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A thermonuclear future

Tatiana Sinitsyna

THE INTERNATIONAL Thermonuclear Energy Reactor (ITER), an international project involving countries conducting research on controlled thermonuclear fusion, could provide mankind with an unlimited source of energy. Some people compare it to an artificial sun, whose internal temperature can reach 150 million degrees C. However, the sun that shines for all of us has a temperature of only 20 million degrees C. "Mankind is lucky to have accomplished this objective," one of the project's organisers, Yevgeny Velikhov, said.

Physicists have long dreamed of harnessing thermonuclear fusion, which is much safer than nuclear energy. Thermonuclear reactors cannot explode the way the Chernobyl nuclear power plant's No. 4 reactor blew up on April 26, 1986. They will not spew radiation because deuterium-tritium fusion is their basic principle of operation. Existing nuclear reactors utilise the nuclear-fission concept. This planet has an unlimited amount of hydrogen isotopes to power thermonuclear reactors. However, the really intricate thermonuclear power plant will feature unheard-of technologies. Its reactor will be subjected to immense pressures and temperatures. Scientists spent decades trying to solve this problem and to ignite thermonuclear plasma. Several countries have harnessed experimental thermonuclear reactions.

Nobody seemed to know anything about thermonuclear fusion even 50 years ago. Nobel laureate Igor Tamm and one of his post-graduate students, Andrei Sakharov, who would later receive the Nobel Prize, were the only scientists capable of discussing this subject. In 1934, Tamm published a textbook on the theory of electricity that outlined the concept of thermonuclear fusion. The situation has changed greatly since. Today 75 per cent of mankind is infatuated with this idea.

It all began in 1992 when Russia, the U.S., the European Community, and Japan decided to develop jointly the first international thermonuclear experimental reactor on the basis of TOKAMAK (Toroidal Chamber in Magnetic Coils) technologies. Soviet physicists developed the first TOKAMAK units in line with Sakharov's ideas. Sakharov suggested the TOKAMAK concept back in the 1960s. The world's physicists offered 114 "thermonuclear" concepts: TOKAMAK alone has survived. Sakharov's concept was eventually tested at the Kurchatov R&D Institute, and it proved to be a success.

Russian achievements in the field of superconductors, as well as unique electron-plasma heating methods, were instrumental in implementing the ITER project.

This project, which will cost an estimated $5 billion, now involves three more countries: China, India, and North Korea. A country whose territory has been chosen to build the reactor shall contribute 50 per cent of the total. The parties to the project debated this issue rather hotly, with France and Japan offering to accommodate the reactor. It was eventually decided to construct the ITER reactor in France's Gadarache (Provence). Russia has undertaken to finance 10 per cent.

The ITER is the most ambitious undertaking of its kind in the history of mankind, dwarfing the International Space Station (ISS) in terms of intellectual and financial resources. "The project hinges on new principles of equitable cooperation. The inequality of owners and consumers has been rectified within its framework. This is an act of intellectual globalisation," Mr. Velikhov noted.

Each country will contribute an ITER segment. The reactor will feature 100 times more high-precision parts than a Boeing 747 jet. An international directorate will oversee the construction project.

The GLORIAD telecommunications network will handle tremendous data flows.

St. Petersburg is to host the G8 summit in the summer of 2006 when the final agreement on ITER construction is expected to be signed. The groundbreaking ceremony may take place in late 2006. Russia initiated the ITER project's subsequent development. In 2003, Moscow suggested the construction of another ITER centre. This centre, due to be built in northern Japan, will help develop a commercial thermonuclear power plant as soon as possible. "According to Mr. Velikhov, "computers with a speed of several thousand teraflop will help build a thermonuclear reactor model." This seems mind-boggling because a teraflop is one trillion floating point operations a second. The world's fastest computer has a speed of just 100 teraflop.

The ITER project is set to remove the last obstacle to the creation of the world's first thermonuclear power plant that promises to solve global energy and environmental problems. A thermonuclear power plant may materialise by 2030. — RIA Novosti

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