NEI Nuclear Notes

We sometimes bring up nuclear fusion as an object of fun, because activists say that fusion will scale successfully and become commercially viable in 10 years or so – and have been saying so for at least  20 years. That’s one joke. Another one is that it takes a city to power a town with fusion energy because it requires a lot of electricity to produce a little energy. None of this is (completely) fair, of course, and there are several projects exploring the use of fusion. The most significant of these is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). ITER is a large-scale scientific experiment that aims to demonstrate that it is possible to produce commercial energy from fusion. This undertaking requires a full-scale reactor – in fact, a full-scale facility. ITER is located in France and financed by the European Union, China, Russia, South Korea, Japan, India and the United States – the big boys and girls of the nuclear world. (The EU is shouldering ab...

Our fusion fan friends will need to let us know how consequential this is: UT [University of Tennessee] researchers have successfully developed a key technology in developing an experimental reactor that can demonstrate the feasibility of fusion energy for the power grid. Nuclear fusion promises to supply more energy than the nuclear fission used today but with far fewer risks. It’s not (just) that I’m automatically dubious about fusion projects – if it’s fusion it’s just around the corner - but this one seems very early: UT researchers completed a critical step this week for the project by successfully testing their technology this week that will insulate and stabilize the central solenoid—the reactor's backbone. That feels like step two of a process with many, many steps. Read the rest of the story and decide – break out the champagne or let it get – a little more – aged? --- China Daily offers a little fusion doings: Russian academic Evgeny Velikhov w...