#81 Serious Discrepancies with ITER and Nuclear Fusion

Oct 102021
 

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By Steven B. Krivit
Oct. 10, 2021

The Third of a Three-Part New Energy Times Investigative Science Report
Part 1: The Tritium Fusion Fuel Discrepancy: The Scientific Facts
Part 2: The Tritium Fusion Fuel Discrepancy: The Misleading Claims


ABSTRACT

Significant discrepancies exist about the forthcoming ITER fusion reactor. These discrepancies could spell disaster for the ITER project as well as for future fusion reactors. Fusion promoters sold the idea of ITER to the public, news media, and elected officials primarily based on these two false claims:

FUEL SOURCE: They said the fuel for fusion was abundant, inexpensive, and universally available. Actually, one of the two required fuel components is. The other does not exist as a natural resource on Earth.

POWER GAIN: They said the ITER reactor (not just the physics reaction) was designed to produce 10 times the power it would consume. They said ITER would be the first fusion reactor (not just the physics reaction) to demonstrate net power production. Actually, if ITER works correctly, there will be no reactor power gain. The reactor will lose power.

FUSION INVESTIGATION
New Energy Times uncovered the input power requirement for the JET reactor, and thus the discrepancies with the JET and ITER reactors, on Dec. 1, 2014. We began reporting on the ITER power discrepancy on Dec. 14, 2016. We uncovered and published the input power value for ITER on Oct. 6, 2017. We began reporting on the fuel discrepancy on July 1, 2017, and published extensive reporting on the fuel discrepancy on Oct. 10, 2021.


Japanese Nobel laureate, physicist Masatoshi Koshiba, sounded the alarm about the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) power discrepancy 16 years ago. He called it a “bait-and-switch” trick. He compared the ITER project to the ancient Chinese saying “sheep head and dog meat.”

“This implies that the shop says it is selling sheep meat but actually they are selling dog meat,” Koshiba said.

John Evans, a materials scientist who worked for many years for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, sounded the alarm about the fusion fuel discrepancy 12 years ago in Nature magazine.

In another article in Nature, Evans cited U.S. physicist William Metz: “It sometimes seems necessary to suspend one’s normal critical faculties not to find the problems of fusion overwhelming.”

The Discrepancies

There are many fusion critics who point out the valid and seemingly insurmountable challenges, one after the other, on the roadway toward practical fusion energy.

My primary concern, however, is the set of discrepancies between the scientific facts about fusion and how fusion information has been sold to us. My concern is scientific integrity. My concern is public trust in science.

I want to encourage the physics community to summon the necessary courage to resolve the following discrepancies and in doing so, demonstrate the integrity the public expects from the scientific community.

  1. Fusion promoters said the fuel for fusion was abundant, inexpensive, and universally available. One of the two required fuel components is. The other does not exist as a natural resource on Earth.
  1. Fusion promoters said the ITER reactor (not reaction) was designed to produce 10 times the power it would consume and that it would be the first fusion reactor (not fusion reaction) to demonstrate net power production. Instead, if ITER works correctly, there will be no reactor power gain. The reactor will lose power.
  1. Fusion promoters said the primary measurable objective of ITER was a reactor (not a reaction) that would produce 500 MW of fusion thermal power from an input of only 50 MW to heat the fuel. The 500 MW thermal output is not possible without the 300 megawatts of electricity needed to operate the reactor.
  1. Fusion promoters used the 1997 result of the JET reactor to sell the concept of ITER. They said that JET produced 16 MW of fusion thermal power from a total input of 24 MW. Instead, the total input rate was 700 MW electric.
  1. Fusion promoters said that a fusion energy source would reduce or even eliminate geopolitical tensions and conflicts based on its universally available fuel. Instead, neither the tritium nor lithium fuel components are equally available to all.
  1. Fusion promoters said that ITER will be a “benefit for all mankind.” Instead, only the nations that funded the ITER project are entitled to share in any intellectual property that may be generated by the project.
  1. Fusion promoters used the triple-product values to proclaim enormous progress toward practical fusion energy. Instead, triple-product values are an irrelevant measurement of such progress.
  1. The ITER organization and its European counterparts (EUROfusion, Fusion for Energy) have been implying that a single international collaboration for a DEMO-class fusion reactor will follow ITER. Instead, no such agreement has ever existed. Europe and every country that wants to build a DEMO-class reactor will require its taxpayers to pay the entire cost of each reactor.
Image from the ITER organization's Web site, Nov. 16, 2016

Image from the ITER organization’s Web site, Nov. 16, 2016

There are two areas of potential additional discrepancies that I have not investigated because of time constraints.

“Fusion Is Safe”

“Fusion is safe.” That’s what the public has been told, over and over. Is this true? The phrase sounds like something uttered by a salesperson rather than a scientist. We don’t know yet what will happen within the extreme conditions of the ITER. I have not examined the potential safety issues with fusion reactors, with ITER specifically, or the materials. Other thoughtful critics have examined some of the issues, and I refer readers to the work of Celia Izoard, L.J. Reinders, Daniel Jassby, and Michael Dittmar.

“Very Little Radioactive Waste”

We know that the constant stream of high-energy neutrons hitting the inner walls of any fusion reactor is going to cause sufficient damage such that the wall material will need to be replaced. In ITER, the wall material that has been activated by neutron irradiation — tons of material — will need to be stored somewhere, perhaps for 100 years. Which village in France has agreed to give a home to the hot material? Again, I have not examined these concerns in detail, and I direct readers to the work of Izoard, Reinders, Jassby, and Dittmar.

Skip the Scientific Method

There are two more discrepancies, logical discrepancies. European taxpayers are paying for fusion scientists to design the EU DEMO reactor right now. Ordinarily in science, experiments are performed, results are evaluated, and new experiments are designed based on those results. But fusion scientists convinced the European government that they have to begin designing the EU DEMO reactor now because designing and building a fusion reactor takes so long.

The Missing Test Facility

European fusion scientists are designing the EU DEMO reactor without knowing what materials will keep the reactor from self-destructing. It’s no secret; everyone in the fusion business knows this. This is the logical equivalent of designing a bridge without knowing what materials you will use to build the bridge.

Twenty-seven years ago, Robert Conn, the chair of the U.S. Fusion Energy Advisory Council, told the Department of Energy, “Regarding a fusion neutron source, a key finding is that preparation for building a DEMO requires that both ITER and a high-flux 14-MeV neutron source proceed on similar schedules.”

This means that building a DEMO-class reactor requires not only the results of ITER but also the results of a special nuclear facility that has the capability of simulating the high energy and high flux of neutrons expected to hit the inner wall of a fusion reactor. The proposed facility is called the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility. It has not been built yet.

In July, I asked Conn whether it was unwise to build a DEMO-class reactor before knowing what, if any, materials can maintain their integrity over long duration, subjected to a 14 MeV neutron flux.

“Your interpretation of our long-ago report is correct. Our recommendation lo’ those many years ago about the need for an intense neutron source to understand neutron damage in materials likely to be used in a reactor stands. It is as true today as it was many years ago. The physics has not changed,” Conn wrote.

From Foolishness to Fraud 

I believe my film ITER, The Grand Illusion: A Forensic Investigation of Power Claims makes clear — particularly from the video footage of the featured fusion scientists — that the ITER reactor idea was intentionally sold based on false power claims.

The film reveals the precipitating events that impelled these fusion scientists to breach their fiduciary duty as scientists, not only to the public but also to their peers. The film reveals only one viable explanation for their otherwise-inexplicable behavior: They believed the end would justify the means.

The difficulty we face, as a society —as a science-loving society — is that this situation does not involve one or two lone-wolf scientists who strayed from the pack. It is in fact the leaders of the pack who have strayed from the principles of scientific integrity with which they were entrusted. This is new. It’s unfamiliar ground. And to many people, it’s inconceivable.

Was there a motive to oversell ITER? Absolutely. When ITER was proposed decades ago, fusion scientists had already developed a reputation for overpromising and under-delivering. The U.S. and U.K. governments were not approving funding for new domestic reactor projects. Along came ITER, thanks to the encouragement of the two most powerful men in the world at the time: Mikael Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan.

Bernard Bigot, the current director general of the ITER organization, later recognized how propitious the outcome of that political summit was for fusion. In a March 8, 2015, news article, Bigot said, “ITER is the last chance we have to demonstrate that tokamak fusion is manageable — there will be no other.”

Sabina Griffith, who works in the ITER communications office, said in a 2018 film that, if ITER does not succeed, then “fusion will be dead, forever or at least for a very very long … nobody will bet on fusion for a long time.”

And now we know that, if ITER works properly, it will fail to demonstrate that fusion is commercially viable. It will therefore fail to accomplish what everybody but the fusion scientists thinks it is supposed to do. We know that, if ITER works properly, it will use up almost all the remaining tritium in the world.

Before the first shovel hit the ground in 2007, ITER was already locked into a path of failure. ITER will never deliver the promises made by its promoters and expected by the public.

Readers may wonder how we got here. My film tells the story. So do the two recently published books by L.J. Reinders, a retired high-energy physicist. The larger book is written as a scholarly reference. The smaller book is written for a scientifically adept lay audience.

Reinders’ books present a comprehensive review of the history of fusion. He provides a thoughtful analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the various aspects of fusion research. He does so with sober, scientific precision. Here is an excerpt from his conclusion:

Although there is no possibility that energy from nuclear fusion will make a tangible contribution to electricity generation in this century, the proponents of nuclear fusion nonetheless steadfastly try to fool us into believing that this could be the case, but they are actually fooling themselves. Richard Feynman said that “the first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.”

The history of fusion shows that the human capacity for self-deception knows no bounds. The question is whether they have crossed the red line from foolishness to fraud. Is fusion now at a stage where they are trying to deliberately fool the entire world?

Reinders has cast a broader net than I have done. I’ve only scrutinized ITER, JET, and, to some extent, the MIT/Commonwealth concepts.

If someone needs to be the first to say that the emperor of fusion has no clothes, then I’ll do it: The ITER reactor was knowingly sold based on false claims. This is fraud.

What are your thoughts? Write to me. I’d like to hear from you. https://news.newenergytimes.net/contact-new-energy-times/

 

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