involves more than 500 scientists and engineers and more than 70 companies
Joint project with EU involves more than 500 scientists and engineers and more than 70 companies
The world’s biggest operational experimental nuclear fusion reactor – a technology in its infancy but billed by some as the answer to humanity’s future energy needs – has been inaugurated in Naka, Japan.
Fusion differs from fission, the technique used in nuclear power plants, by fusing two atomic nuclei instead of splitting one.
The goal of the JT-60SA reactor is to investigate the feasibility of fusion as a safe, large-scale and carbon-free source of net energy – with more energy generated than is put into producing it.
The six-storey-high machine, in a hangar in Naka, north of Tokyo, comprises a doughnut-shaped “tokamak” vessel set to contain swirling plasma heated up to 200mC (360mF).
It is a joint project between the European Union and Japan, and is the forerunner for its big brother in France, the under-construction International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).
Awesome next step! Yes it is going to be expensive, yes it will not be successful in the beginning and so on... We need this kind of research, cause it will not develop itself!
That's not surprising at all. The investment required with the high possibility of failure makes this a non starter for private business which are inherently risk adverse.
Private businesses engage in extremely risky enterprises everyday, it's why things like explicit liability exist. The issue with something like this is their cost benefit analysis tells them that succeeding would create diminishing rates of return. Solving fusion reaction for the purposes of generating electricity eliminates a form of scarcity. Scarcity or manufactured scarcity is the only thing that enables corporations to continually increase profits.
I wonder how it work with 500+ scientists working together. What do they do? Split them among various parts of the projects. And somehow they'll be able to coordinate what they need to achieve?
Wow down votes for asking question? Y'all need to chill out.
I work for a company with over 120,000 employees and...while it has some inefficiencies, yes, different groups coordinate and achieve different parts of different areas and projects.
I imagine it must be pretty hard to coordinate groups, different level of skills, management, etc. And if one part joined another, and their projects aren't compatible with each other, and more.
The world’s biggest operational experimental nuclear fusion reactor – a technology in its infancy but billed by some as the answer to humanity’s future energy needs – has been inaugurated in Naka, Japan.
It is a joint project between the European Union and Japan, and is the forerunner for its big brother in France, the under-construction International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).
Researchers at ITER, which is over budget, behind schedule and facing major technical problems, hope to achieve nuclear fusion technology’s holy grail, net energy.
The EU energy commissioner, Kadri Simson, said the JT-60SA was “the most advanced tokamak in the world”, and called the start of operations “a milestone for fusion history”.
The US government called the result a “landmark achievement” in the quest for a source of unlimited, clean power and an end to reliance on carbon-emitting fossil fuels that cause climate change as well as geopolitical upheaval.
Unlike fission, fusion carries no risk of catastrophic nuclear accidents, such as the disaster in Fukushima in Japan in 2011, and produces far less radioactive waste than current power plants, its exponents say.
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