The theses by which the scandal occurs

Untitled Document

There is something rotten in the kingdom of science

January 14, 2012

This sentence means nothing to you? It's the one that Hamlet says, in Shakespeare's play, word for word.

Many people have urged me to write my memoirs. But for that, I need time, and I don't have much. Moreover, at 74, time is running out for me. I spent eight months on the ITER file, because no one else was doing it. I was helped by some scientists in office, muzzled by their hierarchy, rightly fearing violent retaliation from the nuclear lobby, which is extremely powerful. If someone else could have looked into this file, I was the only one who could speak out clearly and openly.

I clearly put my finger "where it hurts." At a time when traditional anti-nuclear activists focus on radioactive pollution issues, for which the CEA has rigged answers, but all ready, I approached the problem differently.

ITER, like all tokamaks, is fundamentally unstable. On the scale of small machines like Tore Supra or JET, this instability results in some damage now and then. Boom! You sweep, you replace parts, and that's it. But as young Cédric Reux pointed out in his thesis in November 2010 and the Englishman Andrew Thornton in January 2011, at the scale of "these future large tokamaks, like ITER, it will be entirely different. And Thornton even wrote that a disruption on a power tokamak "would be a catastrophe," would be a catastrophe.

Act 1)

The theses that reveal the scandal:

Reux's thesis: http://www-fusion-magnetique.cea.fr/en_savoir_plus/articles/disruptions/these_c_reux.pdf

Andrew Thornton's PhD: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/1509/1/AT_thesis_FINAL.pdf

Act 2)

Ten years ago, this expensive chimera was already drawn up, based on technical data now outdated. Members of the Research, Energy, and Budget Committees, then members of the European Parliament, gathered in plenary session, voted to extend the budget from 5 to 15 billion euros, despite the fight led by Michèle Rivasi, who disseminated the 13-page text I had composed at her request, and also the English translation of this document within non-French speaking parliamentary bodies:

/legacy/NUCLEAIRE/ITER/ITER_fusion_non_controlee/chronique_faillite_annoncee.pdf

Thus, men live

Their decisions follow them from afar

Paraphrase of a song by Léo Ferré (based on a poem by Aragon)

And Michèle Rivasi concluded bitterly, in a press conference: "These people voted a 15 billion euro budget (which will quickly double, don't worry) even though none of them knows what a tokamak or a disruption is, and no one in this Parliament has the slightest desire to make the effort to find out."

At the same time, a copy of this document was published in the magazine Nexus, the only one that gives me these columns. I sent an article to the magazine Pour la Science, which did not have the courtesy to respond. But I expected that. Excommunicated, I am banned from science media (don't you find it strange that this four-year effort represented by the site Savoir sans Frontières, where nearly 400 of my albums, in 34 languages, are offered for free download, has not been mentioned in their columns?)

Fury within the CEA, which first pushed Cédric Reux to write a letter to Michèle Rivasi "expressing his indignation at the misuse of his writings."

Act 3)

Immediate response from me by publishing, on my site, 115 pages of the document, of which the one distributed within the European Commission was only a summary.

/legacy/NUCLEAIRE/ITER/ITER_fusion_non_controlee/Chronique_sans_Z.pdf

Act 4)

The CEA people's lamentable evasion, who gave up on November 16, after Michèle Rivasi had proposed a filmed debate, four against one, in a room of the National Assembly. Evasion of the trio Bernard Bigot, General Administrator of the CEA, Alain Bécoulet, Deputy Director of the CEA's Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research, "ITER expert," and finally Cédric Reux, guilty of saying out loud what everyone had known for a long time: that these damned tokamaks were unstable machines, that they were not close to being controlled. All this because journalist Jean Robin (site Enquete et Debat) was present, with his camera, ready to put the recording of this debate online.

A debate that did not take place, and will not take place. There remains this filmed interview in the National Assembly office, on the same November 16, 2011.

Rivasi Petit

****http://www.enquete-debat.fr/archives/michele-rivasi-et-jean-pierre-petit-a-propos-diter

Outrage at the CEA and IRFM. Insulting emails from Philippe Ghendrih, researcher at this institute. Publication of a clarification text on the CEA's own website, "analyzing the article published in the November 2011 issue of the Nexus magazine".

****http://www-fusion-magnetique.cea.fr/en_savoir_plus/articles/disruptions/analyse_critiquearticle_petit_nexus_vf.pdf

What an honor! Ten pages of criticism, plus their English version, posted online on November 17, 2011, the very next day after the aforementioned evasion. Unprecedented. As Rivasi said on the 16th, when we were vainly waiting for our CEA champions:

You really have to scare them to make them behave like this!

It wasn't just me who scared them, but especially Robin's camera.

Be careful, from now on, what you say will be filmed and put on the web the very next day!

Act 5)

Appearance, on the web, of a pdf corresponding to the communication presented in September 2011 by G.A. Wurden, from Los Alamos, US, at the occasion of an international conference held on ITER in Princeton, the Mecca of fusion.

Princeton