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ITER - Hopes for clean and abundant energy

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Subido el 24 de julio de 2007 por EducaMadrid

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The Ministers representing the seven parties concerned will initial on Wednesday 24 May 2006 in Brussels the agreement establishing the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project. Based on research ongoing for more than 40 years and involving the European Union, China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States, ITER is the world's biggest scientific cooperation project. The construction phase, costing some $10 billion, will last 10 years and the operation phase 20 years. The Cadarache site in southeast France is preparing for the start-up of the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project. As its name states, ITER is a prototype reactor that will experiment under real conditions in generating energy from thermonuclear fusion. There are two types of nuclear reactions, fission and fusion. In nuclear fission, the nucleus of a heavy atom is split into several lighter nuclides. This releases neutrons and a large amount of energy. This process is used in nuclear power stations that operate on the basis of the fission of plutonium. Nuclear fusion is still an experimental process: two atomic nuclei are brought together to form a heavier nucleus. Their fusion releases tremendous amounts of energy from the mass defect. For the nuclei to be able to join together, however, they must be in a state of extreme thermal agitation, meaning they are immersed in a "fusion plasma". This phenomenon occurs naturally in stars, especially in the sun, where hydrogen nuclei fuse to produce helium, releasing huge amounts of heat and light. This reaction has been reproduced artificially for a number of years in laboratory conditions and military applications (the H bomb). But an experimental reactor had to be developed for fusion to be used to generate energy on an industrial scale. That is precisely the purpose of the ITER project, which will study on a large scale (500 MW) the scientific and technical feasibility of a reactor using Tokamak technology. The benefits of this process for generating energy are that it releases no greenhouse gases; the basic fuel (deuterium, a hydrogen isotope) is an almost inexhaustible resource since it is available in sea water; and it involves no risk of environmental accidents. Another advantage is that fusion produces only 1/100th of the waste produced by fission and the waste has a much shorter life cycle. This process for the future will be tested in Cadarache from 2016 in an international project bringing together scientific know-how from the European Union, Russia, China, the United States, India, Japan and South Korea.

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The sun has been shining for several billion years and will shine for several more. 00:00:00
It provides Earth with solar power and makes life possible. 00:00:05
In the upcoming decades, scientists are hoping to copy the energy source of the sun here 00:00:09
on Earth in so-called fusion reactors. 00:00:13
Cadarache in southeastern France, not far from Aix-en-Provence, sits here in the hills 00:00:16
north of Marseille where ITER is going to be built by the European Union and six partner 00:00:20
countries after years of political and environmental controversy. 00:00:24
This whole process is taking about 10 years from now. 00:00:28
In about 10 years' time, we hope to have our first experiments on the machine. 00:00:33
From 2009 onward, the huge reactor hall will be erected here, with 17 buildings around 00:00:38
it. 00:00:44
Inside the circular reactor chamber, a so-called tokamak will be assembled from oval elements 00:00:45
surrounded by superconducting magnets. 00:00:49
It's in this tire-like tube that a super-hot plasma of hydrogen particles is intended to 00:00:52
be created for fusion at temperatures 10 times hotter than the sun. 00:00:57
Next to the ITER site is the French nuclear test facility of Cadarache. 00:01:03
Here for decades, French scientists pursued the fission or division of heavy atoms. 00:01:07
But in fusion, light hydrogen atoms have to be merged together. 00:01:12
In the so-called tor-supra plasma experiment at Cadarache, the problems of dealing with 00:01:17
fusion have also been studied to lay the groundwork for ITER. 00:01:22
Today we are ready to construct ITER. 00:01:32
That means that the technologies for it have been developed by tor-supra in order to create 00:01:35
this prototype. 00:01:40
From fusion test sites all over the world, research results are now being brought together 00:01:46
to build ITER. 00:01:50
In the research centre in Garching, next to Munich in Germany, Italian physicist Gianfranco 00:01:51
Federici is working with fusion experts like Vladimir Barabas from Russia and Kimihiro 00:01:56
Ioki from Japan towards building ITER. 00:02:02
In the autumn, they move to Cadarache like hundreds of other scientists and engineers 00:02:05
from all over the world. 00:02:09
At the Institute of Plasma Physics, Gianfranco Federici has spent years experimenting with 00:02:11
different designs and materials for ITER. 00:02:16
At the moment, he's testing combinations of beryllium, carbon or tungsten for their 00:02:19
later use in the wall of the fusion chamber. 00:02:23
Tungsten is a material which is very heavy in comparison with beryllium or graphite, 00:02:31
but it has an advantage that it has a high melting point, so it can hold a lot of power 00:02:34
deposited onto it, plus it's not eroded as easily as other material. 00:02:38
So it's a very promising material from the point of view of reactor development. 00:02:43
The problem with tungsten is just a tiny bit of tungsten might pollute the plasma and 00:02:48
may degrade the performance of plasma. 00:02:52
Gianfranco Federici has been facing such problems for years. 00:02:56
The construction of a safe and reliable reactor is not only a matter of physics, but a huge 00:02:59
challenge for clever engineers and designers as well. 00:03:03
Together with German physicist Joachim Rott, he's trying to find the right combination 00:03:06
of materials and design. 00:03:10
The wall not only has to resist the extreme heat in the plasma chamber, but also must 00:03:13
not absorb the heavy hydrogen, deuterium and tritium used as fuel for the fusion. 00:03:18
This is a typical tile from a fusion experiment. 00:03:27
We're researching basically how much deuterium has condensed here in the experiment. 00:03:31
This is very important in order to know how much of the radioactive tritium is being withheld 00:03:38
in ITER. 00:03:43
In such plasma experiments, scientists try to find out which materials and designs help 00:03:48
to reduce these problems. 00:03:53
Also, new ways to sufficiently heat up the hydrogen fuel still need to be developed for 00:03:55
the fusion process to start. 00:04:00
So far, for example, heating methods like those used in the European fusion test site 00:04:04
JET in Cullum in Britain are still not enough to create a fusion process for longer than 00:04:08
a few seconds. 00:04:14
Physicist Urself Vance and her team are searching for ways to heat the plasma with high-speed 00:04:16
neutral hydrogen particles. 00:04:19
We've reached the physical levels for this process, so we're confident that it works. 00:04:21
But of course, we've still not yet reached the dimension that's necessary for ITER. 00:04:28
At the moment, we can heat the plasma only for a few minutes, but at least one hour will 00:04:33
be necessary. 00:04:37
In the sun, huge gravitational forces make fusion possible at temperatures of more than 00:04:42
12 million degrees, releasing enormous amounts of energy into space. 00:04:47
It's the same process that scientists on Earth want to use as an almost inexhaustible source 00:04:51
of energy for mankind, in addition to sustainable ones. 00:04:56
The fusion reactions working with deuterium and tritium atomic cores that merge together 00:05:02
and thereby release energy in the form of high-speed neutrons. 00:05:07
On Earth, the energy of these neutrons needs to be caught in the walls of the reactor in 00:05:10
order to heat a traditional steam cycle for the production of electricity. 00:05:14
Fusion works. 00:05:17
The proof is there. 00:05:18
OK? 00:05:19
There is nobody that can argue fusion works on the sun. 00:05:20
The reason why it works on the sun is that because gravitation, which is huge on the 00:05:24
sun and likely is not big on Earth, otherwise we won't be here talking about it, keeps this 00:05:30
nuclei together, gives them enough time and energy to react together so the reaction can 00:05:36
self-sustain. 00:05:42
Unlike existing nuclear power plants based on the fission of highly radioactive uranium, 00:05:45
the fusion reaction does not create highly hazardous nuclear waste materials. 00:05:49
But the fast neutrons that are created in the fusion process could create radioactive 00:05:54
isotopes of material in the reactor walls of ITER if they're not constructed properly. 00:05:58
ITER is therefore only going to be an experimental reactor, working at 20 times higher energy 00:06:03
levels than in existing plasma experiments. 00:06:08
At a cost of 10 billion euros, ITER will never create commercially usable electricity. 00:06:11
But it will be the last step before reaching the goal of creating power plants with fusion 00:06:16
for all of mankind, hopes Russian scientist Vladimir Barabash. 00:06:20
ITER will be built by seven parties. 00:06:24
The parties are responsible for some components of ITER, but these components must be put 00:06:30
together. 00:06:35
It means that in ITER we are now developing a lot of things related to accuracy, for example, 00:06:36
for tolerances, for coding standards, for acceptance of different components made in 00:06:43
different countries. 00:06:47
After having spent several years in Munich, Barabash and his colleagues from Gaching will 00:06:49
move to Kadyrash in a few months. 00:06:53
So will other scientists from all over the world with their families. 00:06:55
In the upcoming years, they'll not only be challenged by the construction of ITER, they'll 00:06:59
also have to cooperate in an international team in an almost unprecedented scientific 00:07:02
endeavour. 00:07:06
You could imagine that with participation of such many countries, and also the way we 00:07:07
organise the collaboration is quite unique. 00:07:18
And also this type of collaboration could be a good precedent for any kind of international 00:07:23
collaboration. 00:07:30
In 2016, ITER partners and politicians hope to begin with fusion tests here on the hills 00:07:31
of Kadyrash, but it's probably not until 2035 that a functioning fusion reactor will produce 00:07:36
the energy of the sun for future generations on Earth. 00:07:42
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Idioma/s:
en
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Autor/es:
The European Union
Subido por:
EducaMadrid
Licencia:
Reconocimiento - No comercial - Sin obra derivada
Visualizaciones:
646
Fecha:
24 de julio de 2007 - 12:31
Visibilidad:
Público
Enlace Relacionado:
European Commission
Duración:
07′ 47″
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4:3 Hasta 2009 fue el estándar utilizado en la televisión PAL; muchas pantallas de ordenador y televisores usan este estándar, erróneamente llamado cuadrado, cuando en la realidad es rectangular o wide.
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