Secular Café: Nuclear Fusion on the way!!!

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Nuclear Fusion on the way!!! Apr 27th 2013, 22:54 Doctor Octopus was ahead of his time :D Quote: An idyllic hilltop setting in the Cadarache forest of Provence in the south of France has become the site of an ambitious attempt to harness the nuclear power of the sun and stars. It is the place where 34 nations representing more than half the world's population have joined forces in the biggest scientific collaboration on the planet – only the International Space Station is bigger. The international nuclear fusion project – known as Iter, meaning "the way" in Latin – is designed to demonstrate a new kind of nuclear reactor capable of producing unlimited supplies of cheap, clean, safe and sustainable electricity from atomic fusion. If Iter demonstrates that it is possible to build commercially-viable fusion reactors then it could become the experiment that saved the world in a century threatened by climate change and an expected three-fold increase in global energy demand. This week the project gained final approval for the design of the most technically challenging component – the fusion reactor's "blanket" that will handle the super-heated nuclear fuel. [...] Nuclear fusion has been a dream since the start of the atomic age. Unlike conventional nuclear-fission power plants, fusion reactors do not produce high-level radioactive waste, cannot be used for military purposes and essentially burn non-toxic fuel derived from water. Many energy experts believe that nuclear fusion is the only serious, environmentally-friendly way of reliably producing "base-load" electricity 24/7. It is, they argue, the only way of generating industrial-scale quantities of electricity night and day without relying on carbon-intensive fossil fuels or dangerous and dirty conventional nuclear power. [...] Even if everything goes to plan, the first demonstration power plant using nuclear fusion will not be ready until at least the 2030s, meaning commercial reactors could not realistically be built until the second half of the century. The long timescales mean nuclear fusion does not often get on the political agenda, unless superpower summitry is involve as it was at the height of the Cold War in 1985. But in the end, the long wait for nuclear fusion, and the experiment to save the world, may prove to be well worth the effort. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...y-8590480.html

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