Untitled Document
Press Releases
May 10, 2012
Since I started getting involved in the ITER project and tokamaks, there have been numerous press releases. The word "disruption" appeared in Wikipedia. During visits to Cadarache, the public no longer just admires the beautiful model they are shown and listens in silence to the words of a charming hostess. People are starting to ask questions.
Recently, a new promotional paper supporting the ITER project appeared on the websites. I was flooded with messages about it, and I decided to respond on my site. Once again, it's complete nonsense. That was my impression, confirmed by phone calls to plasma specialists who are still on duty and therefore have to stay silent.
In about ten days, I will give a lecture in the region on ITER and nuclear energy in general, if I have the time. There is a long video (one hour and fifty minutes) on the Enquête et Débat website, which I recommend you watch, where I echoed the criticisms launched in September 2011 by Glenn Wurden (whom I spoke to on the phone a few months ago), formulated during a conference on future tokamaks in September 2011 at Princeton. In the video, I detail his "slides," presented in English and then immediately in French. It is in the "best of" section of the Enquête et Débat website (green box at the top right).
But one hour and fifty minutes is long. It would have been better to break it into segments. At the time, I recorded everything in one take, without editing. It would have been good if there was a permanent link on the Sortir du Nucléaire website, which only deals with events. I had suggested to Philippe Brousse, president of this collective bringing together 900 associations, to put an icon on the homepage, directing to in-depth articles on the scientific and technical aspects of nuclear energy. He never replied to me. These are event organizers.
The lecture I will give will be recorded on video and immediately broadcast online. Those who take the video and sound will be responsible for inserting the images I provide. That takes some time. It also requires precisely timing the images to fit the right moment and for the appropriate duration.
Today, I am preparing a collection of models, based on small polystyrene tori, 30 cm in diameter, which I bought yesterday in Aix. I will try a first one: to explain the principles of a tokamak's operation, hence ITER, which people completely ignore. It must be said that the choice of the expression "poloidal magnetic field" was not helpful in making things clear.
I will try to fit everything I can into 45 minutes, the maximum attention time that spectators can give.
The organizers tried to give this event the appearance of a debate. Michel Claessens, head of communications at ITER, had initially agreed. Then, knowing he would be facing me, he withdrew, saying he didn't want to debate with someone "too negative" (...).
Same evasion from the scientists at the Institute for Research on Magnetic Fusion, located in Cadarache, the stronghold of fusion in France. Michel Chatelier, Gabriel Marbach, former directors. Alain Bécoulet, an ITER specialist, Philippe Gendrih, research director at this institute, "Mr. Fusion at CNRS."
They will put empty chairs with their names and film it.
All of this is exhausting and I am tired. 75 years old, it's a bit heavy.
Well, let's get to these press releases. They will have to be taken one by one and rejected in detail on this page.
ITER Organization has the means, the money, to promote information, against which the public and internet users had no recourse until now. Here, it's a recent press release about the "Greenwald limit." I first reproduce the press release, then explain:
http://www.bulletins-electroniques.com/actualites/69903.htm
| Source : | Physics and Nanotechnology | One more step towards mastering nuclear fusion? | Two physicists in the USA have recently discovered a possible explanation for one of the major problems preventing the development of nuclear fusion. They propose a solution that, if experimentally validated, should lead to significant performance improvements in tokamaks. This is encouraging for our hopes of mastering this new technology for industrial electricity production. | Indeed, at a time when the planet's energy future is at the center of concerns, nuclear fusion would be an ideal energy source because it is abundant and little polluting. However, the strict conditions required for fusion are difficult to implement, so the technology is still at the research and experimental stage today. The goal of building a fusion power plant, which would convert the heat from fusion reactions into electricity, is still far from being achieved. National and international scientific communities have launched major projects to match this significant challenge. The scale of the investments leaves part of the population perplexed. The development of nuclear fusion is currently a subject of debate regarding the relevance of investing such sums for an uncertain result. In this context, expectations are numerous and pressing. | Therefore, | with enthusiasm | Luis Delgado-Aparicio and David Gates, both physicists at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, recently announced | their discovery. | They focused on instabilities that can occur within the plasma in "tokamak" configurations, which are the major problem hindering their development. | The appearance of these three-dimensional instabilities called "disruptions" has been recognized as inevitable, even under normal confinement conditions. | They correspond to a violent and very rapid loss of plasma confinement, and can significantly damage the equipment. Moreover, the risk of damage is all the higher the greater the power of the tokamak. Thus, the power tokamak prototype ITER, currently under construction in Cadarache, could see its entire installation seriously damaged. | One of the main causes of these disruptions is the increase in plasma density beyond a certain critical value called the "Greenwald limit." This limit seems universal | and its origin remains enigmatic | . | For fusion to occur in the plasma, it must be sufficiently dense and hot to allow the close approach of the light nuclei contained in the plasma and provoke their recombination into heavier nuclei. This recombination is accompanied by a strong release of energy in the form of heat, which we try to recover to then produce electricity. This fusion reaction is naturally used in the sun and most stars. In principle, the more energy we inject into the plasma, the more we expect to increase its density, and thus favor fusion reactions. The limit of ...