ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor by Michel Claessens

ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor by Michel Claessens

Author:Michel Claessens
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030275815
Publisher: Springer International Publishing


False Claims and Miscommunication

In 2017 and 2018 US physicist Daniel Jassby gained some popularity writing some critical articles on ITER.14 Working for 25 years in plasma physics at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Jassby used to be an ardent promoter of fusion. However, recently his tone has changed. In his own words, “Now that I have retired, I have begun to look at the whole fusion enterprise more dispassionately, and I feel that a working, every day, commercial fusion reactor would cause more problems than it would solve.” There is nothing new here as most of Jassby’s arguments have been discussed before. His main points concentrate on the reference to “unlimited energy” (which is still the first thing you see on the ITER Organization’s home page15), the balance between the fusion power output and electrical consumption (see below), the supply of tritium, and the management of radioactive waste. However, Jassby also makes points in favor of ITER (which I will discuss in the final chapter). His message is clear in that there are still uncertainties and problems to sort out before we can see fusion energy supplying our electricity.

Since 2016 US investigative journalist Steven B. Krivit has been writing to several fusion research organizations asserting that some of their publications and websites contain false statements about the performance of the two best-known fusion tokamaks: JET and ITER. In brief, Krivit argues that some key fusion players overestimate the performance of tokamaks to gaslight the public (and the decision-makers) into believing that the ITER reactor is designed to produce more power than it will consume. Most websites, Krivit argues, say nothing about the huge amounts of electrical power that will be needed to operate all the reactor’s systems. Following up on the articles published by Krivit several organizations corrected the information on or even removed the contentious pages from their websites.16 We will come back to this controversy in Chap. 12.

In summary, most of the criticisms voiced by the scientific community about ITER are of course relevant (in particular, those concerning materials and the industrial development of tokamaks). However, we cannot credit these experts when they challenge the funding of ITER and claim that it will exhaust research budgets. This is not the case (particularly, in Europe). In any event ITER was a political decision and the seven members committed to it with their eyes wide open. Claiming that ITER was launched without performing any feasibility studies is simply wrong. Several hundred studies, scientific papers, and technical works (in particular, by the CEA and the ITER Organization) accompanied the preparation and launch of the project.

This should remind us that the modern scientist is part of a very competitive system in which as a good tactician he or she has learned to negotiate contracts, obtain funding, convince decision-makers and the media, and build his or her own “niche.” The dramatic expansion of the scientific community since the second half of the last century, both in countries with a long scientific history and



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