Today many countries take part in thermonuclear research. The leaders are the European Union, the USA, Russia and Japan, while the programs of China, Brazil, Canada and Korea are growing rapidly. Initially, fusion reactors in the US and the USSR were associated with the development of nuclear weapons and remained classified until the Atoms for Peace conference, held in Geneva in 1958. After the creation of the Soviet tokamak, nuclear fusion research in the 1970s became a "big science". But the cost and complexity of the devices has increased to the point where international cooperation has become the only way forward.

Thermonuclear reactors in the world

Beginning in the 1970s, the commercial use of fusion energy was constantly pushed back by 40 years. However, much has happened in recent years, due to which this period can be reduced.

Several tokamaks have been built, including the European JET, the British MAST, and the experimental fusion reactor TFTR at Princeton, USA. The international ITER project is currently under construction in Cadarache, France. It will become the largest tokamak when it is operational in 2020. In 2030, CFETR will be built in China, which will surpass ITER. Meanwhile, the PRC is conducting research on the EAST experimental superconducting tokamak.

Fusion reactors of another type - stellators - are also popular with researchers. One of the largest, LHD, began work at the Japanese National Institute in 1998. It is used to find the best magnetic plasma confinement configuration. The German Max Planck Institute carried out research on the Wendelstein 7-AS reactor in Garching between 1988 and 2002, and currently on the Wendelstein 7-X, which has been under construction for more than 19 years. Another TJII stellarator is in operation in Madrid, Spain. In the US, the Princeton Laboratory (PPPL), where the first fusion reactor of this type was built in 1951, halted construction of the NCSX in 2008 due to cost overruns and lack of funding.

In addition, significant progress has been made in research into inertial thermonuclear fusion. Construction of the $7 billion National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration, was completed in March 2009. The French Laser Mégajoule (LMJ) began operation in October 2014. Fusion reactors use about 2 million joules of light energy delivered by lasers in a few billionths of a second to a target a few millimeters in size to start a nuclear fusion reaction. The main task of the NIF and LMJ is research to support national military nuclear programs.

ITER

In 1985, the Soviet Union proposed to build the next generation tokamak in cooperation with Europe, Japan and the United States. The work was carried out under the auspices of the IAEA. Between 1988 and 1990, the first designs for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ITER, which also means "path" or "journey" in Latin, were created to prove that fusion could produce more energy than it could absorb. Canada and Kazakhstan also participated, mediated by Euratom and Russia, respectively.

Six years later, the ITER board approved the first comprehensive reactor project based on established physics and technology, worth $6 billion. Then the US withdrew from the consortium, which forced them to halve costs and change the project. The result was ITER-FEAT, costing $3 billion but achieving self-sustaining response and a positive power balance.

In 2003, the United States rejoined the consortium, and China announced its desire to participate in it. As a result, in mid-2005, the partners agreed to build ITER in Cadarache in southern France. The EU and France contributed half of the €12.8bn, while Japan, China, South Korea, the US and Russia contributed 10% each. Japan provided high-tech components, hosted the €1 billion IFMIF facility for materials testing, and had the right to build the next test reactor. The total cost of ITER includes half the cost of 10 years of construction and half of the cost of 20 years of operation. India became the seventh member of ITER at the end of 2005.

Experiments should start in 2018 using hydrogen to avoid magnet activation. The use of D-T plasma is not expected before 2026.

The goal of ITER is to generate 500 MW (at least for 400 s) using less than 50 MW of input power without generating electricity.

Demo's two-gigawatt demonstration power plant will produce large-scale on a continuous basis. Demo's concept design will be completed by 2017, with construction to begin in 2024. The launch will take place in 2033.

JET

In 1978, the EU (Euratom, Sweden and Switzerland) started a joint European JET project in the UK. JET is the largest operating tokamak in the world today. A similar JT-60 reactor operates at Japan's National Fusion Fusion Institute, but only JET can use deuterium-tritium fuel.

The reactor was launched in 1983, and became the first experiment, as a result of which, in November 1991, controlled thermonuclear fusion with a power of up to 16 MW for one second and 5 MW of stable power was carried out on a deuterium-tritium plasma. Many experiments have been carried out in order to study various heating schemes and other techniques.

Further improvements to the JET are to increase its power. The MAST compact reactor is being developed together with JET and is part of the ITER project.

K-STAR

K-STAR is a Korean superconducting tokamak from the National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) in Daejeon, which produced its first plasma in mid-2008. ITER, which is the result of international cooperation. The 1.8 m radius tokamak is the first reactor to use Nb3Sn superconducting magnets, the same as those planned to be used in ITER. During the first stage, completed by 2012, K-STAR had to prove the viability of the basic technologies and achieve plasma pulses with a duration of up to 20 s. At the second stage (2013-2017), it is being upgraded to study long pulses up to 300 s in the H mode and transition to the high-performance AT mode. The goal of the third phase (2018-2023) is to achieve high performance and efficiency in the continuous pulse mode. At the 4th stage (2023-2025), DEMO technologies will be tested. The device is not tritium capable and does not use D-T fuel.

K-DEMO

Developed in collaboration with the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and South Korea's NFRI, K-DEMO is set to be the next step in the development of commercial reactors after ITER, and will be the first power plant capable of generating power into the electrical grid, namely 1 million kW within a few weeks. It will have a diameter of 6.65 m and will have a reproduction zone module being created as part of the DEMO project. The Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology plans to invest about a trillion Korean won ($941 million) in it.

East

The Chinese Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) at the Chinese Institute of Physics in Hefei created a hydrogen plasma at a temperature of 50 million °C and held it for 102 seconds.

TFTR

In the American laboratory PPPL, the experimental fusion reactor TFTR operated from 1982 to 1997. In December 1993, TFTR became the first magnetic tokamak to carry out extensive experiments with deuterium-tritium plasma. The following year, the reactor produced a then-record 10.7 MW of controllable power, and in 1995 a temperature record of 510 million °C was reached. However, the facility did not achieve the goal of break-even fusion energy, but successfully met the hardware design goals, making a significant contribution to the development of ITER.

LHD

The LHD at Japan's National Fusion Fusion Institute in Toki, Gifu Prefecture was the largest stellarator in the world. The fusion reactor was launched in 1998 and has demonstrated plasma confinement qualities comparable to other large facilities. An ion temperature of 13.5 keV (about 160 million °C) and an energy of 1.44 MJ was achieved.

Wendelstein 7-X

After a year of testing that began at the end of 2015, the helium temperature briefly reached 1 million °C. In 2016, a hydrogen plasma fusion reactor, using 2 MW of power, reached a temperature of 80 million °C within a quarter of a second. W7-X is the largest stellarator in the world and is planned to operate continuously for 30 minutes. The cost of the reactor was 1 billion €.

NIF

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) was completed in March 2009. Using its 192 laser beams, NIF is able to concentrate 60 times more energy than any previous laser system.

Cold nuclear fusion

In March 1989, two researchers, American Stanley Pons and Briton Martin Fleischman, announced that they had launched a simple tabletop cold fusion reactor operating at room temperature. The process consisted in the electrolysis of heavy water using palladium electrodes, on which deuterium nuclei were concentrated at a high density. The researchers claim that heat was produced that could only be explained in terms of nuclear processes, and there were fusion by-products including helium, tritium and neutrons. However, other experimenters failed to repeat this experience. Most of the scientific community does not believe that cold fusion reactors are real.

Low energy nuclear reactions

Initiated by claims of "cold fusion", research has continued into the low-energy field with some empirical support but no accepted scientific explanation. Apparently, weak nuclear interactions are used to create and capture neutrons (and not a powerful force, as in or their synthesis). Experiments involve permeating hydrogen or deuterium through a catalytic bed and reacting with a metal. The researchers report an observed release of energy. The main practical example is the interaction of hydrogen with nickel powder with the release of heat, the amount of which is greater than any chemical reaction can give.

Is thermonuclear energy necessary?

At this stage in the development of civilization, we can safely say that humanity is facing an "energy challenge". It is due to several fundamental factors at once:

Humanity now consumes a huge amount of energy.

The world's current energy consumption is about 15.7 terawatts (TW). Dividing this value by the population of the planet, we get about 2400 watts per person, which can be easily estimated and imagined. The energy consumed by every inhabitant of the Earth (including children) corresponds to the round-the-clock operation of 24 100-watt electric lamps.

— Global energy consumption is growing rapidly.

According to the forecast of the International Energy Agency (2006), world energy consumption should increase by 50% by 2030.

— Currently, 80% of the energy consumed by the world is created by burning fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas).), the use of which potentially carries the risk of catastrophic environmental changes.

The following joke is popular among the people of Saudi Arabia: “My father rode a camel. I got a car, and my son is already flying a plane. But now his son will again ride a camel.”

This seems to be the case, since by all serious forecasts the world's oil reserves will run out mostly in about 50 years.

Even based on estimates by the US Geological Survey (this forecast is much more optimistic than the others), the growth of world oil production will continue for no more than the next 20 years (other experts predict that the peak of production will be reached in 5-10 years), after which the volume of oil produced will begin decrease at a rate of about 3% per year. The prospects for natural gas production do not look much better. It is usually said that we will have enough hard coal for another 200 years, but this forecast is based on maintaining the current level of production and consumption. Meanwhile, coal consumption is now increasing by 4.5% per year, which immediately reduces the mentioned period of 200 years to only 50 years.

Thus, already now we should prepare for the end of the era of the use of fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, the currently existing alternative energy sources are not able to cover the growing needs of mankind. According to the most optimistic estimates, the maximum amount of energy (in the specified heat equivalent) generated by the listed sources is only 3 TW (wind), 1 TW (hydro), 1 TW (biological sources) and 100 GW (geothermal and offshore installations). The total amount of additional energy (even in this most optimal forecast) is only about 6 TW. At the same time, it should be noted that the development of new energy sources is a very complex technical task, so the cost of the energy they produce will in any case be higher than with the usual combustion of coal, etc. It seems quite obvious that

humanity must look for some other sources of energy, which at present can really be considered only the Sun and thermonuclear fusion reactions.

Potentially, the Sun is an almost inexhaustible source of energy. The amount of energy that falls on just 0.1% of the planet's surface is equivalent to 3.8 TW (even if it is converted with an efficiency of only 15%). The problem lies in our inability to capture and convert this energy, which is associated both with the high cost of solar panels and with the problems of accumulating, storing and further transferring the energy received to the required regions.

At present, nuclear power plants receive on a large scale the energy released during the fission reactions of atomic nuclei. I believe that the creation and development of such stations should be encouraged in every possible way, but it must be taken into account that the reserves of one of the most important material for their operation (cheap uranium) can also be completely used up over the next 50 years.

Another important area of ​​development is the use of nuclear fusion (nucleus fusion), which now acts as the main hope for salvation, although the time of the creation of the first thermonuclear power plants remains uncertain. This lecture is devoted to this topic.

What is nuclear fusion?

Nuclear fusion, which is the basis for the existence of the Sun and stars, is potentially an inexhaustible source of energy for the development of the Universe in general. Experiments conducted in Russia (Russia is the birthplace of the Tokamak fusion facility), the United States, Japan, Germany, as well as in the UK as part of the Joint European Torus (JET) program, which is one of the leading research programs in the world, show that nuclear fusion can provide not only the current energy needs of mankind (16 TW), but also a much larger amount of energy.

The energy of nuclear fusion is very real, and the main question is whether we can create sufficiently reliable and cost-effective thermonuclear facilities.

Nuclear fusion processes are called fusion reactions of light atomic nuclei into heavier ones with the release of a certain amount of energy.

First of all, among them should be noted the reaction between two isotopes (deuterium and tritium) of hydrogen, which is very common on Earth, as a result of which helium is formed and a neutron is released. The reaction can be written in the following form:

D + T = 4 He + n + energy (17.6 MeV).

The released energy, arising from the fact that helium-4 has very strong nuclear bonds, is converted into ordinary kinetic energy, distributed between the neutron and the helium-4 nucleus in the proportion of 14.1 MeV / 3.5 MeV.

To initiate (ignite) the fusion reaction, it is necessary to completely ionize and heat the gas from a mixture of deuterium and tritium to a temperature above 100 million degrees Celsius (we will denote it as M degrees), which is about five times higher than the temperature at the center of the Sun. Already at a temperature of several thousand degrees, interatomic collisions lead to the knocking out of electrons from atoms, as a result of which a mixture of separated nuclei and electrons is formed, known as plasma, in which positively charged and high-energy deuterons and tritons (that is, the nuclei of deuterium and tritium) experience a strong mutual repulsion. However, the high temperature of the plasma (and the associated high energy of the ions) allows these deuterium and tritium ions to overcome the Coulomb repulsion and collide with each other. At temperatures above 100 M degrees, the most “energetic” deuterons and tritons approach each other in collisions at such close distances that powerful nuclear forces begin to act between them, forcing them to merge with each other into a single whole.

The implementation of this process in the laboratory is associated with three very difficult problems. First of all, the gas mixture of nuclei D and T should be heated to temperatures above 100 M degrees, somehow preventing its cooling and pollution (due to reactions with the walls of the vessel).

To solve this problem, "magnetic traps" were invented, called Tokamak, which prevent the interaction of plasma with the walls of the reactor.

In the described method, the plasma is heated by an electric current flowing inside the torus, up to about 3 M degrees, which, however, is still insufficient to initiate the reaction. For additional heating of the plasma, energy is either "pumped" into it by radio frequency radiation (as in a microwave oven), or beams of high-energy neutral particles are injected, which transfer their energy to the plasma during collisions. In addition, the release of heat occurs due to, in fact, thermonuclear reactions (as will be described below), as a result of which, in a sufficiently large installation, plasma “ignition” should occur.

The construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which will be the first tokamak capable of “igniting” plasma, is currently underway in France.

The most advanced existing Tokamak-type facilities have long reached temperatures of the order of 150 M degrees, close to the values ​​required for the operation of a fusion plant, but the ITER reactor should be the first large-scale power plant designed for long-term operation. In the future, it will be necessary to significantly improve the parameters of its operation, which will require, first of all, an increase in the pressure in the plasma, since the rate of nuclear fusion at a given temperature is proportional to the square of the pressure.

The main scientific problem in this case is related to the fact that when the pressure in the plasma increases, very complex and dangerous instabilities arise, that is, unstable modes of operation.

The electrically charged helium nuclei that arise during the fusion reaction are kept inside a "magnetic trap", where they are gradually slowed down due to collisions with other particles, and the energy released during collisions helps maintain the high temperature of the plasma column. Neutral (not having an electric charge) neutrons leave the system and transfer their energy to the walls of the reactor, and the heat taken from the walls is the source of energy for the operation of turbines that generate electricity. The problems and difficulties of operating such a facility are primarily related to the fact that a powerful flux of high-energy neutrons and the released energy (in the form of electromagnetic radiation and plasma particles) seriously affect the reactor and can destroy the materials from which it was created.

Because of this, the design of thermonuclear installations is very complex. Physicists and engineers are faced with the task of ensuring the high reliability of their work. The design and construction of thermonuclear stations require them to solve a number of diverse and very complex technological problems.

The device of a thermonuclear power plant

The figure shows a schematic diagram (not to scale) of the device and the principle of operation of a thermonuclear power plant. In the central part there is a toroidal (donut-shaped) chamber with a volume of ~ 2000 m 3 filled with tritium-deuterium (T-D) plasma heated to a temperature above 100 M degrees. The neutrons produced during the fusion reaction leave the "magnetic trap" and fall into the shell shown in the figure with a thickness of about 1 m. 1

Inside the shell, neutrons collide with lithium atoms, resulting in a reaction with the formation of tritium:

neutron + lithium = helium + tritium.

In addition, competing reactions occur in the system (without the formation of tritium), as well as many reactions with the release of additional neutrons, which then also lead to the formation of tritium (in this case, the release of additional neutrons can be significantly enhanced, for example, by introducing atoms into the shell beryllium and lead). The general conclusion is that in this installation a nuclear fusion reaction can take place (at least theoretically), in which tritium will be formed. In this case, the amount of tritium formed should not only meet the needs of the installation itself, but even be somewhat larger, which will make it possible to provide new installations with tritium.

It is this operating concept that must be tested and implemented in the ITER reactor described below.

Neutrons should heat the shell in the so-called pilot plants (which will use relatively "ordinary" structural materials) to about 400 degrees. In the future, it is planned to create improved installations with a shell heating temperature above 1000 degrees, which can be achieved through the use of the latest high-strength materials (such as silicon carbide composites). The heat released in the shell, as in conventional stations, is taken by the primary cooling circuit with a coolant (containing, for example, water or helium) and transferred to the secondary circuit, where water vapor is produced and supplied to the turbines.

The main advantage of nuclear fusion is that it requires only a very small amount of naturally occurring substances as fuel.

The nuclear fusion reaction in the plants described can release enormous amounts of energy, ten million times greater than the standard heat generated by conventional chemical reactions (such as burning fossil fuels). For comparison, we point out that the amount of coal required to operate a thermal power plant with a capacity of 1 gigawatt (GW) is 10,000 tons per day (ten railway cars), and a thermonuclear plant of the same capacity will consume only about 1 kg of D + mixture per day T.

Deuterium is a stable isotope of hydrogen; in about one out of every 3350 molecules of ordinary water, one of the hydrogen atoms is replaced by deuterium (a legacy inherited from the Big Bang of the Universe). This fact makes it easy to organize a fairly cheap production of the required amount of deuterium from water. It is more difficult to obtain tritium, which is unstable (half-life is about 12 years, as a result of which its content in nature is negligible), however, as shown above, tritium will be produced right inside the thermonuclear installation during operation due to the reaction of neutrons with lithium.

Thus, the initial fuel for a thermonuclear reactor is lithium and water.

Lithium is a common metal widely used in household appliances (mobile phone batteries, for example). The plant described above, even with imperfect efficiency, will be able to produce 200,000 kWh of electrical energy, which is equivalent to the energy contained in 70 tons of coal. The required amount of lithium is contained in one computer battery, and the amount of deuterium is contained in 45 liters of water. The above value corresponds to the current consumption of electricity (in terms of one person) in the EU countries for 30 years. The very fact that such an insignificant amount of lithium can provide the generation of such an amount of electricity (without CO 2 emissions and without the slightest pollution of the atmosphere) is a sufficiently strong argument for the rapid and vigorous development of research on the development of fusion energy (despite all the difficulties and problems) even with long-term perspective of creating a cost-effective thermonuclear reactor.

Deuterium should be sufficient for millions of years, and the easily mined lithium reserves are quite sufficient to meet the needs for hundreds of years.

Even if we run out of lithium in rocks, we can extract it from the water, where it is found in a high enough concentration (100 times that of uranium) to make it economically viable to mine.

Thermonuclear energy not only promises humanity, in principle, the possibility of producing a huge amount of energy in the future (without CO 2 emissions and without atmospheric pollution), but also has a number of other advantages.

1 ) High internal security.

The plasma used in thermonuclear installations has a very low density (about a million times lower than the density of the atmosphere), as a result of which the working environment of the installations will never contain energy sufficient to cause serious incidents or accidents.

In addition, the loading of "fuel" must be carried out continuously, which makes it easy to stop its work, not to mention the fact that in the event of an accident and a sharp change in environmental conditions, the thermonuclear "flame" should simply go out.

What are the dangers associated with fusion energy? First, it is worth noting that although the fusion products (helium and neutrons) are not radioactive, the reactor shell can become radioactive during long-term exposure to neutrons.

Secondly, tritium is radioactive and has a relatively short half-life (12 years). But although the volume of plasma used is significant, due to its low density, it contains only a very small amount of tritium (a total weight of about ten postage stamps). So

even in the most difficult situations and accidents (complete destruction of the shell and the release of all the tritium contained in it, for example, during an earthquake and an aircraft crash into a station), only a small amount of fuel will enter the environment, which will not require the evacuation of the population from nearby settlements.

2 ) The cost of energy.

It is expected that the so-called "internal" price of the received electricity (the cost of production itself) will become acceptable if it is 75% of the price already existing in the market. “Acceptable” in this case means that the price will be lower than the price of energy produced using old hydrocarbon fuels. The “external” cost (side effects, impact on public health, climate, environment, etc.) will be essentially zero.

International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor ITER

The main next step is to build an ITER reactor designed to demonstrate the very possibility of plasma ignition and, on this basis, obtain at least a tenfold gain in energy (in relation to the energy spent on plasma heating). The ITER reactor will be an experimental device that will not even be equipped with turbines for generating electricity and devices for using it. The purpose of its creation is to study the conditions that must be met during the operation of such power plants, as well as the creation on this basis of real, cost-effective power plants, which, apparently, should exceed ITER in size. The creation of real prototypes of fusion power plants (that is, plants fully equipped with turbines, etc.) requires solving the following two problems. First, it is necessary to continue developing new materials (capable of withstanding very harsh operating conditions in the conditions described) and to test them in accordance with the special rules for the equipment of the IFMIF (International Fusion Irradiation Facility) system, described below. Secondly, there are many purely technical problems to be solved and new technologies to be developed related to remote control, heating, cladding design, fuel cycles, etc. 2

The figure shows the ITER reactor, which surpasses the largest JET facility today, not only in all linear dimensions (approximately twice), but also in the magnitude of the magnetic fields used in it and the currents flowing through the plasma.

The purpose of creating this reactor is to demonstrate the capabilities of the combined efforts of physicists and engineers in the design of a large-scale thermonuclear power plant.

The capacity of the installation planned by the designers is 500 MW (with the energy consumption at the system input of only about 50 MW). 3

The ITER plant is being built by a consortium that includes the EU, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US. The total population of these countries is about half of the total population of the Earth, so the project can be called a global response to a global challenge. The main components and assemblies of the ITER reactor have already been created and tested, and construction has already begun in the town of Cadarache (France). The launch of the reactor is scheduled for 2020, and the production of deuterium-tritium plasma - for 2027, since the commissioning of the reactor requires long and serious tests for plasma from deuterium and tritium.

The magnetic coils of the ITER reactor are based on superconducting materials (which, in principle, allow continuous operation, provided that the current in the plasma is maintained), so the designers hope to provide a guaranteed duty cycle of at least 10 minutes. It is clear that the presence of superconducting magnetic coils is fundamentally important for the continuous operation of a real thermonuclear power plant. Superconducting coils have already been used in devices such as Tokamak, but they have not previously been used in such large-scale installations designed for tritium plasma. In addition, the ITER facility will for the first time use and test various shell modules designed to work in real stations, where tritium nuclei can be generated or “recovered”.

The main purpose of building the facility is to demonstrate the successful control of plasma combustion and the possibility of actually obtaining energy in thermonuclear devices at the current level of technology development.

Further development in this direction, of course, will require many efforts to improve the efficiency of devices, especially from the point of view of their economic feasibility, which is associated with serious and lengthy studies, both on the ITER reactor and on other devices. Among the tasks set, the following three should be highlighted:

1) It is necessary to show that the existing level of science and technology already allows obtaining a 10-fold gain in energy (compared to that spent to maintain the process) in a controlled nuclear fusion process. The reaction must proceed without the occurrence of dangerous unstable modes, without overheating and damage to the construction materials, and without contamination of the plasma by impurities. With fusion power on the order of 50% of the plasma heating power, these goals have already been achieved in experiments on small facilities, but the creation of the ITER reactor will make it possible to test the reliability of control methods on a much larger facility that produces much more energy for a long time. The ITER reactor is designed to test and harmonize the requirements for a future fusion reactor, and its creation is a very complex and interesting task.

2) It is necessary to study methods for increasing the pressure in the plasma (recall that the reaction rate at a given temperature is proportional to the square of the pressure) to prevent the occurrence of dangerous unstable regimes of plasma behavior. The success of research in this direction will either ensure the operation of the reactor at a higher plasma density, or reduce the requirements for the strength of the generated magnetic fields, which will significantly reduce the cost of electricity produced by the reactor.

3) Tests should confirm that the continuous operation of the reactor in a stable mode can be realistically ensured (from an economic and technical point of view, this requirement seems to be very important, if not the main one), and the launch of the plant can be carried out without huge energy costs. Researchers and designers are very hopeful that the "continuous" flow of electromagnetic current through the plasma can be provided by its generation in the plasma (due to high-frequency radiation and injection of fast atoms).

The modern world is facing a very serious energy challenge, which can more accurately be called an "uncertain energy crisis".

At present, almost all the energy consumed by mankind is created by burning fossil fuels, and the solution to the problem may be associated with the use of solar energy or nuclear energy (creation of fast neutron reactors, etc.). The global problem caused by the growing population of developing countries and their need to improve living standards and increase the amount of energy produced cannot be solved only on the basis of the approaches considered, although, of course, any attempts to develop alternative methods of energy generation should be encouraged.

If there are no major and unexpected surprises in the way of the development of thermonuclear energy, then, subject to the developed reasonable and orderly program of actions, which (of course, subject to good organization of work and sufficient funding) should lead to the creation of a prototype thermonuclear power plant. In this case, in about 30 years, we will be able to supply electric current from it to the energy networks for the first time, and in a little more than 10 years, the first commercial thermonuclear power plant will begin to operate. It is possible that in the second half of our century, nuclear fusion energy will begin to replace fossil fuels and gradually begin to play an increasingly important role in providing humanity with energy on a global scale.

For a long time trudnopisaka asked to make a post about a fusion reactor under construction. Learn interesting details of the technology, find out why this project is taking so long to be implemented. Finally got the material. Let's get acquainted with the details of the project.

How it all started. The “energy challenge” arose as a result of a combination of the following three factors:

1. Humanity now consumes a huge amount of energy.

The world's current energy consumption is about 15.7 terawatts (TW). Dividing this value by the population of the planet, we get about 2400 watts per person, which can be easily estimated and imagined. The energy consumed by every inhabitant of the Earth (including children) corresponds to the round-the-clock operation of 24 hundred-watt electric lamps. However, the consumption of this energy around the planet is very uneven, as it is very high in several countries and negligible in others. Consumption (in terms of one person) is 10.3 kW in the USA (one of the record values), 6.3 kW in the Russian Federation, 5.1 kW in the UK, etc., but, on the other hand, it is only 0.21 kW in Bangladesh (only 2% of US energy consumption!).

2. World energy consumption is increasing dramatically.

According to the forecast of the International Energy Agency (2006), world energy consumption should increase by 50% by 2030. Developed countries, of course, could do just fine without additional energy, but this growth is necessary to lift the population of developing countries, where 1.5 billion people are suffering from an acute shortage of electricity, out of poverty.

3. Currently, 80% of the world's energy is generated by burning fossil fuels(oil, coal and gas), the use of which:
a) potentially carries the risk of catastrophic environmental changes;
b) must inevitably end someday.

From what has been said, it is clear that already now we must prepare for the end of the era of the use of fossil fuels.

At present, nuclear power plants receive on a large scale the energy released during the fission reactions of atomic nuclei. The creation and development of such stations should be encouraged in every possible way, however, it should be taken into account that the reserves of one of the most important material for their operation (cheap uranium) can also be completely used up within the next 50 years. The possibilities of nuclear fission-based energy can (and should) be significantly expanded through the use of more efficient energy cycles, which can almost double the amount of energy produced. For the development of energy in this direction, it is necessary to create reactors on thorium (the so-called thorium breeder reactors or breeder reactors), in which more thorium is produced during the reaction than the original uranium, as a result of which the total amount of energy received for a given amount of substance increases by 40 times . It also seems promising to create fast-neutron plutonium breeders, which are much more efficient than uranium reactors and make it possible to obtain 60 times more energy. Perhaps, for the development of these areas, it will be necessary to develop new, non-standard methods for obtaining uranium (for example, from sea water, which seems to be the most accessible).

Fusion power plants

The figure shows a schematic diagram (not to scale) of the device and the principle of operation of a thermonuclear power plant. In the central part, there is a toroidal (donut-shaped) chamber with a volume of ~2000 m3 filled with tritium-deuterium (T-D) plasma heated to a temperature above 100 M°C. The neutrons produced during the fusion reaction (1) leave the "magnetic bottle" and fall into the shell shown in the figure with a thickness of about 1 m.

Inside the shell, neutrons collide with lithium atoms, resulting in a reaction with the formation of tritium:

neutron + lithium → helium + tritium

In addition, competing reactions occur in the system (without the formation of tritium), as well as many reactions with the release of additional neutrons, which then also lead to the formation of tritium (in this case, the release of additional neutrons can be significantly enhanced, for example, by introducing beryllium atoms into the shell and lead). The general conclusion is that in this installation a nuclear fusion reaction can take place (at least theoretically), in which tritium will be formed. In this case, the amount of tritium formed should not only meet the needs of the installation itself, but even be somewhat larger, which will make it possible to provide new installations with tritium. It is this operating concept that must be tested and implemented in the ITER reactor described below.

In addition, neutrons must heat up the cladding in the so-called pilot plants (which will use relatively "conventional" structural materials) to about 400°C. In the future, it is planned to create improved installations with a shell heating temperature above 1000°C, which can be achieved through the use of the latest high-strength materials (such as silicon carbide composites). The heat released in the shell, as in conventional stations, is taken by the primary cooling circuit with a coolant (containing, for example, water or helium) and transferred to the secondary circuit, where water vapor is produced and supplied to the turbines.

1985 - The Soviet Union proposed the next generation Tokamak plant, using the experience of the four leading countries in the creation of thermonuclear reactors. The United States of America, together with Japan and the European Community, put forward a proposal for the implementation of the project.

France is currently building the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor (ITER), described below, which will be the first tokamak capable of "igniting" plasma.

The most advanced tokamak-type facilities in existence have long reached temperatures of the order of 150 M°C, close to those required for operation of a fusion plant, but the ITER reactor should be the first large-scale power plant designed for long-term operation. In the future, it will be necessary to significantly improve the parameters of its operation, which will require, first of all, an increase in the pressure in the plasma, since the rate of nuclear fusion at a given temperature is proportional to the square of the pressure. The main scientific problem in this case is related to the fact that when the pressure in the plasma increases, very complex and dangerous instabilities arise, that is, unstable modes of operation.

Why do we need it?

The main advantage of nuclear fusion is that it requires only a very small amount of naturally occurring substances as fuel. The nuclear fusion reaction in the plants described can release enormous amounts of energy, ten million times greater than the standard heat generated by conventional chemical reactions (such as burning fossil fuels). For comparison, we point out that the amount of coal required to operate a thermal power plant with a capacity of 1 gigawatt (GW) is 10,000 tons per day (ten railway cars), and a fusion plant of the same capacity will consume only about 1 kilogram of a D + T mixture per day. .

Deuterium is a stable isotope of hydrogen; in about one out of every 3350 molecules of ordinary water, one of the hydrogen atoms is replaced by deuterium (a legacy inherited from the Big Bang). This fact makes it easy to organize a fairly cheap production of the required amount of deuterium from water. It is more difficult to obtain tritium, which is unstable (half-life is about 12 years, as a result of which its content in nature is negligible), however, as shown above, tritium will arise directly inside the thermonuclear installation during operation, due to the reaction of neutrons with lithium.

Thus, the initial fuel for a thermonuclear reactor is lithium and water. Lithium is a common metal widely used in household appliances (mobile phone batteries, etc.). The plant described above, even with imperfect efficiency, will be able to produce 200,000 kWh of electrical energy, which is equivalent to the energy contained in 70 tons of coal. The required amount of lithium is contained in one computer battery, and the amount of deuterium is contained in 45 liters of water. The above value corresponds to the current consumption of electricity (in terms of one person) in the EU countries for 30 years. The very fact that such an insignificant amount of lithium can provide the generation of such an amount of electricity (without CO2 emissions and without the slightest pollution of the atmosphere) is a fairly serious argument for the fastest and most vigorous development of thermonuclear energy (despite all the difficulties and problems) and even without one hundred percent confidence in the success of such research.

Deuterium should last for millions of years, and easily mined lithium reserves are quite sufficient to meet the needs for hundreds of years. Even if we run out of lithium in rocks, we can extract it from the water, where it is found in a high enough concentration (100 times that of uranium) to make it economically viable to mine.

An experimental thermonuclear reactor (International thermonuclear experimental reactor) is being built near the city of Cadarache in France. The main task of the ITER project is the implementation of a controlled thermonuclear fusion reaction on an industrial scale.

Per unit weight of thermonuclear fuel, about 10 million times more energy is obtained than by burning the same amount of organic fuel, and about a hundred times more than by fissioning uranium nuclei in the reactors of currently operating nuclear power plants. If the calculations of scientists and designers are justified, this will give humanity an inexhaustible source of energy.

Therefore, a number of countries (Russia, India, China, Korea, Kazakhstan, USA, Canada, Japan, EU countries) joined their efforts in creating the International Thermonuclear Research Reactor - a prototype of new power plants.

ITER is an installation that creates conditions for the synthesis of hydrogen and tritium atoms (an isotope of hydrogen), resulting in the formation of a new atom - the helium atom. This process is accompanied by a huge surge of energy: the temperature of the plasma in which the thermonuclear reaction takes place is about 150 million degrees Celsius (for comparison, the temperature of the core of the Sun is 40 million degrees). In this case, the isotopes burn out, leaving practically no radioactive waste.
The scheme of participation in the international project provides for the supply of reactor components and financing of its construction. In exchange for this, each of the participating countries receives full access to all technologies for creating a thermonuclear reactor and to the results of all experimental work on this reactor, which will serve as the basis for the design of serial power thermonuclear reactors.

The reactor, based on the principle of thermonuclear fusion, has no radioactive radiation and is completely safe for the environment. It can be located almost anywhere in the world, and ordinary water serves as fuel for it. Construction of ITER should take about ten years, after which the reactor is supposed to be used for 20 years.

Clickable 4000 px

Russia's interests in the Council of the International Organization for the Construction of the ITER Thermonuclear Reactor in the coming years will be represented by Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Mikhail Kovalchuk, Director of the Kurchatov Institute, the Institute of Crystallography of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Scientific Secretary of the Presidential Council for Science, Technology and Education. Kovalchuk will temporarily replace Academician Yevgeny Velikhov, who has been elected Chairman of the International Council of ITER for the next two years and does not have the right to combine this position with the duties of an official representative of a participating country.

The total cost of construction is estimated at 5 billion euros, and the same amount will be required for the trial operation of the reactor. The shares of India, China, Korea, Russia, the US and Japan each account for approximately 10 percent of the total value, with 45 percent accounted for by the countries of the European Union. However, while the European states have not agreed how exactly the costs will be distributed among them. Because of this, the start of construction was postponed to April 2010. Despite another delay, scientists and officials involved in the creation of ITER say they will be able to complete the project by 2018.

The estimated thermonuclear power of ITER is 500 megawatts. Individual parts of the magnets reach a weight of 200 to 450 tons. To cool ITER, 33,000 cubic meters of water per day will be required.

In 1998, the US stopped funding its participation in the project. After the Republicans came to power in the country, and rolling blackouts began in California, the Bush administration announced an increase in energy investments. The United States did not intend to participate in the international project and was engaged in its own thermonuclear project. In early 2002, President Bush's technology adviser John Marburger III announced that the US had changed its mind and intended to return to the project.

In terms of the number of participants, the project is comparable to another major international scientific project - the International Space Station. The cost of ITER, which previously reached 8 billion dollars, then amounted to less than 4 billion. As a result of the withdrawal of the United States, it was decided to reduce the reactor power from 1.5 GW to 500 MW. Accordingly, the price of the project “lost weight”.

In June 2002, the symposium "ITER Days in Moscow" was held in the Russian capital. It discussed the theoretical, practical and organizational problems of the revival of the project, the success of which can change the fate of mankind and give it a new type of energy, in terms of efficiency and economy comparable only to solar energy.

In July 2010, representatives of the countries participating in the ITER international thermonuclear reactor project approved its budget and construction schedule at an extraordinary meeting held in Cadarache, France. .

At the last extraordinary meeting, the project participants approved the date for the start of the first experiments with plasma - 2019. Full trials are planned for March 2027, although project management has asked technical staff to try to optimize the process and start trials in 2026. The participants of the meeting also decided on the costs for the construction of the reactor, however, the amounts planned to be spent on the creation of the facility were not disclosed. According to information received by the editor of the ScienceNOW portal from an unnamed source, by the time the experiments begin, the cost of the ITER project may be 16 billion euros.

The meeting in Cadarache was also the first official working day for the project's new director, Japanese physicist Osamu Motojima. Before him, the project was led by the Japanese Kaname Ikeda since 2005, who wished to leave the post immediately after the approval of the budget and construction time.

The ITER fusion reactor is a joint project of the European Union, Switzerland, Japan, the USA, Russia, South Korea, China and India. The idea of ​​creating ITER has been considered since the 80s of the last century, however, due to financial and technical difficulties, the cost of the project is constantly growing, and the start date of construction is constantly being postponed. In 2009, experts expected that work on the creation of the reactor would begin in 2010. Later, this date was moved, and first 2018 and then 2019 were called as the launch time of the reactor.

Fusion reactions are fusion reactions of nuclei of light isotopes with the formation of a heavier nucleus, which are accompanied by a huge release of energy. In theory, fusion reactors can generate a lot of energy at low cost, but currently scientists are spending a lot more energy and money to start and maintain a fusion reaction.

Fusion is a cheap and environmentally friendly way to produce energy. For billions of years, uncontrolled thermonuclear fusion has been taking place on the Sun - helium is formed from the heavy isotope of hydrogen deuterium. This releases an enormous amount of energy. However, people on Earth have not yet learned to control such reactions.

Hydrogen isotopes will be used as fuel in the ITER reactor. During a thermonuclear reaction, energy is released when light atoms combine to form heavier ones. To achieve this, it is necessary to heat the gas to a temperature of over 100 million degrees - much higher than the temperature at the center of the Sun. Gas at this temperature turns into plasma. At the same time, hydrogen isotope atoms merge, turning into helium atoms with the release of a large number of neutrons. A power plant operating on this principle will use the energy of neutrons moderated by a layer of dense matter (lithium).

Why did the creation of thermonuclear installations take so long?

Why is it that such important and valuable installations, the advantages of which have been discussed for almost half a century, have not yet been created? There are three main reasons (discussed below), the first of which can be called external or public, and the other two - internal, that is, due to the laws and conditions for the development of thermonuclear energy itself.

1. For a long time, it was believed that the problem of the practical use of fusion energy does not require urgent decisions and actions, since back in the 80s of the last century, fossil fuel sources seemed inexhaustible, and environmental problems and climate change did not concern the public. In 1976, the Advisory Committee on Fusion Energy at the US Department of Energy attempted to estimate the timing of R&D and the construction of a demonstration fusion power plant under different research funding options. At the same time, it turned out that the volume of annual funding for research in this direction is completely insufficient, and while maintaining the existing level of appropriations, the creation of thermonuclear installations will never be successful, since the allocated funds do not even correspond to the minimum, critical level.

2. A more serious obstacle to the development of research in this area is that a thermonuclear installation of the type under discussion cannot be created and demonstrated on a small scale. From the explanations presented below, it will become clear that thermonuclear fusion requires not only the magnetic confinement of the plasma, but also its sufficient heating. The ratio of energy expended and received increases at least in proportion to the square of the linear dimensions of the installation, as a result of which the scientific and technical capabilities and advantages of thermonuclear installations can be tested and demonstrated only at fairly large stations, such as the ITER reactor mentioned above. The society was simply not ready to finance such large projects until there was sufficient confidence in success.

3. The development of thermonuclear energy has been very complex, however (despite insufficient funding and difficulties in choosing centers for the creation of JET and ITER facilities), there has been clear progress in recent years, although an operating station has not yet been created.

The modern world is facing a very serious energy challenge, which can more accurately be called an "uncertain energy crisis". The problem is related to the fact that the reserves of fossil fuels may run out in the second half of this century. Moreover, the burning of fossil fuels may lead to the need to somehow capture and "store" the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere (the CCS program mentioned above) in order to prevent serious changes in the planet's climate.

At present, almost all the energy consumed by mankind is created by burning fossil fuels, and the solution to the problem may be associated with the use of solar energy or nuclear energy (creation of fast breeder reactors, etc.). The global problem caused by the growing population of developing countries and their need to improve living standards and increase the amount of energy produced cannot be solved only on the basis of the approaches considered, although, of course, any attempts to develop alternative methods of energy generation should be encouraged.

As a matter of fact, we have a small choice of behavioral strategies and the development of thermonuclear energy is extremely important, even though there is no guarantee of success. The Financial Times (dated January 25, 2004) wrote about this:

Let's hope that there will be no major and unexpected surprises in the way of the development of thermonuclear energy. In this case, in about 30 years, we will be able to supply electric current from it to the energy networks for the first time, and in a little more than 10 years, the first commercial thermonuclear power plant will begin to operate. It is possible that in the second half of our century, the energy of nuclear fusion will begin to replace fossil fuels and gradually begin to play an increasingly important role in providing humanity with energy on a global scale.

There is no absolute guarantee that the task of creating thermonuclear energy (as an efficient and large-scale source of energy for all mankind) will be completed successfully, but the probability of success in this direction is quite high. Considering the huge potential of thermonuclear power plants, all the costs of projects for their rapid (and even accelerated) development can be considered justified, especially since these investments look very modest against the backdrop of a monstrous world energy market (4 trillion dollars a year8). Meeting the needs of mankind in energy is a very serious problem. As fossil fuels become less and less available (besides, their use becomes undesirable), the situation is changing, and we simply cannot afford not to develop fusion power.

To the question "When will thermonuclear energy appear?" Lev Artsimovich (a recognized pioneer and leader of research in this area) once replied that "it will be created when it becomes really necessary for mankind"

ITER will be the first fusion reactor to generate more energy than it consumes. Scientists measure this characteristic with a simple factor they call "Q". If ITER makes it possible to achieve all the set scientific goals, then it will produce 10 times more energy than it consumes. The last device built, the "Joint European Tor" in England, is a smaller prototype fusion reactor that reached a Q of almost 1 at the final stage of scientific research, meaning that it generated exactly as much power as it consumed. ITER will surpass this by demonstrating the creation of energy from fusion and achieving a Q value of 10. The idea is to generate 500 MW with an energy consumption of about 50 MW. Thus, one of the scientific goals of ITER is to prove that a Q value of 10 can be achieved.

Another scientific goal is that ITER will have a very long "burn" time - a pulse of increased duration up to one hour. ITER is a research experimental reactor that cannot produce energy continuously. When ITER starts operating, it will be on for one hour, after which it will need to be turned off. This is important because until now the standard devices we have been creating have been able to have a burning time of several seconds or even tenths of a second - this is the maximum. The "joint European torus" reached its Q value of 1 with a burning time of approximately two seconds with a pulse length of 20 seconds. But a process that lasts a few seconds is not truly permanent. By analogy with starting a car engine: turning on the engine for a short time and then turning it off is not the real operation of the car. Only when you drive your car for half an hour, it will enter a permanent mode of operation and demonstrate that such a car can really be driven.

That is, from a technical and scientific point of view, ITER will provide a Q value of 10 and an increased burning time.

The thermonuclear fusion program has a truly international, broad character. People are already counting on the success of ITER and are thinking about the next step - creating a prototype industrial thermonuclear reactor called DEMO. To build it, it is necessary that ITER work. We must achieve our scientific goals, because this will mean that the ideas we put forward are quite feasible. However, I agree that you should always think about what will happen next. In addition, during the operation of ITER for 25-30 years, our knowledge will gradually deepen and expand, and we will be able to more accurately outline our next step.

Indeed, there is no dispute about whether ITER should be exactly a tokamak. Some scholars put the question quite differently: should there be ITER? Experts in different countries, developing their own, not so large-scale thermonuclear projects, argue that such a large reactor is not needed at all.

However, their opinion is hardly worth considering authoritative. Physicists who have been working with toroidal traps for several decades have been involved in the creation of ITER. The design of the experimental thermonuclear reactor in Karadash was based on all the knowledge gained in the course of experiments on dozens of precursor tokamaks. And these results indicate that the reactor must have a tokamak, and a large one at that.

JET At the moment, the most successful tokamak can be considered JET, built by the EU in the British town of Abingdon. This is the largest of the tokamak-type reactors created to date, the large radius of the plasma torus is 2.96 meters. The power of the thermonuclear reaction already reaches more than 20 megawatts with a retention time of up to 10 seconds. The reactor returns about 40% of the energy invested in the plasma.

It is plasma physics that determines the energy balance,” Igor Semenov told Infox.ru. Associate professor at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology described what an energy balance is with a simple example: “We all saw how a fire burns. In fact, there is not firewood burning, but gas. The energy chain there is as follows: gas burns, firewood heats up, firewood evaporates, gas burns again. Therefore, if we throw water into the fire, we will sharply take energy from the system for the phase transition of liquid water into a vapor state. The balance will become negative, the fire will go out. There is another way - we can simply take and spread the firebrands in space. The fire will also go out. The same is true for the fusion reactor we are building. The dimensions are chosen so as to create an appropriate positive energy balance for this reactor. Sufficient to build a real TNPP in the future, solving at this experimental stage all the problems that currently remain unresolved.”

The dimensions of the reactor once changed. This happened at the turn of the 20th-21st century, when the United States withdrew from the project, and the remaining members realized that the ITER budget (at that time it was estimated at 10 billion US dollars) was too large. Physicists and engineers were required to reduce the cost of the installation. And this could be done only at the expense of size. The “redesign” of ITER was led by the French physicist Robert Aymar, who had previously worked on the French tokamak Tore Supra in Karadash. The outer radius of the plasma torus has been reduced from 8.2 meters to 6.3 meters. However, the risks associated with downsizing were partly offset by a few additional superconducting magnets, which made it possible to implement the then-discovered and explored plasma confinement regime.

source
http://ehorussia.com
http://oko-planet.su

10:14 a.m. - International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor ITER

The construction site of the ITER fusion reactor in October 2016. The reactor itself will be there in the center, where the circle with the crane is.

So, this is the first post with a record and a short description of what we discussed in my rubric on Silver rain. The topic of yesterday's issue was thermonuclear energy and the most expensive scientific installation in the world - ITER.

So what is ITER?
ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is an international experimental thermonuclear reactor. It is being built by the efforts of dozens of countries in the French nuclear center Cadarache. Planning for it began back in the 1980s, the project was developed from 1992 to 2007, construction began in 2009. The first plasma is expected to be received in 2025, and the final completion and reaching the maximum planned work parameters according to the project will be around 2035. Why is this important and interesting? First, ITER is the most expensive and complex scientific and experimental facility in the world. Its cost is already estimated at more than 20 billion euros. The Large Hadron Collider, for comparison, cost 6 billion euros and took 7 years to build. Secondly, ITER is the most important thing that is being done now towards the development of thermonuclear energy, which can potentially solve all the energy problems of mankind in the future. The purpose of the installation is to demonstrate the possibility of controlled thermonuclear fusion with industrial scale capacities and to accumulate experience for the construction of the first thermonuclear power plant. So ITER itself will not generate electricity yet.

In a thermonuclear reactor, unlike a conventional atomic reactor, it is not the fission reaction of heavy nuclei of uranium or plutonium that is used, but the reaction of the fusion of light helium nuclei from hydrogen isotopes - deuterium and tritium. A similar fusion reaction takes place in the Sun, so the "alternative" solar and wind energy is in some way an indirect use of the thermonuclear energy of our star.

At the same time, it is very difficult to create a controlled thermonuclear fusion reaction. They learned how to produce an uncontrolled thermonuclear reaction on earth - in the form of hydrogen thermonuclear bombs, the most powerful of those created by man. But for peaceful purposes it cannot be used yet. There are several difficulties here. First, the fusion reaction requires a high temperature. It is necessary to disperse and collide two light nuclei with the same positive charge, which at lower speeds will simply repel. Therefore, the temperature of the Sun reaches 15 million degrees, and in the ITER reactor there will be even more - 150 million degrees.

Substance at such a temperature exists only in the form of plasma - the fourth aggregate state of matter after solid, liquid and gaseous, where there are no longer atoms, but only separate charged particles - nuclei, protons and electrons. Therefore, the second difficulty of a thermonuclear installation is the retention of this plasma inside the reactor. No material can withstand contact with this plasma, so it will have to be held not by matter, but by a magnetic field. If you give the field a closed shape, then the charged particles will be inside it. However, it is even theoretically impossible to create a spherical closed magnetic field (due to the hedgehog combing theorem), so a torus-shaped field was proposed to contain the plasma. Bagel, in other words. And it was invented and implemented for the first time by Soviet scientists. Therefore, the name of such a design - Tokamak (Toroidal chamber with magnetic coils), entered the world of science from the Russian language. ITER will be the largest and most powerful tokamak in the world, although there are already more than 300 of them on the planet.

Well, and one more difficulty - to create the necessary magnetic field, huge superconducting magnets are needed, cooled by liquid helium to temperatures below -270 degrees Celsius. So it turns out that a tokamak is a device where, in a complete vacuum (because apart from fuel, deuterium and tritium, no gas impurities are allowed inside), a reaction will occur inside coils with a minus temperature at a temperature of 150 million degrees. This is the hot sandwich. More specifically, a bagel.

The size and complexity of the installation can be estimated from this diagram.

But what is the actual size of those magnet rings from which the tokamak chamber shown in the diagram above will be assembled. More exciting photos.

Read more about the physics of the tokamak and its device on the fingers here.

It would be difficult for even the most developed countries to pull off such a project alone. Due to the complexity of the installation, it was necessary to combine the knowledge and experience of all countries involved in fusion research. The ITER project involves the united European Union, the USA, Russia, Japan, South Korea, China, and India. Later, Kazakhstan joined it, and recently even Iran. Someone invests in the project with money, and someone in the form of building equipment. Russia, for example, builds many important components, as shown in the picture below. And you can read more about Russia's participation on the website of the Russian project center ITER.

Parts of the ITER design, which are made in Russia. Their value is several billion euros.

Combining efforts is beneficial for everyone - by investing their part, countries then get access to all the information obtained at the pilot facility. Thermonuclear energy can indeed become the property of all mankind. Another possible reason for the project being implemented as an international cooperation is risk sharing. It is still very far from the appearance of commercial installations (ITER itself will not even generate energy yet, after it the next DEMO reactor will do it), everyone understands this, and it is unprofitable to pull such an expensive experiment alone. Countries, roughly speaking, invest in the distant future and maintain the scientific potential in the field of thermonuclear energy, but at the same time they share the risks that the product will not appear soon and not in the form in which it can be used.

Although I was engaged in the study of nuclear energy, but a thermonuclear reactor is a topic so separate and far from traditional nuclear power plants that only now I have plunged deep enough into it. Now it seems to me that technically the problem of peaceful use of controlled thermonuclear energy will be solved. That's just how much it will be in demand by the time of creation and when exactly this will happen is still difficult to say.

ITER (ITER, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, "International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor") is a large-scale scientific and technical project aimed at building the first international experimental thermonuclear reactor.

Implemented by seven main partners (European Union, India, China, Republic of Korea, Russia, USA, Japan) in Cadarache (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, France). ITER is based on the tokamak facility (named after the first letters: toroidal chamber with magnetic coils), which is considered the most promising device for controlled thermonuclear fusion. The first tokamak was built in the Soviet Union in 1954.

The aim of the project is to demonstrate that fusion energy can be used on an industrial scale. ITER is supposed to generate energy by fusion reaction with heavy hydrogen isotopes at a temperature of more than 100 million degrees.

It is assumed that 1 g of fuel (a mixture of deuterium and tritium), which will be used in the installation, will give the same amount of energy as 8 tons of oil. Estimated thermonuclear power of ITER is 500 MW.

Experts say that a reactor of this type is much safer than current nuclear power plants (NPPs), and sea water can provide fuel for it in almost unlimited quantities. Thus, the successful implementation of ITER will provide an inexhaustible source of clean energy.

Project history

The concept of the reactor was developed at the Institute of Atomic Energy. I.V. Kurchatov. In 1978, the USSR put forward the idea of ​​implementing a project at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). An agreement on the implementation of the project was reached in 1985 in Geneva during negotiations between the USSR and the USA.

The program was later approved by the IAEA. In 1987, the project received its current name, in 1988 the governing body, the ITER Council, was established. In 1988-1990. Soviet, American, Japanese and European scientists and engineers carried out a conceptual study of the project.

On July 21, 1992 in Washington, the EU, Russia, the USA and Japan signed an agreement on the development of the ITER technical project, which was completed in 2001. In 2002-2005. South Korea, China and India joined the project. The agreement on the construction of the first international experimental thermonuclear reactor was signed in Paris on November 21, 2006.

A year later, on November 7, 2007, an agreement was signed on the ITER construction site, according to which the reactor will be located in France, at the Cadarache nuclear center near Marseille. The control and data processing center will be located in Naka (Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan).

Site preparation at Cadarache began in January 2007, and full-scale construction began in 2013. The complex will be located on an area of ​​180 hectares. The reactor with a height of 60 m and a mass of 23 thousand tons will be located on a site 1 km long and 400 m wide. Work on its construction is coordinated by the International Organization ITER, established in October 2007.

The cost of the project is estimated at 15 billion euros, of which the EU (through Euratom) accounts for 45.4%, and six other participants (including the Russian Federation) contribute 9.1% each. Since 1994, Kazakhstan has also been participating in the project under the Russian quota.

The elements of the reactor will be delivered by ships to the Mediterranean coast of France and from there transported by special caravans to the Cadarache region. To this end, sections of existing roads were significantly re-equipped in 2013, bridges were strengthened, new crossings and roads with especially strong surface were built. In the period from 2014 to 2019, at least three dozen super-heavy road trains should pass along the reinforced road.

Plasma diagnostic systems for ITER will be developed in Novosibirsk. An agreement on this was signed on January 27, 2014 by the Director of the International Organization ITER, Osamu Motojima, and the head of the National Agency for ITER in the Russian Federation, Anatoly Krasilnikov.

The development of the diagnostic complex within the framework of the new agreement is being carried out on the basis of the Physico-Technical Institute. A. F. Ioffe of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

It is expected that the reactor will be put into operation in 2020, the first reactions for nuclear fusion will be carried out on it no earlier than 2027. In 2037, it is planned to complete the experimental part of the project and by 2040 switch to electricity generation. According to preliminary forecasts of experts, the industrial version of the reactor will be ready no earlier than 2060, and a series of reactors of this type can be created only by the end of the 21st century.