This page, in pdf
ITER:
A 15-billion-euro experiment
The fusion reactor: dangerous
Lithium plus water = explosion!
July 13, 2011
: A reader informed me that a hacker had, on the server, modified a word in the code, "search" having been replaced by "custom", rendering the search engine inoperative. This complete word modification cannot correspond to a bug.
The correction has been made. Thank you.
The corrupted code line:
Restoration:
Now the internal search engine works.
July 13, 2011: A reader's reaction:
I read your article: enlightening.
I found this in memory:
http://www.dissident-media.org/infonucleaire/iter.html
It contains interesting things. I strongly recommend readers click on this link, which will introduce them to the world of scientific-technological surrealism.
The more I learn,
the more I am dismayed.
One could summarize it like this:
waste
improvisation
recklessness
"We didn't see the problems coming"
bargaining
Coué method
"Who tries nothing achieves nothing"
July 13, 2011:
A second reader's reaction, which you will appreciate:
Dear colleague,
As a plasma physicist at CNRS, I have read with interest your document on ITER "A 15-Billion-Euro Experiment."
It is excellent and contains no errors.
But it must be known that all serious and honest plasma physicists, including the physicist-engineers at CEA (unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer plasma physicists in the ITER project), are fully aware of all this.
It is perfectly clear that anyone who would claim otherwise is either completely dishonest, entirely incompetent, or a naive theorist far removed from reality.
Hence the refusal to engage in a contradictory debate on this subject...
What should be done? Of course,
we must react.
But knowing some local elected officials well, I would suggest targeting certain individuals at the General Council 13 and the Regional Council. It is locally that action is possible, whereas ITER Organization is merely a hollow technical management structure (no scientific management, in particular).
Ecologist elected officials in such bodies should be good advisors in this effort.
Having not yet completed my career at CNRS, I count on your discretion as a former colleague to keep this message confidential.
(I recently contacted E...., and we had a long discussion during which we realized our views were very similar on many points).
Best regards,
......, from the Group of Applied Plasma Physics at CNRS
Professional website:
http://www.........
Personal email: ..............
The individual is a laboratory director......
In summary:
1 - You are entirely right; your arguments are scientifically relevant.
2 - We must act!
3 - But keep me out of all this, as I have not yet completed my career at CNRS....
July 12, 2011:
Yesterday, July 11, we three met with a member of the public inquiry commission on the ITER project, at the City Hall, Place Jules Santini, 13115 Saint Paul lez Durance. Two representatives of a small local ecological association, bringing a few hundred signatures from a petition, and one scientist-engineer: me.
Only one known signatory: Albert Jacquart.
Before the inquiry period had even ended, we already knew the commission’s response. First, it was not considered that I, in the presence of the commission’s officials, questioning the scientific leaders of the project, would be a totally inappropriate and out-of-place action. "The scientific debate has already taken place," we were told. Where, when, how? Mystery.
The commission has three possible opinions it must provide one month after the closure of the "public inquiry."
-
A negative opinion (excluded)
-
A positive opinion, without reservations
-
A positive opinion, with recommendations.
It is the third option that will prevail. The recommendations will be worded in such a way that ITER ORGANIZATION can issue a response satisfying ASN, the Nuclear Safety Authority. We can expect responses like:
- Regarding the following point, raised during the public inquiry, particular attention will be paid to safety measures, experimental protocols, conditions for gaseous discharges, etc.
Then the project can be classified as a "project of public interest," and work can proceed at full speed, with funds flowing freely.
Out of 14 members of the commission delegated by the European Parliament, 12 have already declared in favor of continuing the project.
It has been repeatedly emphasized that ITER was "a research and development project, and nothing else." Therefore, it is normal that many aspects have not yet been tested on the English JET machine, since ITER is above all an
experimental
installation, a 15-billion-euro experiment.
In the brochure provided, it is stated that the first deuterium-tritium fusion tests on ITER will begin in 2027, i.e., in sixteen years. For DEMO, the date of 2047 has been mentioned.
The announcement regarding this public inquiry
ITER
project:
-
Launched before essential preliminary studies had been carried out in many fields (resistance of a first wall made of beryllium to a 14 MeV neutron flux, control of plasma pollution by heavy ions, particularly tungsten lining the "divertor," guarantees of non-dangerousness in implementing a tritium-covered lithium blanket, etc.). These studies should have been conducted on the English JET machine.
-
I would describe this as scientific and technical adventurism, a 15-billion-euro toy demanded by engineers and researchers, not to solve the planet's energy needs, but to amuse themselves for an unlimited number of decades.
The danger of the project remains clearly visible on the CEA website at:
http://www-fusion-magnetique.cea.fr/cea/next/couvertures/blk.htm
I had this document downloaded onto the town hall computer and affixed it in the inquiry notebook as evidence. A WCLL system (water-cooled lithium-lead: a mixture of liquid lithium-lead cooled by pressurized water) is extremely dangerous, since the lithium-lead mixture is immediately explosive if accidentally brought into contact with water, and this system is located near the fragile superconducting magnet.
This is just one example
of the carelessness with which this project has been conducted, in the style:
- Give us fifteen billion euros (to start with), and a blank check, so we can amuse ourselves among friends, without having to account to anyone.
Based on the technical information I had included on this website, associations and individuals have begun to react (650 so far). You can do the same by signing the petition drafted by the association Médiane and sending it to the town hall of Saint Paul lez Durance, where your submission will be immediately added to the file.
Letter of support for the STOP ITER collective
Arguments of the ITER collective
Request to extend the public inquiry
to be sent to
City Hall, Place Jules Santini, 13115 Saint Paul lez Durance
I personally requested to be confronted, in the presence of the inquiry commission members, with the scientific leaders of the ITER project, not with representatives from "their communications service, responsible for... answering questions." Citizens have requested to be present at this confrontation, and you are fully entitled to join them, as you also have the right as French citizens to attend the July 11 meeting at 3 p.m. at the Saint Paul lez Durance town hall, where you can join the petition.
French parliamentarians would be utterly incapable of expressing themselves on this ITER project, other than echoing the intense brainwashing they have undergone, originating from the propaganda service ("a sun in a test tube, unlimited energy, etc..."). The same applies to the parliamentarians delegated by the European Parliament in May 2011, tasked with judging the legality of increasing the budget from 5 to 15 billion euros.
I am quite pessimistic about the outcome of our efforts, given the passivity of the French people. It is joined by the recklessness of local municipal officials, blinded by the prospect of a miraculous windfall, completely unaware of the risks this installation poses to nearby populations.
In Japan, Japanese citizens systematically buy contaminated vegetables "to support local economies, devastated by disaster." Land exchanges are planned between contaminated and non-contaminated regions. Contamination standards are being raised. Contaminated products are diluted in safe products so that the mixture can meet the "standards."
How many Fukuhashimas will it take for populations to understand that we must massively develop numerous systems based on renewable energies (solar thermal, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc.), combined with long-distance energy transport via high-voltage direct current (70,000 megawatts currently, worldwide, for such energy transport over distances reaching thousands of kilometers)?
Following this July 11 meeting, it became clear that the inquiry commissioners were completely ignorant (as were the elected officials, "decision-makers," and politicians) of large-scale alternative solutions. For the one we met, "solar thermal" was limited to the solar water heater on his roof. Former submariner, he was unaware of DCNS projects to build and market submersible reactors of low power, fully automated, intended to supply coastal installations.
The internal search engine, which had functioned since 2005 on my website by calling cached Google pages, has been down for weeks. If a reader can indicate a remedy for this issue, it would be welcome.
Otherwise, it will remain as is.
July 13, 2011: A reader informed me that a hacker had, on the server, modified a word in the code, "search" having been replaced by "custom," rendering the search engine inoperative. This complete word modification cannot correspond to a bug.
The correction has been made. Thank you.
The corrupted code line:
Restoration:
Readers have suggested contacting Eva Joly, Nicolas Hulot, or other highly media-impact figures, to inform them of such perfectly operational solutions. I have taken steps to make contact.
Link to the final summary of this page
On May 16, 2011, a delegation from the European Parliament visited the Hotel du Roy René in Aix-en-Provence, where they heard various presentations by ITER project leaders. I was able to hand 40 copies of a memorandum I had printed at home—half in color—to Member of Parliament Michèle Rivasi just before the meeting; she distributed them to the parliamentarians.
Outside the hotel, about 200 anti-nuclear demonstrators had gathered. This is few, given the stakes, and
I was the only scientist
, or even the only engineer or technician. The demonstrators were "ordinary anti-nuclear activists."
It is true that people like me are waking up after the wake-up call represented by Fukushima. But this awareness, for me, of the deadly nature of nuclear energy, is definitive. I had simply never looked into the issue before. Previously, early activists endured police baton charges, tear gas attacks, and even defensive grenade attacks that killed activist Michalon during a protest against the installation of a fast breeder reactor at Creys-Malville on July 31, 1977, when he was hit in the chest by one of these grenades, which exploded.
Even today, there are those who chain themselves to the rails where radioactive waste convoys will pass through the "reprocessing center at La Hague" (in fact, a plutonium extraction center, from which French-made MOX fuel—used in 20 reactors in France, the third reactor at Fukushima, and exported by France—is produced). These people are forcibly removed, injured, while fighting to protect our health and that of our children from the profit-driven actions of nuclear pathologists.
The deadly caravan must pass, at all costs.
I admit I felt shame at reacting so late, and a deep unease at seeing no colleagues—scientists or engineers—join this legitimate protest. The realization of the insane danger posed by nuclear energy is finally dawning, spurred by the Fukushima disaster, despite the blackout in major media, orchestrated by the nuclear barons.
But before this, those protesting against nuclear power were seen as marginal, dreamers, whereas they simply had a much clearer and earlier vision of the situation than we did.
As we will see later, things are far worse than one might imagine.
Until now, arguments against the installation of ITER were mainly environmental or even landscape-related. I have just watched a grotesque, shocking video taken during the site presentation, where the guide stated that bats had been carefully relocated from their natural habitat to encourage them to nest elsewhere. We also took care to protect certain endangered plant species.
What nonsense, when you discover what follows.
We know the criticisms regarding tritium's radiotoxicity, a radioactive substance with a half-life of 12.3 years. Yes, the problem is real. Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen, whose nucleus contains one proton and two neutrons, accompanied, like ordinary light hydrogen (nucleus consisting of a single proton), and like deuterium (nucleus consisting of one proton and one neutron), by a single electron. This electron constitutes what is called the "electron cloud of the atom in question." It is this cloud that determines the chemical properties of the substance.
Thus, from a chemical standpoint, light hydrogen and its two isotopes, deuterium and tritium, have exactly the same chemical properties.
When "heavy" hydrogen combines with oxygen, we obtain what is called "heavy water."
All combinations are possible, including molecules of water containing one or two tritium atoms.
This tritiated water will therefore be radioactive.
Opponents of the ITER program will argue that since tritium is hydrogen, it is extremely difficult to confine safely (there is no zero risk, they will say). Hydrogen molecules, like light hydrogen molecules, are minuscule and tend to bypass obstacles such as valves or seals. Worse still, hydrogen passes through solid walls! Tritium is a champion of escape, passing through seals and most polymers.
When it comes to light hydrogen or even deuterium, the biological danger is nonexistent. With tritium, it is a different story. The hydrogen molecule has the property of bonding with numerous other atoms, forming a vast number of molecules belonging to "mineral" chemistry or biochemistry.
Thus, this tritium can integrate into food chains and even into human DNA.
ITER supporters may retort that a release or leak of tritium, corresponding to the operation of the test machine or its descendants, would result only in insignificant pollution, "not presenting a health risk."
We have grown accustomed to hearing this from all nuclear officials for decades.
Another argument advanced by proponents of the ITER project: there are "water cycles" in the human body. If tritiated water were absorbed, the human body would return it to nature relatively quickly. Its "biological half-life" (from one month to one year) is shorter than its "radiological half-life" (Wikipedia).
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Fixation_biologique_du_tritium
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Cin.C3.A9tique_dans_l.27organisme
The situation would be different if tritium atoms were bound, for example, to DNA molecules. We are touching here on the consequences of very low-level pollution, exerting effects over long durations, and particularly affecting pregnant women and children.
Again, ITER supporters will shrug their shoulders, saying that the amounts of tritium involved will remain very small, and that even if nearby potable water reservoirs received tritiated water, the dilution would be so low that... etc.
Therefore, perhaps we should not look for effective criticism on this ground.
Of course, there is the project's cost, which is exploding, and its tripling is merely a pale beginning, as we will see later, combined with schedule uncertainties, and this nagging question:
- When will we get electricity?
The technical-scientific aspects we will now discuss render such forecasts impossible, both in terms of timing and cost, and simply in terms of
feasibility and profitability.
Let us first examine the origins of the ITER project.
http://www.iter.org/fr/proj/iterhistory
It is stated that this project arose from discussions between Gorbachev and Reagan in Geneva in 1985, following the end of the Cold War.
Reagan and Gorbachev in Geneva, 1985
For humanity, the possession of vast nuclear arsenals and missiles gave the atom a completely negative image, only slightly mitigated by the positive connotation of civilian nuclear energy. Indeed, a civilian reactor can be converted into a plutonium-producing reactor and thus manufacture the explosive material used in fission bombs: plutonium.
-
Add the intractable problems related to waste storage and decommissioning of nuclear power plants, for which no viable solution had even been sketched.
-
Add the inescapable phenomenon of nuclear weapons proliferation.
By the way, one year after this meeting came Chernobyl.
Thus, there arose a need to find a "peaceful atom," one that could not produce new weapons, whose waste would consist of an innocuous gas: helium, which could not lead to the proliferation of "sensitive materials."
Immediately, generators based on deuterium-tritium fusion were considered,
immediately endowed with all virtues.
An "inexhaustible" energy, it was said. And one evoked the phenomenal quantities of deuterium and tritium (or lithium, from which tritium can be produced) contained in ocean water (see below).
Thus, energy from fusion was originally a very powerful myth—the myth of the "benevolent atom," safe, peaceful, and "unlimited energy."
Add an image that speaks to the human imagination: the "sun in a test tube."
Humans have always linked major natural phenomena to mythological constructs. Rain that falls from the sky enables good harvests. Among the pre-Columbians, people implored the sky to send this vital liquid: rain. But water is also the flood, the destructive force that kills.
The same applies to the Sun. Among the ancient Egyptians, gods were often just variations of the central solar deity. Ra was the benevolent sun, ensuring good harvests, while Seth was his brother, the terrible desert sun god, who withers crops and causes travelers to die of thirst.
There is a myth of the atom. When Oppenheimer, who could read Sanskrit, first witnessed the nuclear fire unleashed before his eyes, he instinctively recited an Indian poem from the Bhagavad Gita (verse 33, Chapter 11), which ends with:
I am death, the destroyer of all worlds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita
Thus, the atom began to enter history, taking a place in human imagination as the embodiment of a terrible god, comparable to Jupiter's thunderbolt or Thor's hammer, with biblical echoes of apocalypse and the end of the world.
Then came the era of the peaceful atom, dispensing comfort and a better life. An atom that heats homes, powers the TGV engines that transport us so comfortably and swiftly.
But the tragedies of Chernobyl and Fukushima serve as brutal, violent reminders. Then the atom becomes a kind of white plague—invisible, odorless, slowly deadly.
- They would not all die, but all would be struck...
Even when nuclear plant operations seem to proceed smoothly, health impacts are observed among those working there. A study by INSERM
shows that cancer rates are twice as high among those maintaining nuclear plants, even when their dosimeters record doses below the (arbitrarily set) safety standards established by the Nuclear Safety Authority.
Audio link
Thus, the civilian atom, despite the powerful lobbying by nuclear barons, takes on an alarming appearance.
So why not turn to this "sun in a test tube," this atom once again
benevolent and risk-free?
Indeed, if a commercial airliner crashed into a tokamak, or a terrorist damaged it with explosives, what would be the consequence? A little deuterium, tritium, lithium, and helium would escape into nature, they say, and the next day, we would forget about it.
With fusion, the myth emerges of an "atom without risk or waste."
On this second point, this is only partially true. Deuterium-tritium fusion produces neutrons. These will contaminate all reactor structures, making them radioactive through "activation" due to the transmutations caused by the neutron flux in all materials. Thus, decommissioning a fusion reactor would be just as complex, problematic, and costly as decommissioning a fission reactor.
Proponents of the ITER program will argue that this would only produce waste with half-lives measured in centuries,
whereas fission generates deadly radionuclides
for hundreds of thousands of years.
Having laid this groundwork, we must attempt to move beyond myth, forget the beautiful phrases like "sun in a test tube" and "unlimited energy," come back down to Earth, and examine the matter in terms of
feasibility.
To do this, I will need to employ a physicist's discourse. Where possible, I will strive to keep this discourse accessible.
Fusion remains an ivory tower, protected by the extreme complexity of the phenomena involved, allowing nuclear barons to shut down any questioning with the response "it's very complicated." Then they will deploy the ink cloud of this complexity before their interlocutor, possibly a politician, allowing them to dodge questions, like an octopus releasing its ink cloud.
So let us now enter the heart of
these scientific and technical questions,
beyond the usual jargon for laypeople.
The ITER project relies on two sets of results. On one hand, there is the British result, from JET (Joint European Torus),
achieved at the Culham laboratory in October 1991,
where, for one second, the injection of various forms of energy allowed the maintenance of fusion reactions, with a coefficient
Q = 0.7
What does this coefficient Q mean? It is the ratio between the raw energy released by fusion and the energy injected in the form of microwaves, neutral injection, etc.
A fusion reactor produces energy whose flux is proportional to the volume of its nuclear vessel, hence to the cube of its characteristic dimension (let us take, for example, the diameter of the plasma torus).
Energy losses occur at the wall, so they are proportional to the chamber's surface area, which varies as the square of the characteristic dimension.
The corollary is that the Q coefficient follows this law of evolution:
Since JET was limited to Q = 0.65, it was because the machine was too small. ITER, twice as large, should allow a coefficient twice as high, i.e.,
Q = 1.4
On ITER's fact sheets, it is stated that its designers hope to achieve a factor greater than 5, with an operating time of 400 to 1000 seconds.
Some details about the experiment conducted on JET. This tokamak is not equipped with a superconducting magnet. The magnetic field is generated by a copper-wound solenoid. The current flowing through it reaches megampere levels, and the Joule heating effect prevents extending the experiment.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus
http://claude.emt.inrs.ca/VQE/sources/fusion_futur.html
ITER's heating systems (microwaves, neutral injection) are extrapolations of those used in JET.
Thus, ITER "will work."
No one doubts it. Deuterium-tritium fusion will be achieved, with a Q factor greater than one, and for a much longer duration, made possible by the use of a superconducting magnet.
But is that all?
The machine, as we will show, is incomplete.
In its current state, it cannot even serve as a prototype aimed at validation. Simply because essential elements are missing, and even more so, components whose operation has never been tested.
The reactor will be charged with a 50/50 mixture of two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium. The fusion reaction consumes this mixture, producing an alpha particle (helium nucleus), carrying two positive charges, with an energy of 3.5 MeV, and a neutron, carrying an energy of 14.1 MeV.
Deuterium-tritium fusion
An image that has been hammered into the public for decades, though it represents only half the story!
The magnetic confinement field opposes the escape of this helium nucleus as much as possible. By exchanging energy with deuterium and tritium ions, it contributes to maintaining the plasma temperature, which tends to continuously cool down through radiation. But this field has no effect on the neutron, which, being electrically neutral, will inevitably strike the wall. Captured by its materials, it will create radioactivity in its elements through "activation," causing various transmutations.
The late Nobel laureate Gilles de Gennes doubted whether the delicate material of the superconducting magnet could be protected from the bombardment of fusion neutrons. Superconducting elements are fragile. Damage caused by neutrons, through inducing transmutations, could locally destroy superconductivity, render the very expensive magnet inoperative, or even cause its destruction.
Confronted with this, ITER's leaders respond that behind the first wall ("the first wall") and the magnet lies a lithium envelope, or rather a lithium-based compound, which, by absorbing neutrons, regenerates tritium through the exoenergetic reaction:
http://www-fusion-magnetique.cea.fr/gb/cea/next/couvertures/blk.htm#ch1
See also:
Note in passing that this reaction is a fission reaction, triggered fission of a lithium-7 atom, which is unstable and splits into two atoms, respectively possessing 4 (helium) and 3 (tritium) nucleons.
This
tritium-covered blanket
is in liquid form, forming a mixture of lithium and lead. Lead's function is to slow down neutrons, and when struck by a neutron, can emit two. This liquid mass at 500°C is cooled by pressurized water. It is absolutely impossible for this liquid metal mixture to come into contact with this water. Lithium melts at 180°C and vaporizes at 1342°C.
Lithium does not burn in air at normal temperature, unlike its alkali cousin sodium. But at sufficient temperature, it burns like its other cousin, magnesium, and this combustion is violently exothermic.
http://www.plexiglass.fr/materiaux/metaux/lithium.html
Excerpts:
Lithium is the only alkali metal that can be handled in air without danger, whereas the others oxidize, often with ignition. In dry air, lithium slowly develops a layer of oxide and nitride.
In humid air, the attack, catalyzed by water vapor, is much faster.
The metal does not ignite in dry oxygen
until above 200°C
producing lithium oxide (Li₂O) and not peroxide—a property that clearly distinguishes it from its heavier homologues and brings it closer to the alkaline earth metals.
The combustion of lithium is highly exothermic and accompanied by intense white light, similar to magnesium.
Lithium burning in air, in contact with water: immediate explosion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojGaAGDVsCc
Lithium fire in water:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSly84lRqj0&feature=related
Lithium plus water:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxhW7TtXIAM&feature=related
When in contact with water at 500°C, lithium decomposes it, extracting oxygen and releasing hydrogen. You see a reaction similar to that of zirconium cladding surrounding fuel pellets in the Fukushima reactors, and generally in all water-cooled reactors when temperature rises to the point where water turns into steam.
The hydrogen released by the reaction between lithium and the cooling water can combine with air and cause explosions, like those seen at Fukushima. Lithium is an extremely reactive substance, capable of combining with oxygen, hydrogen (forming lithium hydride, the explosive component of hydrogen bombs), and even nitrogen at room temperature, producing lithium nitrides. All these reactions are exothermic and prone to dangerous runaway.
And no one has told you a word about this.
No one has mentioned what would happen if, in a "fusion" reactor, the lithium were to catch fire or react with the water meant to cool it. These tritium breeding blankets have not been tested. As Michèle Rivasi pointed out during that meeting, it would be preferable to test the behavior of these tritium breeding blankets on other machines, such as JET or German machines (ASDEX at the Max Planck Institute), or Japanese ones, before launching into a project that is
- expensive - dangerous - problematic
Around these tritium breeding cells, whose image you will see below (source: CEA website), you have two things:
- Directly in contact, the first wall, made of beryllium. This is a metal that melts at 1380°C. Its behavior in a tokamak has not been tested either. Beryllium is
highly toxic
, causing a disease called
berylliosis
, an incurable lung condition. It is also carcinogenic.
Source:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9ryllium#Contamination_du_corps_humain
Component of a tritium breeding blanket (another "unprecedented experiment")
Some might object that lithium in these components is in the form of an alloy, possibly less flammable due to the lead content. The boiling point of lithium is 1342°C and that of lead is 1749°C. In case of temperature excursion, lithium vaporizes first and separates from lead, forming bubbles that are much less dense.
On the other side, you find the superconducting magnet, cooled by liquid helium at 3° absolute. Even the slightest temperature increase causes superconductivity to cease. The part of the magnet that loses this property becomes resistive, generating a violent Joule effect, which propagates progressively, vaporizing the coolant, liquid helium.
When these conductors are in a state of
superconductivity
, there is no Joule effect, no heat release. The cryogenic system managing them exists solely to prevent ambient heat from warming these elements, which are bathed in liquid helium.
If superconductivity is broken anywhere, the affected element becomes resistive and releases heat. An accident occurred at CERN in 2008. Superconductivity was lost at a weld. The current flowing through the magnets is 9000 amperes. An electric arc formed, vaporizing the surrounding liquid helium. The explosion displaced 40-ton magnets several meters (...).
On a fusion reactor equipped with its essential tritium breeding blanket, a catastrophe is therefore possible, with:
-
Violent combustion of lithium contained in the tritium breeding blanket (it burns like magnesium. A demonstration would be needed on a TV show).
-
In contact with water: explosion.
-
The heat released disrupts the nearby superconducting magnet, causing it to vaporize.
-
This lithium fire carries toxic lead vapors (causing lead poisoning) and tritium (radioactive), which was synthesized in the tritium breeding blanket.
-
The "first wall" (one to two millimeters of beryllium) is also vaporized and mixes with toxic pollutants.
-
Add the dispersion of a few kilograms of tritium representing the reactor's fuel charge.
The whole thing...
Rest assured, such a reactor explosion would immediately stop any fusion reaction within it. That's something. That's what you've been told for decades, boasting the safety of these nuclear reactors of the next century.
But chemically speaking, it's... Seveso.
During these ITER meetings, Michèle Rivasi caused obvious discomfort when she asked, "Who would pay in case of a problem, a catastrophe? Who would be held responsible?"
The response was a nervous silence, indicating:
- But really, what are you talking about? What catastrophe? All precautions will have been taken, of course!
This presence of lithium, essential for forming the tritium breeding blanket,
makes the reactor fundamentally dangerous.
This unavoidable danger has been carefully hidden from the public, while a smoke screen has been deployed about the "basic fusion reaction"—the deuterium-tritium mixture.
Let us be clear. A "fusion reactor" does not operate via a single reaction, but two.
Let us detail them:
2
Deuterium
- 3
Tritium
yield
4
Helium
plus 1
neutron
,
plus energy.
(the most publicized nuclear reaction in history)
Neutrons alone account for 80% of the emitted energy: 14 MeV (mega-electron volts).
Helium accounts for 20% of this energy. We rely on this energy, transferred through collisions in the plasma, to maintain the reactor temperature at 100–150 million degrees.
Neutrons, being electrically neutral, pass through the "magnetic barrier" and strike the "first wall" made of beryllium. Either they pass through without interaction, or they interact and participate in a reaction:
9
Beryllium
neutron
yields 2
4
Helium
plus 2
1
neutron
The second reaction, essential for a fusion reactor, is the one that
regenerates tritium
:
1
neutron
- 6
Lithium
yields
4
Helium
plus 3
Tritium
,
plus energy.
We can combine these two fundamental reactions:
2
Deuterium
- 3
Tritium
yields
4
Helium
plus 1
neutron
,
plus energy (fusion).
1
neutron
- 6
Lithium
yields
4
Helium
plus 3
Tritium
,
plus energy (stimulated fission)
into a single equation:
2
Deuterium
- 6
Lithium
yields 2
4
Helium
,
plus energy
Thus, a "fusion reactor," which has a kinship with breeder reactors, consumes not a mixture of deuterium and tritium, but deuterium and lithium—two substances abundantly present in seawater.
Hence the idea of "unlimited energy."
All of this is true. But one must know how to make the tritium regeneration reaction work, which is extremely dangerous and untested. It will only be "tested on ITER."
It took intense disinformation and decades of media anesthesia for the local population, aside from a few "eco-enthusiasts," to passively accept such a dangerous project being installed in the region. Maryse Joissains, mayor of Aix, for her part, reaffirmed her unwavering support for ITER.
The tritium breeding blanket should consist of N components like the one described in the figure above. In the ITER experiment, only a few of these components will be used. Perhaps even just one, the others being replaced by a shell serving as a neutron barrier. Probably plain lead.
The deployment of this tritium breeding blanket around the chamber will come later, with DEMO, the next prototype.
No matter which way you look at it, the ITER project is full of extremely complex problems, accompanied by untested solutions, no less problematic. And complexity implies long development time and cost explosions.
In terms of complexity, there is as much distance between ITER and a fission reactor as between a jet engine and a kettle.
To the designers of ITER, one might ask:
- Will the behavior of the entire "first wall" system, flanked by its tritium breeding blanket and associated heat evacuation system, be satisfactory? Isn't this essentially an "unprecedented experiment"?
Another problem related to ITER's operation concerns the ablation of its first wall due to impacts from hydrogen ions. Here, guiding principles are based on results obtained in France on the Tore Supra device, a French tokamak located in Cadarache, equipped with a superconducting magnet producing 4 teslas. The temperatures achieved did not reach those needed for fusion. (Unless I'm mistaken—I’d appreciate clarification—these were in the range of several million degrees.) However, the operating time reached a record duration of 6 minutes.
This allowed study of the behavior of walls very close to or in contact with a hot plasma. The chamber was then lined with carbon tiles (CFC), similar to those used on the Space Shuttle. That is, a mixture of carbon and carbon fibers. Carbon conducts heat well and withstands high temperatures. Researchers thus studied heat absorption via conduction through a wall called the "limiter"—that circular path visible at the bottom of the toroidal chamber.
The chamber of Tore Supra. At the bottom, its limiter
The chamber walls were tested with heat fluxes of 1 megawatt per square meter, rising to 10 megawatts per square meter at the limiter, whose surface temperature reached 1200–1500°C. This limiter is a heat exchanger, behind which water at 220°C under 40 bars flows. This setup allowed testing the feasibility of recovering heat in a tokamak.
A clarification, recently confirmed: it was loudly announced that deuterium-tritium fusion—the "magic pair"—had been achieved on JET. In fact, and this is likely little known, most fusion experiments have been conducted using deuterium alone, which requires slightly higher temperatures, around 150 million degrees.
The reactions occurring in a reactor using deuterium as fusion fuel
Source:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_nucl%C3%A9aire
• deuterium + deuterium → (helium-3 + 0.82 MeV) + (neutron + 2.45 MeV)
• deuterium + deuterium → (tritium + 1.01 MeV) + (proton + 3.03 MeV)
• deuterium + tritium → (helium-4 + 3.52 MeV) + (neutron + 14.06 MeV)
• deuterium + helium-3 → (helium-4 + 3.67 MeV) + (proton + 14.67 MeV)
The British conducted a few tests with deuterium-tritium to validate the concept. But according to my source, the majority of tests were carried out with deuterium, possibly due to cost considerations.
Radiative losses.
The plasma loses energy through radiation, with the radiating species being "the electron gas." There is first synchrotron radiation, reflecting energy loss from electrically charged particles orbiting in the machine's magnetic field. The second source of loss is "bremsstrahlung" (braking radiation). When an electron passes near an ion, its trajectory is deflected. It slows down and emits this type of radiation, whose intensity increases with the square of the ion's electric charge Z.
Bremsstrahlung radiation
Carbon was thus interesting because:
-
It withstands high temperatures (these "tiles" are very similar to those on the Space Shuttle)
-
It has good thermal conductivity
-
Carbon ions carry few electric charges (four).
Therefore, in this bremsstrahlung radiation loss mechanism, a carbon ion (stripped from the wall and polluting the plasma) causes losses 16 times greater than those from electron-hydrogen ion encounters, which carry only one charge.
But carbon undergoes ablation and behaves like a real hydrogen pump, absorbing hydrogen and producing hydrocarbons in the process. If these mix with tritium atoms, carbon becomes radioactive (tritium's half-life is 12 years).
Thus, carbon is out, except (as we'll see later) as a waste absorber.
For ITER, whose internal wall covers 1000 square meters, the choice has been made: 700 square meters will be lined with beryllium, the lightest metal, with a melting point of 1280°C. It is expected that this will withstand thermal shock thanks to sub-wall cooling via pressurized water circulation. Regarding plasma pollution from ion erosion, beryllium carries 6 electric charges, resulting in radiation losses 36 times greater than those accompanying electron-hydrogen atom encounters.
Fusion naturally produces helium. A reactor like ITER cannot function with 10% helium, which constitutes the "ash" of the reaction. Therefore, helium must be continuously removed.
This was also the limiter's function, but engineers were led to imagine a different geometry, resulting in the design of a divertor. This corresponds to the two grooves visible running along the base of the toroidal chamber:
The divertor is composed of modules and segments that can be manipulated and replaced. Here is one of them.
Divertor module
The green parts correspond to tungsten cladding. This metal, which forms the filaments in incandescent light bulbs, has the highest melting point of all metals at 3000°C. Its shape is explained by a special magnetic geometry that allows capturing and confining ions:
Light blue: beryllium. Dark blue: tungsten. Black: carbon.
A "fish-tail" magnetic geometry is visible. The grooves at the base of these two channels are designed to form the orifice, the lip allowing plasma pumping, followed by its reinjection into the chamber after removal of "ash," helium, and unwanted ions (causing radiative cooling): carbon, beryllium, and tungsten.
Tungsten is the most damaging pollutant in this regard. Indeed, the atom carries 74 electrons. Specialists told me that tungsten ions, mixed into the fusion plasma, could carry 50 to 60 electric charges. Thus, an electron encountering one of these ions results in bremsstrahlung radiation losses 3600 times more intense than those from an electron-hydrogen ion encounter.
We are discussing radiative losses via bremsstrahlung. But there are other losses, even more significant, associated with "free-bound" transitions.
When electrons encounter deuterium, tritium, helium, or beryllium ions, the nuclei have lost all their electrons. This is not the case with tungsten under operating conditions. Fifteen to twenty-five electrons (out of 74) remain bound to the nucleus. When an electron collides with one of these ions, it excites the residual electron shell, followed immediately by radiative de-excitation, emitting a photon. Another significant loss.
Thus, tungsten ion pollution could cause a drop in performance, potentially leading to extinction.
After consulting a specialist, I learned that pumping heavy ions would occur at the base of the grooves separating two divertor elements, through centimeter-sized orifices.
JET was initially equipped with a limiter similar to that of Tore Supra. The British modified their setup to line the chamber with tungsten and install a divertor at its base. As Michèle Rivasi noted on May 16th in Aix, it might have been wise to wait for the results of British experiments before launching the ITER project.
The same applies to the beryllium wall.
Has the divertor system been tested anywhere?
Can it guarantee fusion plasma purity?
Specialists' response:
- Only experience will provide the answer.
Conclusion:
When venturing into the ITER machine, one discovers a complexity that is dizzying. This device is a hundred times more complicated than a fission reactor. It carries dozens of problems, with solutions that have not yet been tested. The efficiency of the divertor and the ability of a beryllium wall to withstand stress remain speculative. Yet, the success of this continuous plasma purification method is a
non-negotiable
condition for further development.
From this perspective, ITER is an exciting experiment, a wealth of thesis topics and sophisticated studies. But it is also
a 15-billion-euro experiment
(for now)
Any additional problem will trigger another budget explosion. Our parliamentarians must be aware of this and not be dazzled by the usual grandiose slogans meant to anesthetize and cloud their judgment:
-
The Sun in a test tube
-
Unlimited energy...
When I asked a researcher involved in the project:
- When, and at what cost, can we expect this machine to become an electricity generator?
Their answer was:
- You won't be surprised if it costs tens of billions of euros, or takes decades.
The menu is on the table. Too expensive, too slow, too problematic.
In terms of energy needs, what are the alternatives?
Nuclear fission:
-
Dangerous - Harmful to the environment and health.
-
No solution for waste management.
Fusion via ITER:
-
Too expensive
-
Too problematic
-
Too slow
I will be attending the DZP (dense Z-pinches) conference in Biarritz, from June 6 to 9.
DZP2011 is the principal conference for specialists working in the field of dense Z-pinch research and closely related topics. Previous conferences held in Laguna Beach (1989), London (1993), Vancouver (1997), Albuquerque (2002), Oxford (2005), and Alexandria (2008) attracted over 100 delegates from up to 20 countries.
Topics covered by DZP2011 include all aspects of dense Z-pinch research, including fundamental Z-pinch physics and the broad range of applications of Z-pinches to areas such as inertial confinement fusion, laboratory plasma astrophysics, soft x-ray lasers, and fundamental high energy density physics. Related dense plasma configurations such as X-pinches, plasma foci, and high current capillary discharges are among the topics of interest.
On Monday, June 6, 2011, at 8:30 AM, my friend Malcolm Haines will "open" the conference by presenting his analysis of results obtained from Z-machines since 2005, and will conclude with the statement: "At Sandia, over two billion degrees were achieved as early as 2005." His presentation at this international conference on Z-machines is essential.
Excerpt from the Biarritz conference program on Z-machines (June 6–9, 2011)
(Will a French journalist cover the event personally, or will they rely solely on statements from the CEA and other sources?)
The explanation of the phenomenon lies in the words: "turbulent resistivity."
I will support Malcolm's presentation.
Malcolm Haines,
pioneer of plasma and MHD physics
In previous years, I heard Americans claim these temperatures had never been achieved, and that the conclusions Malcolm published in 2006 in the prestigious Physical Review Letters, in an article titled "Over two billion degrees," were incorrect. Yet, for five years, his critics have not published a single line to support their claims or provide credible explanations.
I believe the Americans are
misinforming
, aiming at the development of pure fusion bombs (where fusion is initiated by MHD compression, not by an atomic bomb, the primary energy source being delivered by a conventional explosive, following the old Russian method). These would be miniaturizable and "green" (hydrogen-boron fusion).
I said Haines would be present, but we are not certain. He currently has health issues that might prevent him from attending.
If Haines is not present, no one else will be able to counter, as he alone can, with the full weight of his scientific credibility, the brazen, odious lies of the Americans.
Eric Lerner will also be present, working on a Focus device and strongly advocating for a non-polluting hydrogen-boron fusion pathway, very weakly neutron-producing, which starts at one billion degrees.
Eric Lerner,
champion of aneutronic fusion
As I've stated on my website for five years, I believe that one day generators based on this aneutronic fusion will emerge (I had already mentioned this in my comic strip "Energétiquement vôtre," freely downloadable from the Savoir sans Frontières website), operating like "two-stroke engines," with a temperature spike at the end of MHD compression.
Like internal combustion engines. It has been a century since these replaced steam engines.
ITER is nothing more than... the steam engine of the third millennium, hyper-complex.
If nuclear energy is ever to regain momentum, it will be through impulsive fusion generators.
Then we will see fusion
producing no waste of any kind, neither in the form of fusion products nor in the form of structures rendered radioactive by neutron bombardment.
Persisting with fission, accumulating highly radiotoxic waste (100,000 tons just in France), storing waste with lifetimes measured in hundreds of thousands of years, is absurd in light of future scientific progress.
It denies the power of scientific advancement.
The Sandia breakthrough shows a path is possible. But as usual, it will be:
- Weapons first, energy later
Nothing guarantees that exploring this pure hydrogen-boron fusion pathway will quickly yield electricity generators.
But these machines cost 500 times less than ITER.
Let us re-examine the solutions:
Fission: dangerous, highly polluting, harmful to health
Fusion via ITER: problematic, uncertain, too expensive
Aneutronic fusion: undefined horizon but low cost. Therefore, begin fundamental research.
Shale gas: groundwater pollution
Returning to gas and oil: burden on imports, limited resources, pollution (including oil spills), greenhouse gas emissions.
Renewable energies remain: immense, diverse, requiring low technological levels.
If all countries in the world accepted to invest
massively
in these solutions (far beyond simple household installations), dedicating the money currently spent on nuclear energy and weapons development, all problems would be quickly resolved!
But such an approach faces fierce opposition for various reasons.
-
The enormous investments made in nuclear energy would become obsolete. Let us hasten to add that if such investments were made—and continue to be made—it is primarily for military applications (focused on plutonium production).
-
The low technological level required for developing renewable energies (in deserts, geothermally active regions, oceans, etc.) would place technologically advanced nations on equal footing with those previously considered incapable of catching up with modern technology.
-
This approach represents a "anti-New World Order, anti-globalization, even anti-capitalist" policy.
President Nicolas Sarkozy's opinion during his visit to Tokyo on March 31, 2011
Two minutes of video
- France has chosen nuclear energy...
Which France? The one represented by its elected officials, manipulated by our nuclear oligarchs, by the polytechnicians of the Corps des Mines, by the military? By the atom barons?
The French people "did not choose nuclear energy."
The opinion of Japanese Nobel laureate Masatoshi Koshiba on ITER
A summary of the argument presented on this page.
ITER is a project that has been heavily publicized for a long time. Over-sensationalized and oversimplified, it has been reduced to catchy images like "the sun in a test tube," "unlimited energy," etc. But science does not work through fantasy images and video clips with beautiful CGI.
The idea of extracting energy from the fusion of two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, is based on
two reactions
, not one. Deuterium is abundant in nature and not radioactive. Tritium does not exist in appreciable quantities in nature. With a half-life of 12.3 years, it is radioactive and therefore biotoxic.
To start, a fusion reactor would need to be charged with a 50/50 D-T mixture. Then various heating methods would raise this mixture to a temperature exceeding 100 million degrees, enabling fusion reactions—producing a helium nucleus and a high-energy neutron—to begin. A magnetic confinement system, repeatedly described, prevents plasma from escaping.
In 1991, D-T fusion was achieved in the English tokamak JET at Culham, England, for a brief second. During this operation, the fusion produced raw energy equivalent to 70% of the energy injected. This is called the Q factor.
Roughly speaking, the energy released grows with the plasma volume, while losses grow with its surface area. Very schematically, one could say that if a machine is twice as large (as ITER is compared to JET), the Q ratio would double. It seems very likely that this goal will be achieved, with a Q > 1, but this leaves a vast landscape of unresolved problems.
Furthermore, what is targeted in ITER is a longer operating time (400 to 1000 seconds), which can only be achieved by generating the magnetic field using a superconducting system bathed in liquid helium, cooled to below -270°C. In this context, the project has relied on work done by the French at Cadarache on a tokamak equipped with a superconducting magnet producing 4 teslas, of more modest size, but which enabled the creation of this magnetic field for 6 minutes, with the plasma temperature remaining below the fusion ignition threshold.
Work done on Tore Supra and other machines has provided some insights into plasma-wall interactions, without yielding a viable solution. The internal surface of the torus was lined with carbon tiles. But these behaved like "hydrogen pumps," especially absorbing tritium, which is radioactive. This choice was therefore not retained.
The ITER project is therefore supposed to start without having tested the behavior of the "first wall," which will be in contact with the fusion plasma. In this 1,000 square meter chamber, 700 square meters must be covered with a light metal—beryllium. This element is notoriously toxic (a recognized occupational disease: berylliosis) and carcinogenic. It melts at 1,280°C and boils at 2,400°C. The remaining 300 square meters should be lined with tungsten, which withstands higher temperatures (3,000°C), but presents other disadvantages.
The most critical issue has been concealed. A fusion generator cannot operate with external tritium input. There will be no "tritium factory" outside the reactor. This tritium must instead be synthesized within a lithium blanket, immediately adjacent to the first wall. This synthesis produces tritium and helium while simultaneously absorbing neutrons emitted by fusion, which pass unimpeded through the magnetic barrier. The tritium-producing substance is solely lithium, a metal with a low melting point: 180°C, boiling at 1,300°C. The reaction is therefore:
neutron
plus
lithium
yields
helium
plus
tritium
plus energy (the reaction is exothermic)
Thus, the overall operation of a fusion reactor is:
deuterium
plus
lithium
yields two
helium
plus
energy.
It can be seen that this process is also intended to provide essential protection for the fragile superconducting magnet located immediately behind this tritium-producing blanket (whose fragility Nobel laureate Gennes had highlighted, while fellow Nobel laureate Masatoshi Koshiba from Japan expressed concern about the impact of high-energy neutrons—14 MeV, compared to only 2 MeV from fission reactions).
Lithium can exist in liquid form, mixed with lead. Cooling would then be achieved using pressurized water. In the second configuration, lithium would be embedded within a ceramic, in which case the coolant and heat transfer fluid would be helium.
In the ITER experiment, testing of the entire system is not planned. That is, the machine will be incomplete. Only limited tests of tritium-producing components are envisaged—yet, logically, such tests should have been conducted beforehand on JET. In fact, in the ITER experiment, the fragile superconducting magnet will simply be protected from neutron bombardment by a protective layer, for example lead, which at the same time serves as a heat sink.
Only in DEMO, the next machine, will fusion energy production be coupled with tritium regeneration via the essential tritium-producing blanket. It seems unreasonable to commit to such an expensive and complex project without prior positive testing of these tritium-producing components. ITER carries too many uncertainties and unresolved problems. In passing, lithium is extremely reactive—it burns in air and explodes on contact with water. It reacts with many substances: oxygen, water, and even nitrogen. Its compounds are toxic.
The list of unresolved issues for the ITER project is long. No one can predict how the beryllium first wall will behave. Despite decades of research, fusion plasmas remain fundamentally unstable. The commonly used image for their magnetic confinement compares them to a poorly inflated inner tube that one attempts to contain with elastic bands—themselves also elastic. Randomly, these instabilities cause the plasma to come into contact with the wall and erode it.
A fusion reactor is a boiler that produces "ash"—in this case, helium—which must be continuously extracted. Helium levels must not exceed 10%, otherwise the reaction extinguishes. Therefore, the fusion reactor includes an extraction and re-injection system called the divertor, located at the base of the chamber, featuring two clearly visible grooves. There, the plasma will contact the wall, requiring tungsten use. Atoms of both beryllium and tungsten will inevitably be stripped away, polluting the plasma. The divertor must not only extract the "helium ash" and re-inject fresh fuel (D-T mixture), but also continuously clean the plasma. Tungsten pollution is particularly problematic because these atoms cause intense radiative cooling, which could halt fusion reactions.
None of this has been tested, and it involves numerous unprecedented experiments simultaneously in a machine costing 15 billion euros.
At the DEMO level, the machine will additionally become fundamentally dangerous due to the presence of lithium and lead. Heat extraction, already tested on Tore-Supra, uses pressurized water channels—a problematic and hazardous coexistence.
It is commonly stated that fusion generators do not carry the risks of fission reactors, since fusion reactions cease immediately upon any malfunction.
True. But the danger lies in the "peripherals." If lithium contacts air, it burns. If it contacts water, it explodes—immediately causing the disintegration of the toxic, carcinogenic beryllium first wall. If the lithium-lead mixture is used, lead emissions will occur, also biotoxic. Tritium emissions—radioactive—will come from both the chamber and from a disrupted tritium-producing blanket. Any reactor malfunction would become immediately uncontrollable. If lithium burns, it cannot be extinguished. The nearby liquid helium would then vaporize. The enormous energy stored in the magnet would then be released via Joule effect, generating massive forces.
The public and decision-makers have deliberately been kept ignorant of these aspects, which the project designers cannot deny—resorting instead to the ever-repeated argument: "There is no such thing as zero risk."
Conclusion: This is a ruinous, problematic project that will ultimately pose extreme dangers to public health.
Official schematic of the complete fusion generator
(1): Injection of deuterium-tritium mixture via the divertor
(2): The plasma, shown in yellow
(3): The 14 MeV neutron flux striking the tritium-producing blanket (4), which also serves as a heat capture system. Heat is directed toward a heat exchanger-turbine-alternator assembly (5)
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