ITER Forum Website Update 4/13

ITER Forum Website update 4/13

B.J.Green (14/4/13)

1.UK nuclear power station given green light

The Government has granted EDF planning permission to build the first UK nuclear power station in almost two decades, in a decision described as a "huge achievement" by the boss of the French energy giant.

By Szu Ping Chan, and agencies

3:24PM GMT 19 Mar 2013

Ed Davey, the Energy Secretary, told MPs that he was granting planning consent for the French energy company to build two nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset.

The project will create between 20,000 and 25,000 jobs during construction and 900 permanent jobs, according to the Government.

Mr Davey said the multi-billion pound project was "in the best interests of the country, and will be the first new nuclear power station constructed in the UK since 1995.

“It’s vital to get investment in new infrastructure to get the economy moving. Low carbon energy projects will bring major investment, supporting jobs and driving growth," said Mr Davey.

EDF Energy chief executive Vincent de Rivaz said receiving planning permission for the project was "a huge achievement" representing years of hard work.

"This decision sets up a huge opportunity for this project to provide enormous benefits to the UK in jobs, skills, cutting carbon emissions and future energy security," he said.

The decision on Tuesday follows months of talks between the Government and EDF, which had described negotiations as "intense" and "challenging", after an original December deadline was missed.

A final investment decision by EDF to go ahead with construction still depends on the deal being negotiated with the Government on the "strike" price paid for electricity generated by the plant.

Under electricity market reforms, low-carbon power such as nuclear reactors and offshore wind farms will have long-term contracts with a guaranteed price for their electricity, to give investors certainty to invest in projects with high capital costs.

Mr de Rivaz urged that to make the opportunity a reality there was a need to reach agreement swiftly on the strike price.

He called for "a fair and balanced deal for consumers and investors", adding: "Intensive discussions with the Government are taking place and agreement is still possible.

"The success of this pioneering project will kick start the new nuclear programme in the UK and is expected to lead to lower costs for successive UK nuclear plants."

Mr Davey told the Commons that affordable new nuclear would play a "crucial role" in ensuring secure, diverse supplies of energy in the UK and decarbonising the electricity sector and the economy.

The plant's two nuclear reactors would be capable of producing 7pc of the UK's electricity, enough to power five million homes, EDF has said.

It is thought the costs of the new power station would run to around £14bn.

Mr Davey said discussions on the strike price were ongoing, but he expected them to be concluded shortly.

The Government previously received a setback on efforts to build a £12 billion underground nuclear waste site when the county council in Cumbria, the only area considering hosting the facility, voted against studying the possibility of having it in the region.

There have been other setbacks in the bid to create a new fleet of nuclear power plants, with three of the "Big Six" energy companies abandoning plans for nuclear new build in the UK.

Last year, RWE npower and E.ON pulled out of a project to build two nuclear plants at Wylfa on Anglesey, North Wales, and Oldbury, Gloucestershire, a scheme which has since been bought by Hitachi.

And last month, British Gas owner Centrica announced it had decided not to go ahead with its share in building new nuclear plants at Sizewell and the one at Hinkley Point.

2. Nuclear fusion is the 'perfect energy source'

By Steven Cowley, Special to CNN

March 12, 2013 -- Updated 1340 GMT (2140 HKT)

Editor's note: Professor Steven Cowley is Director of the Culham Center for Fusion Energy (CCFE), the UK's national laboratory for fusion research. He has published over 100 papers and articles and in 2011 was appointed to the UK's Council for Science and Technology -- an advisory board which reports directly to Prime Minister David Cameron.

(CNN) -- Until recently, fears of peak oil and dependence on Middle Eastern suppliers were the key factors shaping our energy policy, pushing governments to scramble for fossil fuel alternatives. Then came shale gas, tar sands, and other unconventional sources. Industry found ways to affordably extract fuel for decades to come. So many are now imagining an end to the energy crisis. That's a dangerous mistake.

First, even the most optimistic predictions leave our grandchildren exposed to an uncertain future. More immediately -- and maybe more importantly -- burning fossil fuels is the number one cause of global warming and its catastrophic consequences.

We need to innovate alternative energy sources now more than ever ... and our choices are limited. There are few viable options that will preserve the levels of prosperity that modern industrial economies have come to expect.

Solar, advanced nuclear fission, and fusion offer the best hope but, unfortunately, none are ready for large-scale deployment. All need time-consuming innovations so we cannot afford to hesitate; research must be ramped up across the board and government must keep up the pace.

Of our three most promising technologies, fusion would be the biggest prize. It is in many respects the perfect energy source. Sea water provides millions of years of fusion fuel. Fusion reactions are safe, they emit neither radioactive waste nor greenhouse gasses and fusion reactors would take up relatively little space.

The catch is fusion is very hard to do. Two isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) must be held at 200-million degrees until they collide and fuse to make helium. It is not easy to build a device that runs at ten times the temperature of the Sun, but it is possible.

In fact, the European experimental facility, JET -- hosted in the UK, has already done it. For a couple of seconds, it generated 16 megawatts of fusion power -- enough to supply around 8,000 homes. This is an astonishing achievement. We must now extend that duration and power and innovate technologies to make fusion electricity at a price that the consumer will pay.

We're working flat out on the first of those goals. Seven international partners representing more than half the world's people are constructing the critical experiment right now in Southern France. Called ITER -- it is designed to reach a self-sustaining fusion burn -- the last scientific hurdle to fusion power. Construction will complete in 2020 with a fusion burn expected by 2030.

There are other approaches to fusion -- for example the laser experiments at the National Ignition Facility in California -- but for many of us in the scientific trenches, the fusion burn on ITER is expected to be the defining moment.

But what about our second objective of economic viability? ITER isn't meant to achieve that goal. In addition to clearing our last remaining scientific hurdle, we need to advance a parallel engineering agenda into key reactor technologies that will enable commercial fusion power plants to reliably deliver electricity in a highly competitive market.

This means technological advances in areas such as structural and functional materials, power conversion, and reliability. China and Korea are on the job but the U.S. and Europe are reluctant to face the engineering issues. Certainly, cost increases on ITER haven't helped. If we continue to starve the technological research agenda of funds, however, we risk delaying fusion power and ceding technological leadership to China and Korea.

It goes without saying that resources are limited in our recession-ravaged economies ... but disinvesting in seed corn is obviously self-defeating.

What can we afford? The world energy market is approximately €5-€10 trillion ($6.5-13 trillion) a year. The total world spend on energy research is about 0.5% of this -- strikingly low. Fusion research including ITER construction is less than €1.5 billion ($2 billion) a year -- not even 0.05% of the market.

We are, it seems, not taking the threat of climate change and energy shortages seriously. In this context, the roughly €200-500 million ($260-650 million) per year needed to vigorously pursue the parallel track of technology innovation in fusion seems absurdly small.

We often hear that Thomas Malthus' dire predictions about population growth were wrong because humans innovated solutions to food shortages. Will we innovate ourselves out of our long-term energy constraints too? Only if we sufficiently fund alternative energy research now.

3. This reactor withstands temperatures up to 20 times hotter than the Sun

By Charlie Foster

08 March 13

An 18-metre-tall machine is attempting to harness nuclear fusion, the reaction that powers the Sun, to create electricity. "By the end of the century, 30 per cent of global energy could be generated by nuclear fusion," says Francesco Romanelli, leader of the team of scientists operating the Joint European Torus (JET). Based in Culham, Oxfordshire, JET is a collaborative project between 26 European countries and, at 16mW, it's the continent's largest fusion device.

In October 2012 it put its electricity-generating experiments on hold to test the suitability of a new structural material -- a combination of beryllium and tungsten -- that can withstand temperatures "up to 20 times hotter than the Sun", says Romanelli. Since this new material proved far more resilient than the current carbon walls, it will now be included in the design of all large-scale commercial fusion devices.

The JET, built in 1983, works by heating plasma containing two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, to 200,000,000 degrees Celsius, in the hope of generating energy from their binding. "I hope that by 2040 we will start to see fusion power injecting electricity into the grid," says Romanelli. Just stand well back.

This article was taken from the March 2013 issue of Wired magazine. efda.org/jet

4. Rosatom helping to build groundbreaking reactor

February 28, 2013 Andrei Reznichenko, special to RBTH

Energy Russia's nuclear agency is contributing high-tech equipment and know-how for a revolutionary fusion reactor in France.

A new thermonuclear reactor — the product of years of negotiation and research among scientists and officials from around the world – is being constructed at Cadarache in southern France.

Known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), it is the first large-scale attempt to create power from nuclear fusion, the same kind of thermonuclear reaction that takes place in the sun.

Unlike traditional nuclear reactors, which consume rare and often hazardous resources, Iter will require only two basic components to operate: seawater and lithium. Additionally, the major by-product of the fusion reaction is harmless helium.

The ITER project dates back to 1985, when nuclear physicist Yevgeny Velikhov approached European, American and Japanese scientists, on behalf of the Soviet Union, with the idea of creating a joint thermonuclear reactor. Later that year at the US-USSR Geneva Summit, the parties agreed to the development of fusion energy; one year later in Reykjavik an agreement was made to jointly pursue the design of a large fusion facility, ITER.

In 1992, an agreement was signed by the four parties to begin developing the engineering project of the reactor. Construction began at the site in 2011, and the first construction phase will be completed by 2020, by which time the reactor is expected to produce its first plasma. The reactor is expected to be operational for 20 years before being decommissioned.

Although Iter is a joint project, the responsibilities and costs are not distributed evenly. The total cost of the project is around €13 billion (about $ 17 billion). The EU countries contribute about 50 percent of the project’s finance and technology, with the other nations contributing about 10 percent each. Russia’s share is provided in the form of hi-tech equipment.

Russia is also responsible for much of the know-how behind the project. Iter is based primarily on the Soviet-era tokamak reactor, first developed during the 50s and the 60s.

The most efficient fusion reaction to reproduce in a laboratory is the reaction between two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium. This reaction produces the highest energy gain at the lowest temperatures. At extreme temperatures, electrons are separated from nuclei and a gas becomes a plasma – a hot, electrically charged gas.

A tokamak reactor uses magnetic fields to contain and control the hot plasma. The fusion between deuterium and tritium produces one helium nucleus, one neutron, and energy.

The helium nucleus carries an electric charge which will respond to the magnetic fields of the tokamak and remain confined within the plasma. However, some 80 percent of the energy produced is carried away from the plasma by the neutron which has no electrical charge and is therefore unaffected by magnetic fields.

The neutrons will be absorbed by the surrounding walls of the tokamak, transferring their energy to the walls as heat.

Technological developments from every partner were necessary to create Iter. Russia agreed to produce a number of systems for the reactor, including part of the first wall, which is made from beryllium, a metal used in superconductors.

The main Russian supplier of superconducting materials for the international thermonuclear reactor is Chepetsky Mechanical Plant, a subsidiary of Rosatom’s fuel company TVEL. Russia will provide about 20 percent of the superconductors required for ITER.

The agreement that established the international consortium to construct the reactor stipulated that the project would make use not only of technologies currently in use worldwide, but also new technological breakthroughs in the field that would be developed as the project moved forward.

“Iter will have double benefits for each participant,” says Leonid Bolshov, director of the Nuclear Safety Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

“On the one hand, they will have a reactor of the future and a power plant that will meet the electricity requirement of developed economies for many years to come.

“On the other hand, while working on the project, which is unique in its complexity, the countries will share competencies and benefit from new technologies that could be used in different spheres.”

5. Bulgarians vote yes on nuclear power plant referendum

February 6, 2013 Andrei Reznichenko, special to RBTH

In post-Fukushima Eastern Europe, the peaceful atom is winning the battle. In late January, a majority of Bulgarian respondents voted yes on a referendum to support construction of a new nuclear power plant. The ruling GERB party is against construction, but the opposition socialist party says the matter will be decided after upcoming parliamentary elections.

Eastern Europe is not ready to turn its back on nuclear power. On Jan. 27, Bulgaria held a national referendum on the initiative of the country’s socialist party (BSP), headed by former Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev. Bulgarians were asked a single question: “Do you support the development of nuclear power by means of constructing a new nuclear power plant?”

Initially, the question was more specific, referring to “[…] resuming construction of the Belene nuclear power plant,” whose 2006 construction bid was won by Russia’s Atomstroyexport. The Russian company managed to outpace the U.S. company Westinghouse.

The authorities substituted the original wording with more neutral language, however, and this move may have been somewhat misleading for the voters, according to sociologists. Bulgaria’s current prime minister, Boyko Borisov, called for his supporters from GERB party to vote against the construction, in line with his previous decision to close down the Belene project.

The referendum exceeded the minimum turnout threshold, as 21.8 percent of the country’s citizens cast their votes at the polling stations. Construction of the nuclear power plant was supported by 61 percent and opposed by 35 percent of voters. Now, as Bulgaria’s laws prescribe, the issue will be addressed by parliament.

“As regards the moral aspect, I cannot imagine someone who would dare to go against the will of almost a million people [Bulgaria’s total population is slightly more than 7 million]. Besides, the outcome of the referendum demonstrates that the Belene power plant issue will be raised again after the next elections,” says Tasko Ermenkov, an expert on Bulgaria’s energy industry and member of the referendum initiative group.