Is The Fusion Dream Dead? ITER Delayed By 15 Years And $22 Billion Over Budget

Yes and no.

ITER cross-section — ITER

Nuclear fusion is the utopic energy source humanity has been looking for. It produces virtually unlimited, on-demand energy with no radioactive waste and zero planet-destroying emissions. However, taking this technology from the drawing board to reality is the greatest engineering challenge humanity has ever faced, and we have yet to crack it. For well over a decade, ITER has been our best shot at unlocking fusion energy. This utterly gigantic tokamak can theoretically produce 10 times the energy it takes to run. Construction started in 2010 with a budget of $5 billion, and first experiments slated to start in 2020. This rapid timeline made many hopeful that ITER could unlock fusion and make fusion power a viable power solution in time to save the planet from our climate sins. Well, 2020 has been and gone, ITER has blown its budget by $17 billion, and only last week was the reactor chamber, with its enormous electromagnets, completed. However, the team at ITER recently announced that the reactor already requires upgrades and announced a revised timeline where the first operations are to happen by 2033, and the first fusion reactions don’t happen until 2039! Oh, and this revised timeline also requires a further $5 billion to complete! So, the question has to be asked: is the fusion dream dead?

If you want an explanation of how fusion works and how tokamak reactors like ITER work, I recommend reading my previous article here.

Let’s start with why ITER has been delayed.

ITER’s now 19-year delay is due to massive unforeseen expenses, manufacturing defects, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ever-growing complexity and scope of building a first-of-a-kind machine. With this context, the ballooning budget and ever-receding completion date start to make sense.

Take, for example, the thermal shields. These protect the reactor from the hydrogen plasma within, which will be over 27,000 times hotter than the surface of the Sun when ITER is running. As you can imagine, these need to function perfectly! But, last year, the shields that had already been installed were found to have defects. They required complete removal and replacement, along with the 23 km of cooling pipes affixed to them. Not only will this incur a massive delay, but it will also require a vast amount of cash to do.

However, since these shields were designed, other smaller reactors have advanced tokamak technology. Take, for example, South Korea’s Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR). It recently obliterated its own fusion record by sustaining a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius for an astonishing 48 seconds. It did this by using new tungsten deflector plates that could take the punishment of this insane heat for so long. In fact, over recent years, scientists have found that tungsten internals can massively help a tokamak handle hotter temperatures. As such, the team at ITER want to replace their defective beryllium heat shields with tungsten ones. This isn’t as simple as just changing the material; for example, the current cooling system was designed to work with the properties of beryllium. As such, this tungsten switch will require radical changes to multiple systems within and around ITER, which will again incur delays and a huge amount of additional costs.

That is why ITER recently announced its new 2039 timeline and the need for an additional $5 billion to meet that target.

But, according to ITER director-general (what a title) Pietro Barabaschi, this delay might actually be a good thing. He insists that they could have kept to their 2016 timeline, in which ITER would run its first experiments by 2025, but that this would have been illogical. You see, numerous reactors around the world, like KSTAR, have advanced fusion technology dramatically since 2016. It makes no sense to build ITER with what is now an outdated design, only to have to upgrade it in a decade or so at huge expense to use components and systems we know it will require already. Instead, it’s far more efficient to take the time and expenditure now to update and upgrade ITER with these new findings. That is why Barabaschi has no qualms about delaying ITER and going even further over budget, as it means they will be able to deliver a “more complete machine” and, in doing so, take us close to realising fusion technology.

That’s all well and good, but this now means fusion technology can’t be a part of our 2050 net zero push.

ITER will still need years, potentially decades, of development after it is fully functional before it can start producing reliable power. It will take even longer for its technology to be turned into a commercial product that countries can use as a power solution. So, these recent delays could mean fusion power might not be a commercial reality until the 2060s.

The dream of ITER unlocking fusion power this decade is now truly dead. As ITER is by far our best bet at developing a viable fusion energy source, this, in turn, means the dream of us being able to harness fusion energy to halt climate change before it’s too late is also dead.

But fusion is still worth our attention. There is nothing wrong with properly deployed renewables. 100% renewable energy grids already exist. We don’t need fusion to reach net zero. But, the immense advantages of fusion should not be ignored, as its ability to supply such abundant energy will enable us to unlock technology we can only dream of. Fusion really is the future of energy; it just isn’t the immediate future of energy.

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Sources: WNN, Live Science, The Register, Physics World, Will Lockett