Nov. 1, 2018 – By Steven B. Krivit –
In response to a letter from New Energy Times to Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, Birol’s organization has removed false and misleading claims about the forthcoming $24 billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).
In fact, IEA removed the entire ITER section from its Tokamak program Web page.
Oct. 25, 2018 – By Steven B. Krivit –
In response to a letter from New Energy Times to Richard Lyall, the Atkins nuclear major projects director, the Atkins company has removed a false and misleading claim about the most powerful fusion experiment, performed at the JET reactor in the U.K. in 1997. It has also removed a similar claim about the expected results of the $22 billion ITER reactor, now under construction in southern France.
Atkins is a U.K.-based engineering and design consultancy that is responsible for building the infrastructure at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor site. In April 2010, Atkins was awarded a €150 million contract from the European ITER domestic agency known as Fusion for Energy.
On Oct. 2, 2014, Atkins displayed a slide presentation to financial analysts and investors and claimed that the ITER reactor is designed to produce 500 MW of output power for 50MW of input power and that the best fusion result so far, from the JET reactor, produced 16 MW of thermal power.
ITER will, in fact, consume at least 300 MW of electricity to produce that 500 MW of thermal power. If all goes well, the equivalent net power of the ITER reactor will result in a loss of 86 MW, which is not enough for an engineering breakeven. It will, however, be a significant improvement over JET, which had a net loss of 684 MW.
Atkins had published the false claims on its Web site at this url and in this downloadable PDF (revised PDF) until receiving this letter from New Energy Times. New Energy Times sent the letter to Lyall, Julianne Antrobus, the Atkins Nuclear director, and Martin Grant, the Atkins chief executive officer for energy. In response to the letter, Atkins did not dispute, argue or discuss the discrepancy with New Energy Times. The Atkins company simply and silently deleted the false claims.
New Energy Times has tracked how fusion scientists have, for decades, failed to disclose the full amount of input power required by JET and failed to disclose the full power that will be required for ITER. As shown by this document, fusion scientists deceived the Atkins directors into thinking that, “if successful, the [ITER] facility will deliver nuclear fusion on a commercial scale offering safe, limitless and environmentally responsible energy.”
Fusion scientists used a double meaning of the phrase “fusion power” without informing people outside the fusion research community about the double meaning. Misled by fusion scientists, Atkins, in turn, misled financial analysts and investors about the expected power from ITER.
Slide #20 from Oct. 2, 2014, Atkins presentation to financial analysts and investors depicting false projections for ITER and false results from JET
Tony Donné, EUROfusion program manager (Photo by Rob Stork)
Sept. 2, 2018 — By Steven B. Krivit
In November 2017, New Energy Times reported the EUROfusion organization’s publication on its Web site of inaccurate power claims about the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Two weeks later, the EUROfusion organization corrected those falsehoods. Five months later, in April 2018, during an overhaul of its Web site, EUROfusion removed its entire ITER Web page.
EUROfusion, like many organizations directly or indirectly involved in the ITER fusion reactor project, was grossly exaggerating the design capacity of the reactor. Among the inaccurate claims, EUROfusion said that, when complete, ITER would produce 10 times the power it would consume. In fact, the reactor will have a near-zero net power output.
The ITER page was one of the most prominent pages on the original EUROfusion Web site. Also, the page for the JET fusion reactor, ITER’s most direct predecessor, contained a description of ITER with an inaccurate power claim. That description was also removed during the site overhaul.
On April 27, 2018, New Energy Times asked Petra Nieckchen, the EUROfusion media manager, why the ITER page had been removed. Her response provided limited insight, despite a second attempt for clarification.
“ITER is not an experiment EUROfusion uses,” Nieckchen said. “It is an experiment we support.”
A page on the EUROfusion site that refers to ITER is titled “ITER Physics” and is listed under the “Programme” menu section. However, that page does not say anything about ITER. Instead, it provides information about other fusion research devices that EUROfusion says will provide supporting scientific knowledge for ITER. In the menu on the revised EUROfusion Web site, under the list of fusion devices, ITER is not listed.
New Energy Times asked Tony Donné, the program manager for EUROfusion since its inception, why his organization is no longer providing information about the ITER fusion reactor.
“We are not responsible for designing and building ITER,” Donné wrote. “That is the ITER organization. As EUROfusion, we are doing research in support of ITER. We didn’t receive money to build ITER, and there is no reason why we need to report on this; ITER should and does.”
Yet, according to this Oct. 9, 2014, European Commission press release (PDF), the EUROfusion Consortium was established and initially funded with €850,000 by the European Commission with ITER as a key component:
Success of key infrastructure – ITER (with support of JET) – ITER is the largest fusion reactor currently under construction in the South of France in Cadarache. It will be the first magnetic confined fusion device which will produce more power than put into it (it is expected to provide 10 times more power than put into it).
Also, according to this August 2016 EUROfusion brochure (PDF), the consortium was formed with ITER at “the heart of this collaborative agreement.” The brochure says that “EUROfusion’s work is structured around [a document called] the ‘Roadmap to the Realisation of Fusion Energy,’ which places ITER at its core.” It says that, “because ITER is the key facility of the EUROfusion roadmap, the consortium allocates considerable resources to ITER and its accompanying experiments.”
Donné denies that there is any discrepancy between the EUROfusion consortium’s new lack of information about ITER and EUROfusion’s founding mission. He explained it this way: EUROfusion directly supports various European fusion research devices that are intended to provide support for ITER, once operational.
“EUROfusion is not in any way involved in the procurements and manufacture of ITER. Instead we are preparing for the operation phase of ITER,” Donné wrote. “This supporting research makes up a large part of the EUROfusion research portfolio, but should not be seen as direct involvement in the building of ITER.”
As the Oct. 9, 2014, European Commission press release, quoted above, shows, EUROfusion was founded on the false claim that it would produce 10 times more power than put into it. Donné knows that is a false claim. His 2016 presentation (PDF) confirms that ITER will produce the equivalent of zero net power, if all goes well (see image below). The heat output will be 1.6 times the electrical input, but if converted (which is not part of the design) back to electricity, the net power output of ITER would be a loss.
Source: Tony Donné, Gianfranco Federici, “Overview of Design and R&D Activities Towards a European DEMO”
Only a few remaining Web pages on the EUROfusion Web site make any claims about ITER. One is in the FAQ section. On Aug. 21, New Energy Times advised Donné that the page contained multiple misleading statements. Donné fixed almost all the problems on that page within a week. (Original Page / Revised Page)
The only remaining main Web page on the EUROfusion Web site that makes a claim about ITER is its “Fusion on Earth” (PDF) page, which says, “Once operational, ITER will demonstrate the feasibility of fusion as an energy source.”
New Energy Times asked Donné how, in his opinion, ITER will demonstrate the feasibility of fusion as an energy source if it will produce the equivalent of zero net power.
“ITER will do all the necessary tests of the plasma and various subsystems such that, at the end, after successful tests, we can say that it is feasible to build a fusion electricity plant,” Donné wrote.
In other words, according to Donné, ITER won’t demonstrate the feasibility of fusion as an energy source. Instead, it will be feasible — to him — to build another experimental reactor, even larger, after the $22 billion ITER completes its tests.
Sept. 2, 2018 — By Steven B. Krivit
The European Commission has corrected two false and misleading statements about the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) on the European Commission nuclear fusion Web site.
These are the two original statements:
“The international scientific community is now building ITER to show that fusion energy is possible at an industrial scale.”
“ITER will be the first experiment to produce significant quantities of fusion energy, considerably more than required to operate the machine.”
BEFORE
AFTER
On Feb. 16, 2018, New Energy Times wrote to Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, about the two statements, saying that ITER won’t produce power at an industrial scale because its net power output will be about zero. ITER won’t produce considerably more power than required to operate the machine. With its thermal output compared to its electrical input, ITER will make only 1.6 times more power. ITER won’t demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion power because that low level of heat output wouldn’t be enough to be converted to net electrical power.
On March 1, 2018, Telmo Baltazar, a senior political adviser for Juncker, wrote back and said that Maroš Šefcovic, the vice-president responsible for Energy Union, would address the issues. On April 6, 2018, the European Commission updated it Web page with the corrected statements:
“The international scientific community is now building ITER which will demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion on Earth as a sustainable energy source.”
“ITER will be the first experiment to generate up to 500 million watts (MW) of fusion power.”
The first correction removes the “industrial scale” claim and replaces it with an ambiguous claim that could be broadly interpreted. The second correction removes the “considerably more [power] than required to operate the machine” claim and replaces it with the “500 MW fusion power” claim.
Although the second claim is not false, it is still misleading. Most members of the public will not realize that “fusion power” in this context does not mean what they think it means. There is a double meaning that fusion organizations, including the ITER organization and EUROfusion, do not explain well and do not define in their glossaries. The European Commission revision is technically valid only because of this double meaning.
The European Commission faces the same dilemma as other organizations that have had direct or indirect association with the ITER project. If it is transparent with the European public that ITER’s “500 MW of fusion power” is not enough to make 1 Watt of net electrical power, European taxpayers may realize they’ve been deceived.
June 26, 2018 – By Steven B. Krivit
Nick Holloway, the media manager for the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority and Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, the United Kingdom’s premier nuclear fusion research facility, has corrected the agency’s false and misleading statements about ITER in response to letters from New Energy Times.
Original CCFE Text:
“[ITER] is expected to prove the feasibility of electricity generation from fusion by releasing some 500 megawatts of fusion power (from a 50 megawatt input) for up to 500 seconds. It will be the first fusion experiment to produce net power – ten times more than the amount required to heat the plasma.”
Revised CCFE Text:
“[ITER] is designed to produce a plasma that releases 500 megawatts of power from fusion reactions, during pulses of up to 600 seconds.”
Details of the problems with the original text are explained in the following letters:
June 17, 2018, Steven Krivit to Nick Holloway
June 20, 2018, Nick Holloway to Steven Krivit
June 22, 2018, Steven Krivit to Nick Holloway
June 25, 2018, Nick Holloway to Steven Krivit
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