#111 Open Letter to Editors of the New York Times

Feb 192022
 

Feb. 19, 2022

Celia Dugger, Science Editor
Pui-Wing Tam, Technology Editor
Michael Roston, Deputy Technology Editor

Dear Editors,

In several news articles, the New York Times has published inaccurate information about the purpose and primary design objective of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

Examples:
  • “If successful, the reactor would ignite a fusion reaction and produce up to 1.5 billion watts of power, demonstrating the feasibility of exploiting hydrogen fusion for large-scale power generation.” (Malcolm Brown— Dec. 10, 1996)
  • “ITER, a $10 billion project intended to demonstrate by the year 2008 that hydrogen isotope fusion, a process somewhat similar to that which powers the sun, could be a commercially practical source of energy.” (Malcolm Brown— May 20, 1997)
  • “ITER would provide a record 500 megawatts of fusion power for at least 500 seconds, a little more than eight minutes, during each experiment. That would meet the power needs of about 140,000 homes.” (Robert Stern — 31, 2003)
  • “The goal is to prove that energy can be generated through nuclear fusion … So far, experimental fusion reactors have required more energy to operate than they have produced. ITER and the project in Japan are supposed to prove that fusion could be much more than a drain on the grid. … Scientists then would spend the next decade or so trying to create bursts of power of up to 500 megawatts for several minutes at a time.” (James Kanter — April 29, 2009)
  • “Although all fusion reactors to date have produced less energy than they use, physicists are expecting that ITER will benefit from its larger size, and will produce about 10 times more power than it consumes.” (Henry Fountain — March 27, 2017)
  • “The [ITER] consortium hopes to begin generating electricity at the site in 2035. … So far, the best effort to reach positive energy output from a fusion reactor was achieved by the Joint European Torus, or JET, project, a Tokamak that began operation in 1983 in Oxfordshire, England. The device was able to produce 16 megawatts of fusion power while consuming 24 megawatts.” (John Markoff, Aug. 11, 2021)
  • “In the late 1990s, the Joint European Torus experiment in England was able to generate 16 million watts of fusion power for a brief moment, going about 70 percent of the way to producing as much power as it consumed.” (Kenneth Chang — Aug. 17, 2021)
ITER Power Facts

ITER is designed to inject 50 megawatts of heating power into the fuel to create a fusion plasma with 500 megawatts of thermal power. That is its primary scientific purpose and design objective, according to the ITER Design Specification published by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2002.

If ITER accomplishes that objective, the overall reactor will use at least 300 megawatts of electricity continuously throughout the experiment. Since 2017, some fusion scientists have started saying that the ITER reactor will need 50 megawatts to start the reaction. That is not the same as the power needed to start the reactor, which is 500 megawatts of electricity.

On this Web page, I list 11 sources that describe the operating power requirement for ITER in the 300-megawatt range. I list three references that are in the 400-megawatt range.

These facts mean that the overall ITER reactor, if it works as designed, will not produce net power or net energy.

JET Power Facts

The ITER power discrepancy was a direct successor to the JET power discrepancy. Here’s an example of the false power claims about JET, published on March 12, 2018, in the Guardian: “[JET] remains the gold standard for fusion power – but it achieved just 16 MW of output for 25 MW of input.”

JET’s 1997 result still holds the record for power output. But the 16-megawatt output needed an input of 700 megawatts. Full technical details about both reactors are here.

For Your Readers 

The ITER organization claims that the ITER reactor will “prove that fusion power can be produced on a commercial scale and is sustainable.” It says that the project “aims to demonstrate that it is possible to produce commercial energy from fusion.”

With a projected net power loss for the overall reactor, the upper management of the organization knows that they cannot possibly deliver such promises.

Perhaps your readers would appreciate learning the facts now.

Steven B. Krivit
Publisher and Senior Editor, New Energy Times

 

 

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