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#76 Component Issues Are Real Reason for ITER Reactor Delay, Former Spokesman Says

Sep 262021

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.

#75 ITER Fusion Reactor First Plasma Delayed (Again)

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.

#74 Organizers Cancel Fusion Session for United Nations General Assembly Science Summit

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.

#73 National Ignition Facility Achieves Ignition in Historic Nuclear Fusion Experiment

Aug 292021

Laser Fusion and NIF
News Reports #73, #102, #103, #104

Some of the 192 lasers in the National Ignition Facility (Photo: S. Krivit)

Some of the 192 lasers in the U.S. National Ignition Facility (Photo: S. Krivit)

By Steven B. Krivit
August 29, 2021

New Energy Times has learned from scientists at the U.S. fusion lab that the recent results from the National Ignition Facility indicate that the lab has not only approached the threshold of nuclear fusion ignition but also achieved this historic breakthrough.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a nuclear fusion research installation that is privately operated by Lawrence Livermore National Security LLC on behalf of the publicly owned Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). It is located in Livermore, California, just east of San Francisco.

The lab issued a press release on Aug. 17, 2021, announcing that its Aug. 8, 2021, experiment had reached the “threshold of fusion ignition.” However, during our conversations with Kimberly S. Budil, the director of the lab, and Omar A. Hurricane, the chief scientist for the inertial confinement fusion program at the lab, and after our discussions about the data, they unofficially acknowledged that the fusion device had accomplished this historic threshold.

Laser fusion is an informal term for a type of inertial confinement fusion. Whereas most experimental fusion devices in the world initiate fusion through high temperatures, laser fusion does so by high compression.

In the NIF laser fusion experiment, electricity from the grid is sent into the world’s largest array of lasers. (See photos here) That bank of 192 lasers shoots optical energy into a tiny target chamber called a hohlraum. Inside the hohlraum is the fuel capsule. It contains a mixture of hydrogen isotopes.

The NIF hohlraum target (Photo: LLNL)

Diagram of the NIF hohlraum showing the fuel capsule (Diagram: LLNL)

When sufficient energy reaches the fuel, fusion reactions take place. The lab uses three metrics to measure progress.

Starting from the outside of the hohlraum and going in, the first metric is called target gain. This is the ratio of energy produced by the fusion reaction to the energy delivered to the entire hohlraum target. The second metric is called the capsule gain. This is the energy produced by the fusion reaction to the energy delivered to the fuel capsule. The third metric is called fuel gain. This is the energy produced by the fusion reaction to the energy delivered to the fuel.

For the Aug. 8, 2021, results, here are the three gain values:

We Have Ignition
New Energy Times reviewed the gain values above with Hurricane for accuracy. We then located several pages on the LLNL Web site, like this page, which defines ignition as the fusion process generating “energy equaling or exceeding the energy delivered to the capsule.” The Aug. 8 capsule gain achieved a value of 5.6, which is 5.6 times greater than the defined LLNL threshold for ignition. We presented this analysis to Hurricane for comment.

“Yes, many technical assessments of ignition have been made indicating ignition, but we are still processing the data,” Hurricane wrote. “Our team is waiting on claiming ignition until we dot the i’s and cross the t’s. There are many technical definitions of ignition, so we are going through them. This work will be presented in a peer-reviewed publication before we claim it.”

Budil was conditionally willing to agree that, according to the lab’s definition, it had achieved ignition, but she acknowledged that a 1997 report prepared by members of the fusion community under the auspices of the National Academies sets a reference for ignition based on target gain rather than capsule gain.

“Yes, although the National Academies adopted the definition of target gain = 1 for ignition, we do not want to push on this until we have more data and hopefully a bit higher yield,” Budil wrote. “[There is] no official declaration of ignition from us, although others have made this exact point in print.”

Throughout the 24 years since that National Academies’ report was published, LLNL has published on many of its Web pages statements that capsule gain, rather than target gain, is the lab’s reference measurement for ignition.

The Question of Energy
Before we talk about laser fusion as a possible source for energy, it’s crucial to know that the primary purpose of NIF is to test nuclear weapons materials in an enclosed space rather than for fusion energy research.

So what is the likelihood that the NIF device might ever demonstrate that laser fusion can be a source of energy? “Zero chance,” Hurricane wrote. “The NIF was never designed for net energy production since it’s just a research facility.” Here’s the math for the overall device gain, normalizing the electrical input energy to thermal energy based on a 33 percent conversion efficiency:

It’s less accurate, but some people may prefer to compare the electrical input value to the thermal output value. Here’s what that calculation looks like:

The Aug. 8, 2021, experiment, which produced 1.3 megajoules of energy, did so at an energy cost of at least the 400 megajoules required for the lasers. Regardless of whether the capsule gain value or the target gain value is used as the reference for the definition of fusion, the NIF device lost at least 99.7 percent of the energy it consumed.

The lab publishes this claim on its Web site: “Achieving ignition would be an unprecedented, game-changing breakthrough for science and could lead to a new source of boundless clean energy for the world.” The first part is credible; the second part strains credulity. The claim has been published on the LLNL Web site at least since 2014, long before Budil was in charge.