ITER (wikipedia) has been officially announced. The ITER project to construct a large scale demonstration of fusion power in France, will be the most expensive science project on earth (the international space station costs more but that’s in space!).
The announcement took place after ministers representing the seven parties met and signed an agreement to establish the international organization that will implement the ITER fusion project.
ITER was originally an acronym of “International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor”, but this name is no longer used because it sounds too scary.
The project is a collaboration between the European Union (represented by EURATOM), Japan, the People´s Republic of China, India, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the USA.
25 November, 2006 at 10:07 pm |
Interesting. “International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor” indeed is a formidable name. I enjoy seeing this sort of international collaboration.
Incidentally, your first two links (“ITER” and “wikipedia”) do not work. You’ve tagged them with anchor tags (
<a>), but have not supplied theHREFattribute with the target URL.26 November, 2006 at 11:03 am |
Thanks, I must have made a mistake with the link and wordpress removes invalid html.
I think with this collaboration, none of the countries can afford not to be involved just in case it works. It’s good to see China and India involved. This power source promises to be very useful if we are to continue with the rates of consumption we have now. The major problem is the amount of power produced by one plant.
The only real competitor is nuclear fission and this unfortunately produces lots of dangerous radioactive material.
27 November, 2006 at 10:34 am |
[...] I strongly support international collaboration, so I was excited to read on Bainite’s blog that ITER has been formally announced. ITER is a project to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power on a large scale; it is a joint project between the European Union, Japan, the People’s Republic of China, India, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States. The planned location is in Cadarache in southern France (approximate location 43°41′55.65″N 5°44′30.61″E). ITER will fuse deuterium and tritium, contained by magnetic fields. The resultant high-energy neutrons will produce heat. In a fusion power plant, this heat would then be used to produce electricity; however, as ITER intended for research and demonstration, the heat will be allowed to escape. [...]