Untitled Document
ITER, latest news (December 17, 2014):
The Japanese, Motojima, will arrive at the end of his term as Director General of the ITER Organization, at the end of February 2015. The boat is sinking normally (see my videos: everything confirms). His August 2014 interview for the Nature magazine.
The Japanese Osamu Motojima will arrive at the end of his contract as Director General of the ITER Organization at the end of February 2015. The boat is sinking normally. Everything I had described and announced in my videos is confirmed. ITER is a drunk ship, without a captain, a project doomed to failure. These videos have had a significant impact, including on people working on the project, many of whom were unaware of its fundamental flaws, and even, very often, its ... principle of operation! The English subtitles have given these five videos an international audience. This time, no response could be provided regarding my criticisms. But the old responses, unsigned, in French and English, stigmatizing my incompetence, are still on the CEA website:
| CEA response to the article "ITER: Chronicle of an Inevitable Failure" by Mr. Jean-Pierre Petit, published on November 12, 2011 in the review NEXUS N° 77 (November-December 2011). | A rebuttal prepared by the French Commission of Atomic and Alternative Energies in reply to an article entitled "ITER: Chronicle of an Inevitable Failure" published by Mr. Jean-Pierre Petit in the November 12th issue of the review Nexus (). |
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These people don't know what to do. No fusion specialist could endorse these statements. Zugswang: whether they leave these texts in place or have them removed, they will embarrass themselves.
You should know that among the seven countries that have signed a contract on this project, none can abandon the ship before 2017, but the idea is gaining ground, especially among the Americans, who have reduced their financial participation. They are playing on soft ground. At the scale of their research budget, this participation remains modest. However, their lack of support will eventually lead the European Community to finance the project alone, as provided for in the contract in case of withdrawals, this also pharaonic and absurd project doomed to failure. Thus, the United States will be able to, on the science field, continue their general policy: destabilize all those who are not their direct allies.
Glenn Wurden, former head of fusion at Los Alamos, has completely abandoned the idea of the tokamak, which he had initially been one of the best specialists of (ITER is a tokamak). He has more usefully repositioned himself on the MagLif project (fusion in a Z-machine, using a "magnetized liner"). This is the precursor of the "two-stage fusion" where a terawatt laser plays the role of a spark, at the end of MHD compression. Already D-D fusion reactions.
Ah, by the way, latest news regarding the American laser bench NIF (National Ignition Facility), twin of our French Megajoule bench, installed in Barp, near Bordeaux. The statements regarding energy production by laser-initiated fusion have ceased and Livermore reveals the reorientation of the project towards purely military objectives (irradiation of plutonium 239 targets).
Returning to ITER, new technical problems have been added to the whole. Even if this "cathedral for engineers" pretended to function, it would eventually need tritium, to add to deuterium, which is abundant in nature. Tritium, with a half-life of 12.3 years, does not exist in nature. It can only be produced as a byproduct, in reactors where the moderator is pressurized heavy water. Heavy water being the most effective moderator (neutron decelerator), this formula allows working with natural uranium ore, not enriched, composed of 99.3% U238 and 0.7% U235. These are CANDU reactors, mainly located in Canada. One of the disadvantages is the short operating time of the core loads: one year, compared to three to four for cores loaded with enriched uranium. With such a low 235 rate, as soon as it drops, the reactor is no longer profitable and its core must be reloaded.
At the time when these power reactors were operating at full capacity Canada accumulated a stock of tritium, estimated at 35 kg. It is planned that the D-T mixture test campaigns, if they ever take place, will be carried out by drawing on this Canadian stock.
This stock is not inexhaustible. Indeed, many Canadian tritium-producing reactors have reached the end of their life and this stock is regularly decreasing, simply due to the short half-life of this isotope. In the end, a D-T fusion reactor should function like a breeder, that is to say recreate this component of its fuel mixture by using the 14 MeV neutrons emitted by deuterium-tritium fusion, by bombarding a lithium target, giving the reaction:
Lithium + neutron gives Tritium + Helium
This should be done in an envelope made up of four hundred tritium-producing cells surrounding the chamber. Since the D-T reaction only produces one neutron, and many of them will be lost and not reach these tritium-producing cells, it is necessary to use a substance that multiplies the neutrons (lead or beryllium). All of this is extremely complicated and problematic to implement. Also dangerous, because of lithium's affinity for water (the initial tritium-producing cells studied by the CEA had a pressurized water cooling system). Alkaline, lithium burns in air and explodes on contact with water (like the sodium in fast neutron reactors that equipped Superphénix).
The ITER project, since its initial definition, has accumulated delays. It was necessary, from the start, to abandon the material initially chosen to form the first wall of the chamber: carbon. Indeed, the carbon atoms detached formed carbides, of deuterium, but also of tritium, and the carbon wall behaved like a real sponge, which was discovered during long-term tests, without fusion, carried out on Tore-Supra, at Cadarache. Becoming radioactive, this carbon coating would then have constituted an unmanageable mass of waste. This carbon, which was beginning to sublime at 2300°C, was replaced by the dangerous and very toxic beryllium, which melts at 1280°C. From all sides, problems accumulate, synonymous with delays.
Yet, the full power operation of ITER, with breeding (continuous reconstitution of the consumed tritium), cannot be indefinitely postponed. The Canadian tritium stock is decreasing in...