After nearly five years of fabrication and testing, one of the first pieces of an incredibly powerful magnet built by General Atomics has been completed and will be shipped to Europe in the coming months, to be inserted into the heart of an ambitious international nuclear fusion project.
Standing 7 feet high, 14 feet in diameter and weighing 250,000 pounds, the module is one of six virtually identical pieces that will be stacked atop each other to make up what is called the Central Solenoid that will drive 15 million amperes of current within the ITER project, which is under construction in southern France.
“For those of us who have dedicated our careers to fusion research, this is undeniably an exciting moment,” Tony Taylor, vice president for magnetic fusion energy at General Atomics, said in a statement.
When assembled, the Central Solenoid will be 59 feet high and weigh 1,000 tons, making it the largest pulsed superconducting magnet in the world.
The Central Solenoid needs that kind of heft because the ITER project’s mission is an imposing one — to establish whether nuclear fusion technology can be harnessed to unleash its vast potential as a practical, safe and nearly inexhaustible source of clean energy.
Fusion differs from nuclear fission, which is the process used in commercial nuclear power plants, such as the now-shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Fission splits the nuclei of atoms to create power while fusion causes hydrogen nuclei to collide and fuse into helium atoms that release tremendous amounts of energy.
Fusion technology was critical in the development of the hydrogen bomb. However, as an energy source, no commercial fusion reactors exist. In fact, fusion power has been generated only for very short periods in the laboratory.
The ITER project will not capture the energy it produces as electricity but hopes to pave the way for the development of future fusion power plants.
Construction site of the ITER nuclear fusion project in southern France, November 2020.
(ITER)
Some 35 nations are contributing to ITER (pronounced “eater”) and the Central Solenoid is a large part of the U.S. effort.
Construction has been underway since 2010, with the project rising over the nearby town of Cadarache on a plot of land covering about 445 acres. The site is 72 percent complete, with the first tests scheduled to begin in 2025.
About 45,000 amps of electricity will flow through the Central Solenoid’s wires, generating a strong magnetic field that steers and shapes an intensely hot, energy-producing plasma circling around the center of the ITER project.
“The Central Solenoid ranks among the largest, most complex and demanding magnet programs ever undertaken,” John Smith, director of engineering and projects for General Atomics, said in a statement.
Six ITER Central Solenoid modules in various stages of fabrication at General Atomics’ Magnet Technologies Center in Poway. On the far right, the first completed module sits on an air cart that is used to transport the 250,000-pound modules around the facility.
(General Atomics )
The modules are made at the General Atomics Magnet Technologies Center, a 60,000 square-foot warehouse in Poway, under the direction of the US ITER project, managed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Each module is surrounded by 3.6 miles of conductor segments with six layers of insulating tape totaling more than 180 miles. A second module has already been built and is going through testing. A seventh module, a spare, is also being constructed in case something goes wrong with one of the others.
The modules will be transported one at a time by a specially designed trailer to the Texas Gulf Coast, then shipped to Marseilles, France, before getting trucked to ITER.
“The project is on schedule and the (first) module has now passed a series of extremely demanding tests,” Smith said, “so we know it will perform as intended.”
John Smith, director of engineering and projects at General Atomics, stands next to a module for the Central Solenoid of the ITER project in a 2018 photo.
(San Diego Union-Tribune)
Making fusion an energy reality, however, has its share of skeptics. Developing commercial fusion reactors has been discussed since the 1950s, leading to jibes by some that fusion as a power source is always 30 years away.
ITER has been running behind schedule and over budget. Twenty years ago, the project was expected to cost about $7 billion but more recent estimates say the costs could ultimately run 10 times higher.
The U.S. contribution accounts for about 9 percent of ITER’s costs but fusion supporters say the U.S. will receive access to 100 percent of the experiments data and intellectual property, which could prove critical in the development of future fusion programs. Last month, a group of the nation’s top fusion scientists and researchers issued a report to the Department of Energy, calling on the U.S. to build a fusion pilot plant by the 2040s.
Originally, ITER stood for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor but the project’s managers in recent years have preferred using the Latin word “iter,” which means “the way.”
In an email to the Union-Tribune, an ITER official said the switch was made “in part to avoid the confusion that often occurs among laypersons when they associate ‘thermonuclear’ with nuclear fission — which is incorrect, or with ‘thermonuclear’ weapons, which is also incorrect.”
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Critical piece of nuclear fusion project completed by General Atomics - The San Diego Union-Tribune
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