There are many thinkable ways to achieve fusion, and one day one of them will show to work. The tokamak model will probably never meterialize into anything commersial. It is too bulky compared to the energy it can produce.

Why would you involve industry?

You want to have the fusion version of Fukushima?

Please do some research before making statements like this.

There is nowhere near enough fusion-fuel present for a "meltdown" (or whatever the fusion equivalent for that is) to happen

"Please do some research before making statements like this."

Oh geez, practice what you preach.

"fusion-fuel present for a "meltdown" (or whatever the fusion equivalent for that is) to happen"

Perhaps, but there is a Chernobyl-like amount of tritium in the lithium blanket, which is flammable. A lithium fire would be an enormously nasty event, releasing enormous amounts of radioactive steam which would fall as rain. Does that sound safe to you?

That, combined with the continual replacement of the cores (as noted in the article above) as mid-level nuclear waste means this system could never be considered clean.

http://matter2energy.wordpr...

Just passing by, I was surprised to read here that:
"... Fusion produces high-energy neutrons and the bombardment from DEMO will be intense. The neutrons knock atoms in solids out of position, weakening them and making them radioactive."

It sounds like there are too many unknowns to reasonably predict the amount of radioactive material that might be produced, but the public story has been that fusion would not produce any radioactive waste. While it might seem unlikely that an amount comparable to fission reactors would be produced, it seems this is a valid question that cannot yet be definitively determined...

haha .the ITER is in China . and i am a chinese.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. Energy Dept. sponsored numerous fusion demonstration reactor (DEMO) studies, followed soon after by Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Japan. Most of these facilities were supposed to be operating by the magical year 2000. But all of these projects vanished when their technical impracticality and exorbitant costs became clear.

Having been chastened, most of the Fusion Powers may sit out the present DEMO fantasy fest. Now South Korea, virtually a fusion non-entity, claims it will build a DEMO all by itself. Look for the other fusion wanabe's in Asia to announce their own DEMO's.

ITER is so expensive and technologically risky that it requires most of the world's technologically advanced nations to design, develop and build it. But according to Clery, each of the far more technically ambitious DEMO fantasies requires only a single nation, such as South Korea!

As a practical matter, continued cost overruns on ITER and supporting facilities will preclude Europe from initiating a more advanced fusion device. Each DEMO project will suffer the fate of its 20th century predecessors when its technical impracticality and astronomical cost eventually become clear to funding authorities. Meanwhile these activities will provide gainful employment to hallucinatory technologists who like to bamboozle clueless bureaucrats.

Mr. Jassby, you raised essentially the same criticism in response to Charles Seife's rather unpopular Jan. 3rd Slate article. There it was explained to you that the United States spends about as much on magnetic fusion research, per year, as it does on Halloween pet costumes. Is that "exorbitant" to you? Furthermore, the US military in ONE YEAR pays more for gasoline than has been spent on MFE since the 1950s.

I am curious about the source of your information. Where did you learn that "all of these projects vanished when their technical impracticality and exorbitant costs became clear"? Can you point me to your source? I also wonder why you are so critical and dismissive of, for example, Korea's fusion program. The KSTAR tokamak, upon completion in 2008, while not the largest was perhaps the most advanced of its kind in the world, using superconducting magnets. Did you know that for years, South Korea has also had the fastest average Internet connection speed in the world? I think maybe they just take technical and energy infrastructure more seriously than the once-great USA.

As I said in reply to your comments about the Slate article, you seem to have a baseline viability metric for energy production that is unrealistic. I think you want the energy source of the future to be perfect clean and cost almost nothing to develop. By that standard, yeah, fusion, like every other actual option, is going to rub you the wrong way.

This whole fusion energy research program is a scam. The science and engineering is far too complicated to succeed; already they are making excuses as to why it might not succeed. Keep in mind that if the funding did not exist for this type of research, many of these researchers would be unemployed. It is in their best interest to manipulate date and keep this scam going as long as possible. If we rely on fusion power in 2050, we will be freezing to death in the dark.

"The science and engineering is far too complicated to succeed;"

Thats what people also said about going faster than the speed of sound and countless other scientific breakthroughs.

Mr. Reality is being Mr. Narrowminded

To be fair, there are no current commercial supersonic aircraft, so they aren't really a good example of a successful ambitious engineering project.

Long way to go

A major obstacle for ITER is that it is based on the outdated and flawed tokamak concept.
Money would be better spent on well-conceived magnetic-electrostatic fusion machines.

Whatever happened to Dr. Bussard's Polywell reactor?

As far as I know it has been funded by US Navy. People at http://www.talk-polywell.org can give you more details.
But newer magnetic-electrostatic fusion machine concepts are always coming up. http://youtu.be/ro5-QYqqxzM

Prediction: technical issues of fusion power will be solved eventually but the cost of a commercial plant will be so high that solar power with energy storage and other non-fossil-fuel technologies will handily out-compete it.

Ironically, the fact that individual countries want to keep going on their own is a rather encouraging sign that people having insider knowledge think the progress to significant enough for taking the risk of a national project. On the other hand this may just as well be the fantasy of some politician excited with technical reports they do not understand. Who knows...

That is how research is done! Understanding fusion energy toolk like 50 years! the progress is rather slow but still significant. And I can bet that this will be the main source of power for the near future because its expectations are higher, the theory underlying the phenomena has been rather well understood(comparing to superconductivity for exemple)! The only barrier is the technical one, and I think ITER is a great pace forward to it! Well done!

The first to produce useful amounts of energy—to an industry-ready prototype fusion power plant? The amount of heat produced by ITER is equivalent to no more than 100 MW of electricity! Lasting 400 seconds!!! Costing more than $20 billions!!!

Shouldn't the world be laser focused and heavily invest on fusion reactors if they can offer safe and endless energy? Don't you think that the ITER program is lagging?