39. False Fusion Claims by ITER European Domestic Agency

Jul 232020
 

 

Johannes Schwemmer, Director of Fusion for Energy

Johannes Schwemmer, Director of Fusion for Energy

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By Steven B. Krivit
July 23, 2020

The European ITER domestic agency known as Fusion for Energy recently published new false claims about the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project known as ITER. The project will cost taxpayers from 35 nations $45 billion.

The reactor is not designed to produce electricity. However, if it works as planned, it will demonstrate an important scientific achievement: a fusion plasma that has more thermal power than the thermal power used to heat the fuel.

Practically speaking, however, this means that the reactor will produce about zero net power output and will not demonstrate that fusion is a viable energy source despite the hype.

Even though Johannes Schwemmer, the director of the agency, knows how to make accurate and honest claims about the ITER reactor, his organization published a new set of inaccurate, misleading, and exaggerated claims several months ago in three places on the Fusion for Energy ITER Web page.

When fusion scientists talk to one another, they all understand the objective of the ITER project. But when they are communicating the project’s goals to the public, some scientists make false and misleading claims about ITER.

In his own words, from his Nov. 9, 2018, letter to me, Schwemmer wrote that the accurate way to represent the primary objective and goal of ITER is to “ensure that there is no possible misunderstanding on the ITER energy gain of 10 – [that it is] linked only to the plasma and not to the energy balance of the overall ITER plant.”

Yet his organization does otherwise.

CLAIM #1

CLAIM #1

CLAIM #1: CURRENT STATEMENT

“ITER, which in Latin means ‘the way,’ will be the world’s biggest experiment on the path to fusion energy. It will be the first fusion device to generate more energy than that it consumes.”

NOTE: This is false: The device itself is expected to demonstrate zero net power; see the power values in detail below.

An accurate statement would be “ITER, which in Latin means ‘the way,’ will be the world’s biggest experiment on the path to fusion energy. It will be the first fusion device to produce a fusion plasma with more thermal power than the heating power injected into the plasma.”

CLAIM #2 CURRENT STATEMENT

“500 MW for about 7 min – ITER will produce a significant amount of heat in the range of 500 MW for about 7 minutes – enough to satisfy the electricity needs of a medium-sized town during that period of time.”

NOTE: This is dishonest and misleading: If ITER were designed to convert the net thermal power output to electricity, there wouldn’t be enough net power to produce 1 Watt. Based on the ITER design, the overall reactor will produce 686 MW gross thermal output. If this were converted to electricity, it would result in 274 MW gross electrical power and negative 26 MW net electrical power.

An accurate statement would be “A 500 MW plasma for about 7 min – ITER will produce a fusion plasma with a significant amount of thermal power in the range of 500 MW for about 7 minutes.”

CLAIM #2

CLAIM #2

CLAIM #3 CURRENT STATEMENT

“10 times more thermal power – ITER will generate 10 times more thermal power than [that] received.”

NOTE: This is misleading. To be accurate, all power claims must clearly be associated with the plasma.

An accurate statement would be “ITER will produce a fusion plasma with 10 times more thermal power than the heating power injected into the plasma.”

CLAIM #3

CLAIM #3

In other news, the European Parliament just approved another €5 billion for the ITER project.

 

Fusion for Energy Governing Board  (July 23, 2020)

Beatrix Vierkorn Rudolph — Chair of the Governing Board of Fusion for Energy

Friedrich Aumayr — Director, Institute of Applied Physics TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology), Austria

Daniel Weselka — Head of Unit, Federal Ministry for Science and Research, Austria

Ir Alberto Fernandez Fernandez — Nuclear Attaché to DG Energy, FPS Economy, Belgium

Eric Van Walle — General Manager, SCK.CEN, Belgium

DSC Troyo Dimov Troev — Head of Research Unit of the Association Euratom-INRNE, Bulgaria Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria

Tonci Tadic — Division of Experimental Physics, Laboratory for Ion Beam Interactions, Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Croatia

Stjepko Fazinic — Division of Experimental Physics, Laboratory for Ion Beam Interactions, Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Croatia

Anastassios Yiannaki — Director of Reactor Services Division Nuclear Research Institute Rež, Cyprus

Radomir Panek — Institute of Plasma Physics of the CAS, Czech Republic

Ing. Ladislav Vála — Senior Researcher & Project Manager Centrum výzkumu Rež s.r.o. (Research Centre Rež), Czech Republic

Tomas Midtgaard — Senior Advisor, Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Ministry of Higher Education and Science, Denmark

Volker Naulin — Head of Section, Plasma Physics and Fusion Energy, Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark

Rein Kaarli — Advisor, Department of Research, Ministry of Education and Research, Estonia

Madis Kiisk — Director, Institute of Physics, University of Tartu, Estonia

Tuomas Tala — Head of Research Unit of the Euratom-Tekes Association, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland

Kari Koskela — Senior Advisor, Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment for Southeast Finland, Finland

Bertrand Bouchet — Managing Director for European Affairs CEA- International Relations Division, France

Maria Faury — Director of international affairs and large research infrastructures, CEA – Fundamental research division, France

Harald Bolt — Forschungszentrum Juelich (VS-U), Germany

Michael Stötze — Head of Division “Fusion Research: FZJ, HZDR, HZB, IPP” Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany

Stubos Athanasios — Director of the Institute of Nuclear and Radiological Sciences and Technology, Energy and Safety. National Centre for Scientific Research Demokritos, Greece

Mergia Konstantia — Director of Research, INRASTES, NCSR Demokritos Scientist in charge of Greek Fusion Technology Program for Demokritos, Greece

Siegler Andras — Senior Advisor National Research Development and Innovation Office Hungary, Hungary

Gábor Veres — Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary

Miles Turner — Physics, Dublin City University, Ireland

Paul Shortt — Dept. of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Ireland

Ing Aldo Pizzuto — Head of Research Unit Euratom-ENEA Association, ENEA Frascati, Italy

Eugenio Nappi — Vice President INFN, Italy

Massimo Garribba — Director of Nuclear energy, safety and ITER, DG Energy European Commission, EURATOM

Dmitrijs Stepanovs — Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Latvia, Latvia

Hab Andris Sternbergs — Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia, Afghanistan

Sigitas Rimkevicius — Head, Laboratory of Nuclear Installation Safety Lithuanian Energy Institute, Lithuania

Stanislovas Žurauskas — Deputy Head, Science and Technology Division, Ministry of Education and Science, Lithuania

Leon Diederich — Conseiller de Gouvernement, Ministere de l’Enseignement superieur et de la Recherche, Luxembourg

Gaston Schmit — Conseiller de Gouvernement, Ministere de l’Enseignement superieur et de la Recherche, Luxembourg

Ian Gauci Borda — Associate Consultant, Malta Council for Science and Technology, Malta

Karl Montebello — Policy and Strategy Executive, The Malta Council for Science and Technology, Malta

Jeannette Ridder-Numan — Senior policy advisor/deputy head for Science and Humanities and International Affairs, Ministery of Education, Culture and Science, Netherlands

Marco de Baar — Director Nuclear Fusion Programme DIFFER institute, Netherlands

Lukasz Ciupinski — Scientific Expert Materials Design Division, Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering Warsaw University of Technology, Poland

Paulina Styczen — Principal Expert, Department of Strategy, Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland, Poland

Carlos Varandas — Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear, Portugal

Teresa Ponce de Leão — President of LNEG, Portugal

Florin Buzatu — Director-General, Institute of Atomic Physics, Romania

Teddy Craciunescu — National Institute of Lasers, Plasma and Radiation Physics NILPRP Bucharest-Magurele, Romania, Romania

Stefan Matejcik — Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University, Slovakia

Jozef Pitel — Research Scientist, Institute of Electrical Engineering, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia

Jože Duhovnik — Dean, Faculty for ME, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Igor Lengar — Jozef Stefan Institute, Reactor Physics Division, Slovenia

Joaquín Sánchez Sanz — Director de Laboratorio Nacional de Fusion Centro Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT), Spain

Carlos E. Martínez Riera — Ministry of Sciencie, Innovation and Universities, Spain

James Drake — Division of Fusion Plasma Physics, The Royal Institute of Technology KTH, Sweden

Pär Omling — Department of Solid State Physics, Lund University, Sweden

Xavier Reymond — State Secretariat for education, Research and Innovation, International Cooperation in Research and Innovation, Switzerland

Ambrogio Fasoli — Director Centres de Recherches en Physique des Plasmas CRPP Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne EPFL, Switzerland

 

38. Founders of Renaissance Fusion Perpetuate ITER Deception

Jun 182020
 


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By Steven B. Krivit
June 18, 2020

Another news magazine has repeated the false claim that ITER is designed to produce net power.

Founders of Renaissance Fusion, a stellarator start-up based in France and in the U.S., published their article in Power Engineering International magazine today.

The authors and founders, Martin Kupp and Francesco Volpe, wrote that “the reactor will produce net energy” and that it will “produce net power by 2035.”

In the next sentence, the authors tried to support their claim by stating what the reactor is actually designed to do: produce a fusion plasma that emits particles and thermal power 10 times greater than the injected thermal power.

But readers who are not experts in fusion won’t realize that this is a bait-and-switch trick. This type of deception has been used by the fusion community for decades. If ITER works as planned, the net power of the reactor will be about zero net Watts.

 

37. ITER Council Notified of Exaggerated Claims

Jun 162020
 

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Subject: Exaggerated Claims About the ITER Fusion Project
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2020 07:31:27 -0700
From: Steven B. Krivit

TO:
Delong Luo, Chair of the ITER Council, Director-General, ITER China Domestic Agency, Ministry of Science and Technology
Wei Huang, Head of Delegation of ITER Council for China, Vice Minister, Ministry of Science and Technology
Massimo Garribba, Head of Delegation of ITER Council for Europe, Acting Deputy Director-General, DG ENER, European Commission
Ravi Bhusan Grove, Head of Delegation of ITER Council for India, Member, Atomic Energy Commission
Yoshio Yamawaki, Head of Delegation of ITER Council for Japan, Senior Deputy Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
Chang-Yune Lee, Head of Delegation of ITER Council for Korea, Director-General, Space and Nuclear Energy
Igor Borovkov, Head of Delegation of ITER Council for Russian Federation, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Government Executive Office of the Russian Federation
Steve Binkley, Head of Delegation of ITER Council for United States, Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Science

CC:
Bernard Bigot, Director-General, ITER Organization
Johannes Schwemmer, Director of ITER Domestic Agency, EU
Kathy McCarthy, Director of ITER Domestic Agency, US
Ujjwal Baruah, Project Director Director of ITER Domestic Agency, India
Shishir Ddeshpande, Former Project Director of ITER Domestic Agency, India
Kijung Jung, Director of ITER Domestic Agency, Korea
Director of ITER Domestic Agency, Japan
Anatoly V. Krasilnikov, Director of ITER Domestic Agency, RF

Since at least 1993, scientists representing the nuclear fusion community have convinced members of the U.S. Congress that the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), under construction in Southern France, is designed to produce 500 million Watts of thermal power, ten times more electrical power than the reactor is designed to consume.

This is not true.

Later, other fusion scientists convinced the European Parliament and European Commission to publish similar falsehoods about ITER. In fact, the list of organizations that have published falsehoods about ITER in the last decade is extensive.

As revealed by New Energy Times in 2017 and in a subsequent 2019 statement from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, if the ITER reactor works according to design, ITER should produce about as much fusion power as the electricity required to run the entire plant. A statement by a Japanese government fusion organization also describes the design goal accurately: “ITER is about equivalent to a zero (net) power reactor, when the plasma is burning.” A German government document uncovered by New Energy Times also reveals that the reactor’s output will be equivalent to zero net power.

The enormity of this false science claim, in terms of involved scientists, expenditure of taxpayer funds from China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States is unprecedented. The magnitude of the deception, involving scientists whom we hold in high esteem, makes it difficult to recognize and reconcile. Deception and fraud are ugly words that nobody in the scientific world wants to be associated with. Nevertheless, this disturbing matter is one which the fusion community, as well as the broader scientific community, must reckon with.

Much like the perpetual motion frauds from a century ago, which employed hidden mechanical devices to supply power, scientists promoting ITER have hidden the reactor’s expected input power through specific language, undisclosed terminology, and deceit.

“The Dark Side of ITER,” published on June 15, 2020, by Steven B. Krivit, editor of New Energy Times, explains what happened.

—
Steven B. Krivit
Publisher and Senior Editor, New Energy Times
369-B Third Street | Suite 556 | San Rafael, California | USA 94901

36. The Dark Side of ITER

Jun 152020
 

Return to ITER Power Facts Main Page

June 15, 2020
By Steven B. Krivit

Summary

Since at least 1993, scientists representing the nuclear fusion community have convinced members of the U.S. Congress that the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), under construction in Southern France, is designed to produce 500 million Watts of thermal power, ten times more electrical power than the reactor is designed to consume.

This is not true.

Later, other fusion scientists convinced the European Parliament and European Commission to publish similar falsehoods about ITER. In fact, the list of organizations that have, as a result of the fusion scientists’ claims, inadvertently published falsehoods about ITER in the last decade is extensive.

The Facts

As revealed by New Energy Times in 2017 and in a subsequent 2019 statement from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, if the ITER reactor works according to design, the ITER reactor should produce about as much power from fusion as the electricity required to operate the entire device. A statement by a Japanese government fusion organization also describes the expected overall device power balance accurately: “ITER is about equivalent to a zero (net) power reactor, when the plasma is burning.” A German government document uncovered by New Energy Times also reveals that the reactor’s overall output will be equivalent to zero net power.

The actual design goal for the ITER reactor is to create a plasma of 500 megawatts (thermal) for around twenty minutes while 50 megawatts of thermal power are injected into the tokamak, resulting in a ten-fold gain of plasma heating power, not reactor power.

The enormity of this false science claim, in terms of involved scientists, expenditure of taxpayer funds from China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States is unprecedented and is therefore difficult to conceive. Deception and fraud are ugly words that nobody in the scientific world wants to be associated with. Nevertheless, over the course of three decades, it happened.

Much like the perpetual motion frauds from a century ago, which employed hidden mechanical devices to supply power, scientists promoting ITER have hidden the reactor’s expected input power through specific wording, omitted facts, undisclosed terminology, and deceit.

“The Dark Side of ITER,” published on June 15, 2020, by Steven B. Krivit, editor of New Energy Times, explains what happened.

Book Review: Transmutation, The Inside Story

Jun 122020
 

Book Review: Transmutation, The Inside Story
By Steven B. Krivit
June 12, 2020

Tenth in a Series on the Rutherford Nitrogen-to-Oxygen Transmutation Myth

Transmutation, The Inside Story was written by physicist Robin Marshall and self-published on Sept. 12, 2019. The paperback version is 137 pages. (ISBN-10: 107974584X / ISBN-13: 978-1079745849)

Robin Marshall is an emeritus professor of physics from the University of Manchester, recognized science for his research in the field of high-energy physics. Among other awards and honors, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society, was a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and was awarded the Max Born Medal and Prize by the German Physical Society.

From the back cover: “This is a true story. It is a story of Manchester, discovery and physics, and very little comes truer than that. When the year has a ‘19 in it, you can be sure that Manchester will be at the fore. 1819 was the pinnacle of the ‘19s – Peterloo, when Manchester made sacrifices for the Nation. In 1919, Ernest Rutherford, later Sir, even later Lord, became the planet’s first alchemist.”

I must disclose that this is not an impartial review. In fact, my actions may have precipitated Marshall’s decision to write this book. Before discussing Marshall’s book, some backstory is required for context. In 2014, I was writing my own book, Lost History, which I self-published two years later, in 2016. During research for the book, I identified and described the perpetuation of a 70-year myth that depicted physicist Ernest Rutherford as the world’s first successful alchemist. According to the myth, he performed the experiment which demonstrated the first artificial transmutation of elements, specifically, changing the element nitrogen to oxygen.

In May 2019, I learned that the University of Manchester, in collaboration with the U.K. Institute of Physics History of Physics Group, planned to hold a one-day meeting to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Rutherford’s discovery of the first artificial transmutation of elements. On learning about the meeting, scheduled for June 8, I immediately contacted the organizers and university officials. I informed them that the title and the basis for the meeting were factually incorrect.

According to my investigation, Rutherford’s 1919 papers did not mark his discovery of the first artificial transmutation performed at Manchester. Rather, those papers marked his discovery of the proton, in experiments he performed at Manchester. The credit, I explained to the organizers and university officials, for the first artificial transmutation, actually belonged to Patrick Blackett, when he published, in 1925, experiments he performed at the University of Cambridge.

Before the meeting took place, Marshall reacted adversely to my surprising news. He disagreed strongly with my analysis of the history and my conclusion. Marshall took to Twitter to express himself. He promised his readers that the key speaker for the planned meeting, Rutherford expert John Campbell, was going to show that I was wrong. Marshall imagined that I had intended to shut the centenary down rather than encourage the centenary to mark the proper discovery, that of the proton. Marshall’s response was not unique but it was the most extreme reaction that I had encountered. His reaction added drama to what would have been an otherwise dull story about science history.

Three days before the “Centenary of Transmutation” meeting, Marshall wrote on his Twitter account that he was asked to comment and review my “paper.” (Actually, it was not a journal paper but my news article “University of Manchester to Celebrate Wrong Transmutation Discovery.”) He had submitted his review to an unnamed journal in an attempt to show that I was wrong about the discovery credit. Marshall complained on Twitter that the editor had rejected his review, but he was nonetheless determined to triumph. He posted his entire review, as screenshots, to his Twitter feed with exciting preambles to each page.

The “Centenary of Transmutation” meeting took place as scheduled on June 8, 2019, without any change to the title or agenda. Peter Rowlands, a 30-year member of the U.K. Institute of Physics History of Physics Group, opened the meeting with a 38-second introduction and emphatically asserted that the University of Manchester held the bragging rights for the first artificial nuclear transmutation.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to this celebration of the centenary of transmutation, which took place in this very department 100 years ago,” Rowlands said.

Sean Freeman, the head of the University of Manchester School of Physics and Astronomy spoke next. I had previously been in communication with Freeman. A year earlier, on June 26, 2018, I had written to Freeman and Martin Schröder, the vice-president and dean for the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Manchester. I told them both that a Web page from the physics department depicted the incorrect version of the transmutation discovery. Schröder wrote back to me the following day and, for the most part, expressed his agreement with my findings and conclusions. He thanked me for bringing the error to their attention and, after two rounds of edits, he and Freeman brought the page much closer to the facts as shown by my investigation. (Their page still contains a minor conflation of the historical events.)

After Rowlands’ introduction, Freeman gave his talk — and contradicted Rowlands. Rutherford expert John Campbell followed Freeman. He too, contradicted Rowlands. Freeman and Rowlands discussed many details about Rutherford’s achievements, but neither of them claimed that Rutherford had performed and discovered the first artificial transmutation. Instead, Freeman and Campbell discussed the correct discovery associated with the centenary: Rutherford’s 1919 discovery of the proton.

Sean Freeman speaking at the “Centenary of Transmutation”

Freeman also told the audience that Blackett, at Cambridge, had shown the transmutation of nitrogen to oxygen. In each of their respective chronological narratives, when Freeman and Campbell arrived at the year 1919, they spoke accurately and precisely about Rutherford’s proton discovery.

Marshall had promised his Twitter followers that Campbell was going to “state more strongly Krivit was wrong.” Instead, Campbell said nothing in his talk about Rutherford transmuting nitrogen to oxygen. Instead, Campbell admitted that he was wrong. He said that he had relied on secondary sources that were to blame for his mistake:

“I just assumed that the people writing about Rutherford who knew him were right, but then I’ve found out they never looked at the article — I assumed — records of the day, and just formed their own guesswork.”

 

John Campbell speaking at the “Centenary of Transmutation”

In the discussion after Campbell’s talk, the audience had a chance to resolve the incongruity between the advertised purpose of the meeting (Rutherford’s transmutation discovery) and the undisclosed revised purpose of the meeting (Rutherford’s proton discovery). Nearly all the audience discussions centered on transmutation. Campbell repeatedly and accurately responded to the audience that, no, Rutherford never claimed that he had transmuted nitrogen to oxygen. In a separate document, I performed a detailed analysis of the meeting discussion and answered some of the audience questions that Campbell did not answer adequately.

A month later, I responded to Marshall’s Twitter-published review in an open letter. I explained how Marshall had misunderstood a fundamental aspect of Rutherford’s experiments.

Marshall thought that when Rutherford discussed oxygen, that it was in the context of experiments performed with nitrogen gas, and that oxygen was the result of a transmutation from nitrogen. Marshall didn’t understand. Rutherford had performed separate experiments; one experiment used nitrogen gas in the chamber, the other experiment used oxygen gas in the chamber. When Rutherford mentioned oxygen in his papers, he was only referring to the similarities of the particle kinetics of experiments performed in the presence of oxygen to the particle kinetics of experiments performed in the presence of nitrogen.

Marshall wrote and self-published Transmutation, The Inside Story as an attempt to prove that the transmutation discovery belonged to Rutherford. Much of his book is anecdotal and contains ancillary aspects to the history. Only a few pages in the book attempt to provide direct support for Marshall’s thesis.

(Page 56): “Rutherford did have transmutation in mind, but kept quiet about it in public until these papers appeared in 1919. He did mention in a personal letter to Bohr in December 1917 that he was trying to do it and asked Bohr to regard it as private.”

Suffice it to say, Marshall provided no direct quote and no citation. Rutherford said no such thing to Bohr, and had no such intention. The actual quotation from Rutherford’s letter, which is quite well known, is this: “I am also trying to break up the atom by this method – Regard this as private.” In that paragraph, Marshall also associated the word transmutation with his own his own phrase “trying to do it.” But that is an inaccurate conflation. Rutherford’s intention was not to transmute one element to another but to break apart the atom so as to learn its structure and develop support for his satellite model of the atom.

(Page 63): “It is significant that he noticed that what should have been nitrogen behaved like oxygen.”

This is, of course, Marshall’s fundamental misunderstanding of the set of experiments, as I already explained in my open letter.

Lower on the page, Marshall traveled further down the road from fact to falsehood. He displayed an image with two particle tracks. Below the image, he wrote this caption:

(Page 63): “Two alpha particles in a Wilson cloud chamber enter from the left. The upper track was used by Rutherford to identify the stub of the recoil oxygen nucleus.”

 

Again, Marshall provided no direct quote and no citation. In reality, the image Marshall depicts as Figure 6.3 did not come from any of Rutherford’s four 1919 papers. In fact, there are no images of any particle tracks in in any of Rutherford’s set of four papers. Based on my investigation, there is no evidence that Rutherford identified any residual nucleus from his experiments as oxygen before Blackett’s 1925 publication. This image and caption, which Marshall purports to be the primary evidence for his argument, is a complete fabrication.

 

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