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

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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

 

Oct 012021
 

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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.

 

 

 

Sep 262021
 
Former ITER Spokesman Michel Claessens (left), Current ITER Spokesman Laban Coblentz (right)

Former ITER Spokesman Michel Claessens (left), Current ITER Spokesman Laban Coblentz (right)

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By Steven B. Krivit
September 26, 2021

The ITER organization is using Covid as an excuse to hide new delays and costs caused by component issues, according to Michel Claessens, its former spokesman.

This is the relevant sequence of recent events:

  • On June 16-17, 2021, at the ITER Council meeting, the ITER organization advised the council that the project has shifted at least one year behind schedule. Council members were advised that the COVID-19 pandemic and component issues were responsible for the new delays which will also translate to added costs.
  • On June 17, 2021, the ITER organization issued a press release titled “Steady Progress Despite Challenges Including COVID-19.” The press release did not disclose any schedule delay or cost increase.
  • On Sept. 17, 2021, the ITER organization disclosed at a press conference that the project had fallen behind schedule and that the costs are going to rise — primarily because of COVID-related production delays. The organization did not announce how many years have been added to the schedule. Nor did it provide the estimated amount of the extra costs.

Claessens says the primary cause of the delay is not because of COVID but because of production delays that happened before COVID. He wrote about it in his French and English books about ITER.

Claessens told New Energy Times that the current delay is primarily the result of problems with the European sectors of the vacuum vessel that occurred many years ago, when he was working in the organization from 2011 to 2015. He explained what happened in his book:

Originally, two of the vacuum vessel sectors were to be provided by South Korea, the other seven by Europe. But Europe experienced significant delay because of difficulties unrelated to ITER encountered by three Italian companies involved in the manufacturing. Accordingly, the ITER organization asked South Korea to manufacture two additional sectors. In addition, two more companies were contracted to work on the vacuum vessel.

One is based in Spain and is responsible for producing the poloidal (the most internal) part of three of the sectors, and the other is German and will have the delicate job of welding together each sector using powerful electron beams. This company is the only one in Europe capable of welding pieces as large as the ITER components.

Electron beam welding produces almost no lateral shrinkage, angular distortion, or any other kinds of distortion during or after the welding. This means that sensitive components or those with tight tolerances can retain their carefully manufactured dimensions. But this is not an easy process.

The pieces of the sectors travel by road from Italy to Germany and back again. In summer 2018, engineers in Cadarache noticed defects in some of the pieces as they came back from Germany. Fusion for Energy sent an official complaint to the German company, which triggered an internal investigation. As a result, two of the directors of the company, in charge of welding and quality, respectively, were fired.

The challenge for Europe and Korea now is to complete the manufacturing and the welding of all sectors in the tokamak pit by 2022, in order to keep the project on schedule for First Plasma in 2025.

The new delay puts completion of the reactor construction at 2026 or 2027.

New Energy Times sent the information from Claessens to Laban Coblentz, the current ITER spokesman, and asked him to comment on the discrepancy between his explanation for the delay and Claessens’ explanation. Coblentz did not respond.

 

Sep 172021
 

ITER Organization Spokesman Laban Coblentz

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Originally Published: June 18, 2021
Updated: Sept. 17, 2021

By Steven B. Krivit

The first experiments to create a plasma in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) are no longer scheduled to start in 2025. This is the main conclusion of the ITER Council videoconference meeting that took place on June 16 and 17, according to an ITER organization staff member who was not authorized to speak on the record.

First plasma (with test fuels) can no longer be expected in 2025; the delay is estimated to be at least one year, so this means 2026 or 2027. The delay is caused primarily by late deliveries of a number of critical components from several members, particularly the vacuum vessel sectors from Europe, and to some extent by the pandemic.

Use of actual fusion fuel, a 50/50 mixture of deuterium and tritium, will begin about eight years later, in 2035. Full-power operation is planned two years later, around 2037, according to the 2012 fusion roadmap, adjusted to the current schedule.

When the ITER project was approved by its international partners 15 years, ago, the organization estimated that construction of ITER would take ten years. They broke ground in 2007. Based on the current schedule, construction will take about 20 years.

A press release issued by the ITER organization on June 17, 2021, summarizing the meeting does not disclose the delay but hints at the possibility.

“The effects of some technical challenges and the ongoing pandemic are being closely monitored and will be further assessed after due consideration of all possible mitigation measures to prevent any delays that could impact the schedule for the achievement of First Plasma,” the organization said.

Bernard Bigot, the director-general of the ITER organization, publicly acknowledged the likelihood of delays several months ago, when speaking at the International Atomic Energy Agency conference, according to Nuclear Engineering International magazine.

Sept. 15, 2021 Update: Original 10-year construction estimate added.
Sept. 17, 2021 Update: Added projected date for full-power operation.

Sep 092021
 

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By Steven B. Krivit
September 9, 2021

Yesterday, Declan Kirrane, one of the organizers of a science summit for the 76th United Nations General Assembly, taking place Sept. 14-30, cancelled the summit’s scheduled session on nuclear fusion.

Several months ago, Kirrane approached Michel Claessens, one of two former spokesmen for the ITER organization, and asked him to help organize the fusion session for the summit. Kirrane was scheduled to be the chair of one panel. Claessens, the author of the book ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor: Bringing a Sun to Earth, was scheduled to be the chair of the other panel.

Yesterday, Kirrane wrote to Claessens that the ITER organization decided not to participate in the program. Kirrane quickly began learning about the conflicts.

“This morning I had contact with the ITER organization. I learned that you and they have some differences of views. ITER will not participate in any meeting or activity that you have anything to do with. I have therefore decided to cancel the UNGA76 session on nuclear fusion,” Kirrane wrote.

Rather than accommodate the ITER organization’s implicit demand, Kirrane cancelled the entire session.

Even before he left the ITER organization in 2015, Claessens was concerned about the integrity of the organization’s public claims.

In 2017, when he was working for the European Commission, he learned more details about the previously hidden reactor power values and encouraged an open, public discussion. Claessens told New Energy Times that Laban Coblentz, the current ITER organization spokesman, immediately began encouraging Claessens to shut up.

Planned panelists for “Can ITER and Fusion Energy Play a Role in Fighting Climate Change?”

Panel Moderator: Declan Kirrane
Shira Tabachnikoff (deputy head of communications for the ITER organization)
Melanie Windridge (spokeswoman for Tokamak Energy Ltd., and the U.K. spokeswoman for the Fusion Industry Association)
Kirsty Gogan (managing partner of LucidCatalyst)
Samuele Furfari (chemical engineer at Université Libre de Bruxelles)

Planned panelists for “Will Fusion Energy Become Commercial Before 2050?”

Panel Moderator: Michel Claessens
Bernard Bigot (director-general of ITER Organization)
Michel Laberge (chief scientist at General Fusion)
Bob Mumgaard (founder and chief executive officer of Commonwealth Fusion Systems)
Mark Henderson (United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority)

Bigot is featured in the documentary film ITER, The Grand Illusion: A Forensic Investigation of Power Claims.
Laberge, Mumgaard, and Henderson are featured in the investigative analysis “When Will We Get Energy From Nuclear Fusion?
Henderson is featured in the Public Broadcasting Radio program “A Fusion Experiment Promised to be the Next Step in Solving Humanity’s Energy Crisis. It’s a Big Claim to Live up To

Affordable and Clean Energy

ITER is a $65 billion science experiment that, if successful, 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. The experiment is designed to run for 500 seconds and scientists hope it will achieve its peak 500 MW output sometime around 2045.

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

In some universe, this may prove that fusion is an affordable, commercially viable form of clean energy. But not ours.

Promoters of fusion have been claiming that commercial fusion energy is “right around the corner” for most of the last 70 years of the global fusion research program. Despite an overwhelming array of recent designs on paper, magnificent-looking devices, and the generous contributions by private investors, not one fusion reactor has ever produced a single Watt of thermal power in excess of the electricity required to operate the reactor. In light of the complete absence of experimental evidence that a fusion reactor can produce net energy, and in light of the overwhelming presence of false and misleading claims, fusion research has more potential to become the world’s biggest science scam than a practical source of energy.

Records for Science Summit for the 76th United Nations General Assembly

List of fusion sessions (Retrieved Sept. 8, 2021)
Summit Schedule (Retrieved Sept. 8, 2021)
Summit Schedule (Retrieved Sept. 9, 2021)

Sept. 12, 2021 Update: Details about the background conflict have been added.

 

 

 

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