#82 The Tritium Fusion Fuel Discrepancy: The Misleading Claims

Oct 102021
 

Return to the Fusion Fuel Main Page

By Steven B. Krivit
Oct. 10, 2021 

The Second of a Three-Part New Energy Times Investigative Science Report
Part 1: The Tritium Fusion Fuel Discrepancy: The Scientific Facts
Part 3: Serious Discrepancies with ITER and Nuclear Fusion

 

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.

In Part 1 of this series, we learned that any commercial fusion reactor, if one is ever built, will need a 50/50 mixture of two isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium. We learned that deuterium, as claimed, is indeed abundant, inexpensive, and virtually unlimited.


We also learned that the other hydrogen isotope — tritium — does not exist on Earth as a natural resource. We learned that, without tritium, fusion as an energy source is a dead end.

Part 1 shows that courageous fusion scientists have accurately and transparently explained the disturbing problems about tritium.

However, they have not been the scientists who were communicating with the public, news media, and elected officials. The public representatives of the fusion community said that fusion fuel is abundant, inexpensive, and virtually unlimited.

Sometimes, they said (falsely) that tritium, like deuterium, is abundant, inexpensive, and virtually unlimited.  At other times, they didn’t mention tritium at all. This report provides a few examples.

Mark Henderson

From 2008 to March 2021, plasma physicist Mark Henderson was the section leader of the ITER electron cyclotron heating and current drive system. In July 2019, Henderson spoke at a TEDx conference in Vicenza, Italy:

If I go out to the ocean and take a liter of water, and I take a little bit of a special hydrogen isotope out of that water, put the rest of the liter back into the ocean so I don’t damage the ocean, and I take those two isotopes, and I want to put them together, I want to fuse them together. Each liter would be equivalent to about 200 to 350 liters of gasoline, and with that, we’d be able to power all of Italy: electricity, transportation, heat, industry, everything. The energy content stored in the ocean would last humanity for 100 million years. That’s like seven times the age of the universe. So it’s just a perpetual-motion machine.

Note how Henderson glossed over the second of “those two isotopes.” Note how he implied that the ocean would supply both isotopes.

Here’s another example of Henderson’s communications about fusion fuel from an article in SCI magazine:

If you look at the reserves of deuterium – a hydrogen isotope – in the oceans, there’s enough energy to last humanity 150 million years at our present rate of consumption. If we could tap into this energy source, it would be basically an endless supply of energy, and it almost seems stupid for us not to try to exploit that.

Michel Laberge

Michel Laberge is the founder of General Fusion Inc. His company has now established a partnership with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, which is run by Ian Chapman.

Here’s what Laberge said at a TEDx conference in Kansas City in 2014:

The fuel that you need for fusion, you can extract it from the ocean. You can extract the fuel from the ocean for one-thousandth of a cent per kilowatt hour. If the whole planet was run on fusion, there would be enough fuel in the ocean for two billion years. So there’s enough fuel, and it’s nice, and it’s clean, and it’s fantastic.”

Thomas Klinger

Thomas Klinger is the scientific director of the Wendelstein 7-X fusion project at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, in Germany. TEDx was again the preferred platform to promote fusion:

It is abundant, enough fusion fuel for millions of years – and is accessible to everybody. So nobody owns the fusion fuel. The machines are expensive, but the fuel cost is essentially zero.

Johannes P. Schwemmer and Massimo Garribba
Johannes P. Schwemmer

Johannes P. Schwemmer

On Jan. 21, 2019, two European Union government officials responsible for fusion research gave a presentation to the European Parliament Committee on Budgetary Control. One was Johannes P. Schwemmer, the director of the ITER domestic agency for the European Union. The other was Massimo Garribba, the European Commission director who represents Europe on the ITER Council.

Schwemmer told those members of the European Parliament that fusion is a promising source of energy because the “fuels are plentiful and available all over the world.”

Garribba, through a European Commission spokesman, told New Energy Times that he was not responsible for slide #2 with the false fuel claim.

But Garribba also spoke at the 52nd Japan Atomic Industrial Forum Annual Conference in 2019 and wrote in his abstract that “fusion may also become a new, non-carbon emitting, safe and virtually unlimited energy source in the second half of this century.”

Sibylle Günter

Sibylle Günter

 

 

Sibylle Günter

Sibylle Günter is the scientific director of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. In 2011, Günter gave a briefing to the European Parliament. She told the members of the European Parliament that the fuel components for fusion — deuterium and tritium — were “practically unlimited.”

European Parliament workshop cover page (left) and slide from Sibylle Günter (right) 

European Parliament workshop cover page (left) and slide from Sibylle Günter (right)

Maria Zuber

Maria Zuber is the vice president for research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She’s also responsible for research integrity at MIT.

In a Sept. 8, 2021, press release, Zuber told MIT science writer David Chandler that the fuel used to create fusion energy comes from water and that “the Earth is full of water — it’s a nearly unlimited resource.”

Zuber’s direct quote is true. Zuber’s indirect quote is false. The MIT press release has other false statements and inaccuracies. Since the MIT fusion department lost its federal funding several years ago, its professors have been making exaggerated claims and promises.

Last year, a New York Times article by Henry Fountain said that MIT professors published “evidence that SPARC would succeed and produce as much as 10 times the energy it consumes.”

This year, a New York Times article by John Markoff that said that MIT’s commercial partner, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, hopes that their SPARC “prototype, when complete, will produce 10 times the energy it consumes.”

In fact, the SPARC reactor concept is not designed to produce any more energy than it consumes.

However, after SPARC, the MIT/Commonwealth scientists have long-term plans to develop another reactor that is designed for a net positive reactor power gain. It has a similar name: ARC.

But was there a miscommunication because of the similarity in names? Absolutely not. That’s because ARC is designed for a reactor gain of only 3, not 10. (See calculations here.) SPARC is designed for a maximum reaction gain of 10.

The MIT/Commonwealth scientists manipulated public perception in exactly the same way the ITER scientists did: misrepresenting reaction power gain as reactor power gain.

That’s exactly how the ITER communications staff misled Fountain when he went to visit the site for this New York Times article. Fountain wrote that, “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.”

I’ve spoken with Fountain and Markoff. Neither of them, of course, had realized that the scientists or their representatives had tricked them. Both of them seemed perplexed and incredulous. Neither admitted that they were tricked.

Zuber also told Chandler that she believes the SPARC reactor “can achieve net positive energy.” This means that the MIT/Commonwealth scientists fooled their own research integrity officer. I asked Zuber on what data she based her statement about net positive energy. She did not respond to my e-mail.

Other scientists involved in the MIT fusion project told Chandler that “the successful operation of SPARC will demonstrate that a full-scale commercial fusion power plant is practical.”

But the SPARC zero-net-energy design would fail to demonstrate that a full-scale commercial fusion power plant is practical.

The ITER people said the same thing in a 2017 press release: “ITER is a project to prove that fusion power can be produced on a commercial scale.” (Actually, if ITER works properly, it will lose power.)

In a presentation at “Technology Day 2019: MIT on Climate Change,” Zuber told her audience that the president of MIT keeps a close eye on the university’s climate and energy research.

“It’s my honor and privilege to oversee MIT’s climate and energy work,” Zuber said. “President Reif assigned me to do that because this is an important topic to him and it was very important that somebody who reports directly to him was overseeing it so that he could be kept in the loop on a regular basis.”

So there can be no questions about what the president knew and when he knew it, I keep Reif in the loop, as well.

Dennis Whyte

Dennis Whyte is the director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. In the same Sept. 8, 2021, press release that featured Zuber, Whyte said, “Fusion is an inexhaustible, carbon-free source of energy that you can deploy anywhere and at any time. It’s really a fundamentally new energy source.”

Whyte went into more detail in a TEDx lecture from 2013:

This is probably the greatest lure of fusion energy. The fuel is so abundant because it is essentially hydrogen. It actually occurs naturally in seawater, and it’s effectively unlimited to all people on Earth.

The example that we’ve put forward here is that, if I extracted a very small portion of and, in fact, harvested these heavy forms of hydrogen from the top inch of Boston Harbor, this would supply all of Boston’s electricity demands for about 100 years. That’s how incredibly intense the energy source is, and you get it from natural seawater. Also, it doesn’t happen to be just where you happen to be on the planet; everybody would have access to the fuel.

So we have a pretty good idea where Zuber got her information from.

Laban Coblentz

Laban Coblentz is the current spokesman for the ITER organization. Here’s what he told environmental journalist Celia Izoard earlier this year:

[Consider] the vast potential for fusion power to reduce and even eliminate more than a century of geopolitical tensions and conflicts focused on competition for access to fossil fuels, by enabling the use of a power-generating technology for which – uniquely among any baseload power generation source – the fuel (in water and lithium) is globally abundant and equally available to all.

Laban Coblentz

Laban Coblentz

Melanie Windridge

Melanie Windridge is a British plasma physicist, spokeswoman for Tokamak Energy Ltd., and the U.K. spokeswoman for the Fusion Industry Association advocacy organization. Here’s what she said at a 2020 science festival:

If we could do this, we could produce abundant energy with no greenhouse gases. We wouldn’t have to worry about running out of fuel because the types of hydrogen we need come from readily available sources like seawater.

 International Atomic Energy Association

The world’s most influential leaders in the nuclear fusion community belong to the International Fusion Research Council, a  standing advisory body of the International Atomic Energy Association. The council has made counterfactual fusion fuel claims, too. Here’s an example from 2005:

Fusion is, today, one of the most promising of all alternative energy sources because of the vast reserves of fuel, potentially lasting several thousands of years.

This IAEA fuel claim brings us full circle, back to the paper that Abdou and his colleagues published online last year, and in print this year, in the IAEA’s scientific journal Nuclear Fusion.

Nuclear Fusion is widely recognized as the leading journal in the field of nuclear fusion research. The list of co-authors below represents six of the most prestigious fusion organizations in the world, including the ITER organization. There’s a good chance that everybody in the fusion community knows about this scientific paper.

Bernard Bigot

Bernard Bigot, the director-general of the ITER organization, gave a video presentation on June 10, 2021, organized by the Bridge Forum. A press release, distributed by the organization a day after the videoconference, said that, according to Bigot, “fusion energy is a predictable baseload power source.”

For 70 years, fusion promoters have been making the same predictions. In 70 years, fusion energy has not delivered a single Watt of usable power.

Here is what the organizers said about Bigot’s fuel claims in their June 11, 2021, press release:

The speaker indicated that fusion fuel, which is made of two isotopes of hydrogen –  deuterium and tritium – is virtually unlimited for hundreds of millions of years and evenly distributed across the globe.

 Bigot also told a half-truth about the planned power goal:

What is the ITER mission? … The goal is to achieve a yield of over 10, which means that the thermal output will be on the order of 500 megawatts while we are just feeding into the plasma 50 megawatts of heating power.

Bigot neglected to mention that 300 megawatts of electricity will also be needed to operate the experiment and produce the 500 megawatts of thermal power.

Bigot also told the audience that the first fusion power plant might be “connected to the grid in Europe by 2060.”

Each of the 200 fusion reactors that have been built in the past 70 years has been “connected to the grid.” So the phrase “connected to the grid” doesn’t mean anything about power contribution to the grid, let alone doing so cost-effectively.

Michio Kaku

Last, we have television’s favorite physicist: Michio Kaku, an American professor of theoretical physics. Kaku spoke with CNBC in August 2021 and told viewers about a “breakthrough” at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory National Ignition Facility.

Kaku told viewers that the laser fusion device “hit breakeven: to extract more energy than you put in.”

Actually, laser fusion scientists have four definitions for breakeven. Kaku didn’t realize this and thus inadvertently led viewers to think that the device extracted more energy than was put into it. It didn’t come close.

Here’s what Kaku said about fusion fuel:

And the fuel — the fuel is seawater! Hydrogen from seawater could be the basic fuel. So this is too good to be true.

Too Good to Be True

Unfortunately, the last part of Kaku’s statement is where he got the story right. But it’s not his fault. He didn’t know. He trusted and believed the fusion scientists who have dominated the public messages.

We all did.

Next: ITER and The Fusion Discrepancies 

 

#81 Serious Discrepancies with ITER and Nuclear Fusion

Oct 102021
 

Return to ITER Power Facts Main Page

Return to the Fusion Fuel Page

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/

 

#80 The Future ITER Nuclear Reactor: A Titanic and Energy-Intensive Project

Oct 092021
 

Note from Steven B. Krivit: I want to thank my colleague Celia Izoard for doing what I have been unable to do so far: boots-on-the-ground reporting directly from the ITER construction site. Her other two thoughtful articles go into important details that I have not covered and I encourage readers to have a look at them as well.

Researched and Written by Celia Izoard
Originally published in French by Reporterre June 16, 2021
English Version by Steven B. Krivit, Oct. 9, 2021

Overview of the ITER Site, in November 2020 — Photo: ITER organization / EJF Riche

Overview of the ITER Site, in November 2020 — Photo: ITER organization / EJF Riche

Part 1: The Future ITER Nuclear Reactor: A Titanic and Energy-Intensive Project

ITER, in Bouches-du-Rhône, will consume as much energy as it produces. This huge project is also much more expensive than expected: 44 billion euros.

The reality behind the promises of nuclear fusion: ITER, the future international reactor, intends to be the showcase of nuclear fusion, whose qualities, according to its promoters, surpass those of fission, as used in conventional power stations. We investigate the heart of a disproportionate project which has potentially disastrous health and environmental consequences.

Parts 2 and 3 (French only) Available at Reporterre

Part 2: Behind the ITER Project, Mountains of Toxic Metals and Radioactive Waste
Part 3: The ITER Chasm Does Not Discourage Thermonuclear Fusion Projects

Reporting from Saint-Paul-lez-Durance (Bouches-du-Rhône)

In Cadarache, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, several thousand people are working on one of the largest construction sites in the world. The complex where we enter with our guide, which will house the future ITER Nuclear Fusion Reactor (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor,) weighs 440,000 tons, or more than forty Eiffel Towers.

Men and women in construction helmets –“red helmets for the bosses, white for the workers,” explains the guide — all equally dwarfed in this immense space, contemplate a colossal piece of metal weighing 440 tons. It was shipped from China by boat, transported from Fos-sur-Mer on a barge specially built on the Etang de Berre, then transported by night convoy on 104 kilometers of fortified road aboard a giant truck equipped with 352 wheels.

If members of an unknown tribe arrived at the ITER site and observed the titanic resources mobilized for this project, they would probably conclude that a temple is being built here for the worship of a god. They might not be wrong. The name of this deity appears in large letters on the first page of the ITER organization’s Web site: “UNLIMITED ENERGY.”  

Homepage of the ITER organization. Screenshot:ITER.org

French home page of the ITER organization. Screenshot:ITER.org

Nuclear power plants built from the 1960s had already promised to answer this prayer, but by means of fission: triggering a chain reaction releasing neutrons by breaking apart uranium nuclei. But with ITER, its proponents say bluntly: nuclear fission is a dead end. Uranium must be extracted to fuel reactors. Fission requires the management of tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste for thousands of years. Fission chain reactions must be carefully controlled and, if not properly cooled, become uncontrolled, as in Fukushima.

“We no longer want all that,” says Joëlle Elbez-Uzan, the director of safety and environment at the ITER organization.

With nuclear fusion, its proponents assure us, all these problems go away: it needs very little fuel, generates very little waste, and has no risk of runaway reactions. With deuterium (extracted from sea water) and only a few kilograms of radioactive tritium,  heated to between 150 and 200 million degrees Celsius (ten times the temperature of the center of the sun), they say, we can create a plasma from fusion and produce enormous levels of heat. [1]

“Fusion can generate four times more energy per kilogram of fuel than fission, and nearly four million times more energy than burning oil or coal,” promises the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the front page of its bulletin published in May 2021.

One of the Sections of the ITER tokamak vacuum chamber - ITER organization

One of the Sections of the ITER tokamak vacuum chamber – ITER organization

Tenfold Increase in Power. Really?

So far, this information is nothing new: Fusion is the principle behind the thermonuclear bomb (or H-bomb). As physicists explained in 1957, shortly after the international “Atoms for Peace” conference, which initiated fusion research, the purpose of a thermonuclear fusion reactor is to “harness the energy of the H-bomb.” [2]

Instead of giving free rein to the destructive energy of the neutrons, fusion scientists will try to confine plasma in gigantic magnetic fields. Locked in this tokamak, a sort of magnetic bottle invented by Russian physicists, the plasma, raised to very high temperature, would produce helium nuclei, and the fusion reaction, scientists imagine, would be self-sustaining. We could then, fusion scientists say, recover the excess heat created by the reaction and convert it into electric current.

Diagram of the tokamak reactor, showing the vacuum chamber as the gray cylinder, surrounding the coils that generates a magnetic field. Source: CEA, "ITER: the path to the stars?", J. Jacquinot, R. Arnoux, Edisud, 2006.

Diagram of the tokamak reactor, showing the vacuum chamber as the gray cylinder, surrounding the coils that generate the magnetic field. Source: CEA, “ITER: the path to the stars?”, J. Jacquinot, R. Arnoux, Edisud, 2006.

Until now, nuclear fusion could only be carried out for a few seconds — they claim — due to the lack of a tokamak large enough to contain the energy. [3] [N1]

Because no country could have assumed alone the costs of such a construction, the experiment conducted at Cadarache brings together thirty-three countries (European Union, United States, China, Russia, Japan, India and South Korea), who all contribute to its financing. [N2] After 15 years of work and research, the assembly of the ITER tokamak – a gigantic metal enclosure 73 meters high – began in the summer of 2020. The objective is to succeed in confining a fusion plasma for four minutes.

Because of its experimental purpose, ITER will not be connected to turbo-alternators and will not produce electricity. The first firing of plasma with deuterium and tritium will not begin until 2035, according to the current schedule, after the machine has been assembled, and its stability and tightness tested. A European prototype reactor, the EU DEMO, would be built around 2050, according to the ITER organization, then a whole nuclear fusion utility sector “by 2070,” estimates Joëlle Elbez-Uzan cautiously.

But ITER already intends to demonstrate that the reactor will generate “the first net energy production in the history of fusion” by creating an “amplification by a factor of 10: i.e. 50 megawatts (MW) input and 500 megawatts output.” This is the first thing the ITER organization claims: With very little fuel and waste, we will increase the power tenfold: we will inject 50 MW, and we will obtain 500 MW.

In Cadarache, information panel on ITER. © Celia Izoard / Reporterre

In Cadarache, information panel on ITER. © Celia Izoard / Reporterre

Zero Power Balance

The problem is, it is wrong. Or, at least, this is only very partially true. Steven B. Krivit, American scientific journalist, specialist in nuclear fusion, devoted an investigation to it, then a film. At the time of the plasma firing, he explains, to produce the 50 MW of heat that will be injected into the tokamak, and taking into account all the systems required for the reactor, the heating systems and the energy losses, ITER will consume between 300 and 500 MW of high-grade electrical power. That’s almost as much as the low-grade thermal power it is supposed to produce. That doesn’t count the grey energy needed for the mining extraction, the electronics production, the chemicals, and the transportation of all these parts upstream.

“This reactor is designed to produce fusion particles – neutrons and helium – which have ten times the rate of power injected into the fuel to create these particles,” explains Steven B. Krivit, “and not to produce ten times the rate of power consumed by the overall reactor.” 

If the experiment conducted at ITER works, and it is connected to the grid, the power balance would be zero. A “strategic omission,” according to Krivit, which considerably removes any prospect of producing electricity by nuclear fusion.

Inside the ITER site. © Celia Izoard / Reporterre

Inside the ITER site. © Celia Izoard / Reporterre

This subtle distinction between the rate of power injected into and used to heat the fuel and the rate of power consumed by the reactor (like its giant cryogenic plant) is never explained to the public or even, presumably, to ITER’s staff. When we corrected Joëlle Elbez-Uzan during our interview on the fact that the amplification factor by ten only concerns the reaction, and not the total power rate consumed by ITER, the safety director exclaimed, perplexed: “Are you playing a joke on me?”

Asked the same day about ITER’s total power consumption, Laban Coblentz, communications director, replied that he did not know. After a written request, plus fifteen days of waiting and several reminders, Coblentz provided approximate numerical values confirming those of Steven B. Krivit, but he accompanied them by a long dissertation on the need to “place these answers in the context of the mission of ITER.”

Its energy consumption, he said, must be weighed against “the enormous potential of fusion to eliminate more than a century of geopolitical tensions and conflicts linked to access to fossil resources.”

Part of the power consumed by ITER, according to Coblentz, is “the large number of diagnostic tools aimed at an exhaustive analysis of the plasma and used to optimize the design of future machines.” And anyway, he says, it is impossible to precisely estimate the power consumption because “it will depend on the precise configuration of the systems used for each experiment.”

This admission of ignorance by Coblentz is all the more surprising because at the time of the public debate on ITER in 2006, the project’s managment seemed perfectly capable of providing an estimate. The report of the meeting organized in Salon-de-Provence by the National Commission for Public Debate indicates: “When the machine is in standby mode, it will consume 120 megawatts in order to supply the auxiliaries. During the experiments, the power consumed […] will then reach 620  MW in order to heat the plasma, then drop to 450  MW during the main phase of the experiment (370 seconds), and will be restored to 120 MW. At peak power of 620 MW, compensation systems will limit ITER’s impact on the regional electricity grid. [4].”

And for good reason! 620 MW represents an enormous power drain, since the entire Toulouse metropolitan area uses power of nearly 500 MW. Year-round, we learn in one of the notebooks intended for public debate, ITER will consume 600 GWh [5], which corresponds to the supply of a city of 145,000 inhabitants, such as Aix-en-Provence or Le Mans.

The first element of the cryostat heat shield transferred to the tokamak pit on January 14, 2021 © ITER organization

The first element of the cryostat heat shield transferred to the tokamak pit on January 14, 2021 © ITER organization

From 4.5 Billion to 44 Billion Euros

Obviously, the officials of the ITER organization carefully avoid mentioning the cost, for fear of dampening the enthusiasm of the political leaders who finance this colossal instrumentation.

“A small group of physicists representing the nuclear fusion research community has misinformed the public in order to ensure the continuity of its public funding,” summarizes journalist Steven B. Krivit.

To convince the political leaders, it was necessary at least to promise an energy miracle worthy of the multiplication of the loaves. “This is the sledgehammer aargument,”  Thiéry Pierre, a plasma physicist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, told Reporterre. He is very skeptical about the possibility of confining a thermonuclear plasma. “Imagine scientists, crowned with the prestige of theoretical physics, explaining to Jacques Chirac that energy can be multiplied by ten: he writes the check right away!”

Today, the people involved in fusion have all the less interest in disappointing their interlocutors as the costs keep doubling. In 2000, ITER was supposed to cost 4.5 billion euros. In 2006, the year in which the ITER Agreement was ratified by Jacques Chirac, the total cost (construction, operation and decommissioning) was estimated at 10 billion euros. The ITER organization today says the cost is 22 billion Euros but Laban Coblentz admits “this excludes operating costs and decommissioning.”

Even more, it is all the more false to quantify the cost of the project at 22 billion euros since, according to the ITER Agreement, the European Union contributes to the project up to 45.6% of the total amount, yet the EU has allocated 20 billion euros until 2035. According to this agreement, the other six partner countries contribute the rest of the cost through in-kind contributions: the supply of all these unique very high-tech components, always from public funds. The construction cost would therefore be around, according to physicist Thiéry Pierre, “44 billion euros,” which led him to send a note to the management of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), asking to put an end to this disinformation “which risks casting permanent discredit on plasma physics.”

Finally, by adding the billions needed to run the experiments and deal with a massive volume of decommissioning waste, the U.S. Department of Energy may have been more realistic in estimating the total cost of ITER at 65 billion dollars (approximately 54 billion euros). Apart from the International Space Station, it is the most expensive scientific experiment in human history.

Reporterre Notes:
  1. The fusion that will take place in ITER is called “thermonuclear.” By heating, it accelerates deuterium and tritium nuclei so as to make them overcome electrostatic repulsion and to fuse them, which emits very energetic neutrons. Heating takes place in different stages. First, gaseous fuel is introduced into the tokamak and electricity passes through the large central magnet, which itself sends a current through the gas. This is ohmic heating, which works on the principle of  resistance and which makes it possible to reach the temperature of 20 million degrees Celsius. Second, two complementary heating techniques are introduced to reach 150 million degrees: neutral particles are injected into the plasma, giving it energy and two sources of high frequency electromagnetic waves are activated.
  2. “Nuclear fusion: energy in abundance,” The scientific method, France Culture, June 12, 2019.
  3. For example, in the JETtokamak in England and the West tokamak at the CEA in Cadarache. And more recent announcements from Korea ( KSTAR ) and China (East).
  4. Report of the public debate on ITER in Provence, National Commission for Public Debate, 2006, p. 43.
  5. ITER en Provence, National Commission for Public Debate, Cahier 1, 2006, p. 23.
New Energy Times Notes:

N1. According to plasma physicist Daniel Jassby, a “tokamak large enough to contain the energy” as the limitation for the duration of experiments is nonsense. Jassby says that the primary limitation is because of the maximum duration of the toroidal current. With reactor designs that did not use superconducting coils, the secondary reason was because of potentially excessive heating of the magnetic field coils, which would have caused them to melt. A tertiary limitation is the challenge to remove, not contain, the heat produced in fusion reactors.

N2. Switzerland and England are no longer partner nations to the ITER project and the number of partner countries has been corrected in this version.

 

 

 

 

#78 Uncovering the 700 MW Input Power Needed for the Joint European Torus Reactor

Oct 052021
 
Cover image from 1988 EURATOM Report on the Joint European Torus Reactor

Cover image from 1988 EURATOM Report on the Joint European Torus Reactor

Return to ITER Power Facts Main Page

By Steven B. Krivit
Oct. 5, 2021

Most people I speak with who are first learning about the power discrepancies with fusion reactors are initially incredulous. They cannot believe that the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor actually needed 700 megawatts of electricity to operate instead of 24 megawatts. They cannot believe that the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will require at least 300 megawatts of electricity to operate instead of just 50 megawatts.

They cannot believe that the planned SPARC reactor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Commonwealth Fusion Systems partnership is not designed to produce net energy.

Some journalists — and television’s favorite physicist Michio Kaku — were even tricked into thinking that the National Ignition Facility produced fusion reactions that released 70 percent of the energy consumed by the device.

One of the most frequent questions people ask me is how I uncovered this trail of deception. It was an accident. I stumbled on it. Here is an excerpt from my 2016 book Fusion Fiasco, which explains the story.

——————

Thermonuclear Fusion 50 Years Later

Since the 1970s, thermonuclear fusion researchers and advocates had been saying that practical fusion reactors were just two decades away.

Ethan Siegel, a professor of physics and astronomy at Lewis & Clark College, who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics, wrote about the progress of fusion on the Forbes.com blog on Aug. 27, 2015: “The reality is we’ve moved ever closer to … the breakeven [power] point in nuclear fusion — where we get out as much [power] as we put in.” Yet there is still no practical fusion reactor, and no experimental reactor has produced a single watt in excess of the total power required to operate the reactor.

As I was checking basic facts about the claimed steady technical progress in fusion research — which I had assumed were correct — I discovered an astonishing discrepancy between what was publicly reported and the actual progress in net power produced by fusion.

Net-Power Representation

One of my technical editors [Mat Nieuwenhoven] asked whether I had information about the progress that had been made in increasing the net fusion power over the decades.

I sent an e-mail to Stephen O. Dean, the director of Fusion Power Associates, a nonprofit research and educational foundation, and asked whether he had such information. He didn’t. Slowly, the picture came into focus. I soon learned how important the insiders’ phrase “power injected” or “heating power” or “applied fusion power” was.

“The applied fusion power,” Dean wrote, “is not a relevant measure of progress since these have all been experiments not designed for net [power]. The input referred to is just the input to the plasma and does not include the power to operate the equipment.”

I was confused. I thought that the numbers — for example, the 65 percent cited for JET — reflected total net power. I asked him whether he knew the best total net power for those devices. He didn’t. I asked him whether this meant that JET’s and TFTR’s peaks were based on the input heating power rather than the total input electrical power. Yes, it did, he wrote. Now I was concerned.

As I soon learned, in addition to the power required to heat the plasma, power is consumed in tokamaks by a variety of processes. The greatest among these is the power required to create and maintain the magnetic field that suspends the plasma within the toroidal chamber.

Two Methods of Accounting

At first, I didn’t believe that fusion researchers normally accounted for only a fraction of the total input power when they stated net power values. I called [Michel Shaffer] a plasma fusion physicist who worked for General Atomics and asked him to explain this. He corroborated what Dean had told me. It was true.

Yes, people in the magnetic fusion research industry, since the 1970s, have always used applied heating power rather than total system input power when reporting their progress. I asked [Shaffer] whether he knew how much greater the actual total system input power was than the heating input power. He guessed that, typically, total input power was about 10 times as much. If this was correct, then fusion results had been exaggerated by an order of magnitude for decades.

I sent an inquiry to Nick Holloway, the media manager for the Communications Group of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, which operates the Joint European Torus. I told him that I understood JET had generated 16 MW fusion power with 24 MW applied heating power input. I asked him whether he could tell me about how much total input electrical power was required to make that much power.

“We don’t have the electrical power input figure for this pulse to hand unfortunately,” Holloway wrote. “Below is some information from my colleague Chris D. Warrick on JET’s typical electrical power levels, so it will be of this order. But if you do need the exact input figure we can find out.” Here is Warrick’s e-mail:

The general answer is that a JET pulse typically requires ~700 MW of electrical power to run. The vast majority of this goes into feeding the copper magnetic coils and the rest into subsystems and energizing the heating systems. In future machines, the copper coils will be replaced with superconducting coils – which will ensure the total input power is dramatically reduced. I don’t have on hand the specific numbers for this particular pulse.

Order of Magnitude Difference

Holloway and Warrick had confirmed it: The total input power was an order of magnitude larger than applied heating power, as was the value which has been universally used to represent the state of the art in thermonuclear fusion research.

The total system input power used for JET’s world-record fusion experiment was about 700 MW. Thus, a more accurate summary of the most successful thermonuclear fusion experiment is this:

With a total input power of ~700 MW, JET produced 16 MW of fusion power, resulting in a net consumption of ~684 MW of power, for a duration of 100 milliseconds. In other words, the JET tokamak consumed ~98% of the total power given to it. The “fusion power” it produced, in heat, was ~2% of the total power input.

As most of the public would understand the term “fusion power,” JET produced none. (This calculation assumes, for the sake of example, that the number of ~700 MW is a precise value to three significant digits, which it most likely is not.)

The truth about the overall efficiency of the reactors has been so well-hidden that even Charles Seife, the author of a pessimistic book on fusion, missed it. He, too, was unaware that the researchers were reporting their power input based on applied thermal power input rather than the total electrical power input. Seife thought that the best JET experiment had lost between 10% and 40% of the input power.

JET got 6 watts out for every 10 it put in. It was a record, and a remarkable achievement, but a net loss of 40 percent of [power] is not the hallmark of a great power plant. Scientists would claim — after twiddling with the definition of the [power] put into the system — that the loss was as little as 10%. This might be so, but it still wasn’t breakeven; JET was losing energy, not making it.

Seife had no idea that JET actually lost about 98% of the input [power], rather than 10% to 40% of the input [power]. The shorthand typically used to describe energy production in the fusion community has created a mistaken view of its success among most observers.

——————

Insight Into ITER

That’s the end of the excerpt from my book.

I had already consulted with Google. But at the time Holloway sent me the 700 MW value, on Dec. 1, 2014, I had been unable to find any book or Web page that cited a value for the overall JET input power requirement. Only after learning the input value from Holloway was I able to put that number into my search criteria and locate a published reference for it.

A copy of the e-mail I had received from Holloway is on this Web page, as are all the sources that I have located for the input power requirements for ITER.

Once I understood how fusion scientists had almost universally communicated the results of JET, I realized that they had done the same thing with the projected power values for ITER. And I later saw the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Commonwealth Fusion Systems scientists doing it, too.

Coming back to Nieuwenhoven’s question about the progress in power output from reactors over the decades, I have produced a detailed report called “When Will We Get Energy From Nuclear Fusion?” that addresses this question.

Image and text from EURATOM Report 1988

Image and text from EURATOM Report 1988

 

Text from ITER organization Web site, Oct. 5, 2021

Text from ITER organization Web site, Oct. 5, 2021

 

#77 Misleading ITER Power Claims by Fusion Scientist Mark Henderson

Oct 012021
 

Return to ITER Power Facts Main Page

By Steven B. Krivit
Oct. 1, 2021

On March 17, 2021, investigative radio journalist Grant Hill spoke with me about my International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) investigation. Hill had asked the ITER organization for someone to speak with, and they provided U.S. physicist Mark Henderson, who at the time was working in France on the ITER reactor project.

Hill cut his teeth as an investigative journalist on a story called “Stay the F**k Out of Bordentown,” about police brutality in a small town in New Jersey.

On the Pulse

On May 7, 2021, Hill’s radio segment aired on WHYY’s “The Pulse,” a health and science radio show produced by Philadelphia’s NPR affiliate station. The show approached him to do a piece on fusion progress – how close humanity was to achieving real fusion energy production. At first, Hill didn’t know anything about the field. But after he read my news reports and a 2008 book by Charles Seife, he approached the subject with caution.

“The history behind fusion energy was fascinating and full of interesting characters who claimed they could do incredible things,” Hill said.

When he spoke with me, Hill was particularly interested in the expected power output of the ITER reactor.

Hill asked Henderson about the power values associated with ITER, too. Henderson told Hill that one of the key issues in communication is to understand who your audience is. He said that, as a scientist, it is important to give each audience enough information to be able to correctly understand the ITER power values. Henderson told Hill that he doesn’t like conveying information in a way that can be misinterpreted.

Henderson said that he hoped his public presentations about ITER had always been clear and accurate about the power projections for ITER.

Former ITER Fusion Scientist Mark Henderson

Former ITER Fusion Scientist Mark Henderson

Mark Henderson

Henderson, now 59, has dreamed of building a practical fusion reactor since he was 14. Since earning his Ph.D. in plasma physics from Auburn University in Alabama in 1991, he has devoted his professional career to fusion research. He first went to work at the Centre de Recherches en Physique des Plasmas in Lausanne, Switzerland.

In 2008, he started working at the ITER organization. There, he held a high-level position as the section leader of the ITER electron cyclotron heating and current drive system.

Shortly after Henderson spoke with Hill on March 30, 2021, he apparently resigned from the ITER organization. Henderson told me that he now works for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. He said that his career move had been planned for a while and that it was unrelated to the radio show.

ITER Project Power Fundamentals

Before going further, we need to have a brief discussion about the primary measurable objective of the ITER project and the long-running discrepancy over the power claims.

If successful, the ITER fusion experiment will inject 50 million Watts of thermal power into the fusion fuel and, in turn, produce fusion reactions with 500 million Watts of thermal power. But reaction power gain is not the same as reactor power gain.

If ITER succeeds in this reaction power gain — which is its primary scientific goal — then the correlated result for the overall reactor will be an equivalent loss of 250 million Watts of thermal power. The equivalent loss, normalized to electric power, will be 100 million Watts.

From a pure physics perspective, the reactions will demonstrate net power. From a practical perspective, the reactor will lose power.

However, for decades, the ITER organization and its representatives said that the overall reactor, if it works as planned, will be the first fusion reactor to produce net power; from an input of only 50 megawatts to heat the fuel, they said, the reactor would produce 500 megawatts, a tenfold power gain.

They consistently failed to explain that the 50 MW input really meant only the injected thermal power used to heat the fuel. They failed to explain that the 500 MW thermal output is not possible without the 300 megawatts of electricity needed to operate the reactor.

The false claims made by the ITER organization, as published on its Web site, before Oct. 6, 2017

The false claims made by the ITER organization, as published on its Web site, before Oct. 6, 2017

Image from 2016 ITER organization promotional film

Image from 2016 ITER organization promotional film

When in Vicenza

A day before his interview for the radio show, Henderson sent Hill a link to his lecture at a TEDx conference in Vicenza, Italy, from June 2019. Henderson appears in the video as a serious scientist: dispassionate, thoughtful, and humble. Wearing blue jeans and a slightly wrinkled short-sleeved shirt and often sporting a gentle smile, Henderson exuded credibility.  

Mark Henderson speaking at TEDx Vicenza, June 2019

Mark Henderson speaking at TEDx Vicenza, June 2019

But when Hill watched and listened to Henderson’s lecture, he realized that Henderson didn’t communicate to his audience so they would accurately understand the information, specifically the power values. Henderson’s message — by accident or design — was certain to be misinterpreted.

In his TEDx lecture, Henderson first mentioned the record-setting 1997 fusion result from the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor:

We were able to create a reaction where the amount of energy we put in equals the amount of energy out. We call it breakeven.

I will first address the less-significant issue. The thermal power produced from the 1997 fusion reactions in JET was 16 MW. The injected heating power delivered to the fuel was 24 MW. That’s neither equal nor breakeven by any definition.

Now let’s discuss the far more serious and insidious problem. Watching and listening to the video reveals that Henderson knew he was talking to a lay audience. When Henderson said the amount of energy in equals the amount of energy out, he created the only association that any non-expert would make: a comparison between the energy that went into the JET reactor and the energy that came out of the JET reactor.

But the rate of power going into the JET reactor was 700 MW of electricity, not 24 MW. That gives a reactor efficiency, with values normalized, of 1 percent.

Henderson created a similar false impression when, moments later in his lecture, he spoke about ITER:

Our goal is to build a machine that performs 10 times better, so we have 1 Watt going in equals 10 Watts out.

In this case, Henderson had no excuse. In no way did Henderson inform the audience that he was talking about only the reaction, rather than the reactor. The ITER machine, with a planned equivalent of 800 megawatts of thermal power going in and 550 megawatts of thermal power coming out, gives a reactor efficiency of 68 percent. (See calculations here.) So, if ITER works as designed, it will perform 68 times better than JET. That would indeed be progress! But ITER is still planned to be a reactor with a net-power loss. The problem is, Who would pay $6 billion for that, let alone $65 billion?

So, to be honest, Henderson would have had to discuss explicitly the reaction power values and explain the concept of injected thermal power — or say this:

Our goal is to build a machine that performs 68 times better, so we have 8 Watts going in equals 5.5 Watts out.

Once Is a Mistake; Three Times Is a Habit

I wondered whether Henderson was just having a bad day when he gave his TEDx presentation. But a quick Internet search revealed other nearly identical misleading claims. A lecture he planned to give (and presumably gave) was listed at a Barcelona School of Telecommunications Engineering Web site in 2017. Here’s an excerpt from his abstract:

To date, fusion experiments have reached the “break-even” point, with the energy output equaling the energy input. Europe, with Russia, China, U.S., South Korea, India, and Japan is now building a new device (ITER) in the south of France that aims at demonstrating a 10-fold increase in output power.

Again, he clearly communicated the power gain in the context of the device, not the physics reaction.

On Aug. 23, 2019, NDTV interviewed Henderson. The interviewer asked him, “How soon do you think you can have the first generation of heat, because you’re not going to generate electricity here for quite a while?” Here is Henderson’s response:

Well, actually, we won’t generate electricity. This is an experimental reactor, but we hope that within 15 years we will be producing energy, so that every one Watt we put in we will get 10 Watts out.

Again, he clearly communicated the power gain in the context of the reactor, not the physics reaction.

 The Question of Context

I carefully considered whether there was anything in Henderson’s TEDx lecture and NDTV interview that could have put his claims in a context to make them accurate and honest. I found nothing.

I confronted Henderson about his false claims, and I showed him what I had found. I invited him to offer an explanation.

He had a lot to say but very little that was relevant. Throughout the many e-mails we exchanged, I reminded him that his statements were clearly implying reactor power values and in no way explaining that he was really talking about only the physics, the reaction values. I encouraged him to take his time and to think carefully about how he would like to explain his actions to the public. Here’s what he wrote on May 13, 2021:

My statements in each address, taken in their context, has been consistent with the ITER objectives and the interpretation of the power generated in the plasma as a 10-fold increase above what was injected into the plasma.

What Henderson told me is precisely the aim of ITER. And it is precisely what Henderson didn’t tell his public audiences cited here.

One of the most fascinating things in Hill’s investigation is what Henderson told him about the distinction between the projected reaction power gain of 10 and projected reactor power gain of 1 in ITER.

“Henderson doubted whether actual engineers who work on fusion sites correctly understood this difference, let alone the public,” Hill wrote.

It’s an amazing admission on Henderson’s part, considering statements to public audiences.

But Henderson was right about one thing. Even a high-ranking scientist at the ITER organization thought that the reactor was designed to produce 10 times the power it would consume.

What is difficult for me to fathom, despite all the conversations I’ve had with fusion scientists who have done the same thing Henderson has done, is that even Tim Luce, the current chief scientist of the ITER organization, was telling journalists, “We plan to produce 500 megawatts with 50 megawatts of consumption.” (See my report here. Neither Luce nor Coblentz has informed me of any error in my report.)

Henderson told Hill that, if there was confusion, it was all just a misinterpretation, not purposeful misrepresentation.

“It is very easy in any field to be misinterpreted,” Henderson told Hill. “And unfortunately, it’s easier for people to take potshots at fusion, just because [of] the amount of invested money to build a machine.”

This report covers only Henderson’s misrepresentations of the power values. To see his misrepresentations about fusion fuel and fusion progress, please see this report and video; however, it is written for technical and scientific audiences.

When in Rome

A survey of Henderson’s public communications in print and multimedia suggest that he cares deeply about our future on this planet. His motives seem to be in the right place. But Henderson is one of many fusion scientists who have abused the public’s trust in science, in scientists, in physics, and in nuclear fusion research. He is by no means alone.

As my film, ITER, The Grand Illusion: A Forensic Investigation of Power Claims, shows, many fusion scientists communicating with the public, the news media, and elected officials have done exactly what Henderson has done: create a grossly exaggerated appearance of past and future progress in fusion research. This abuse has been going on for decades.

 

 

 

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