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Joining the venture to harness fusion

R. Ramachandran

The aim of the ambitious multi-billion dollar International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion as a sustained long-term energy source.

FUSION IS the process that powers the burning of stars including the Sun. Unlike the familiar nuclear fission, fusion reaction involves the fusing of the nuclei of lighter elements like hydrogen and its isotopes to form heavier elements accompanied by release of energy.

However, to replicate this stellar mechanism in a terrestrial laboratory requires bringing together the lighter nuclei at temperatures that is obtained in the stars — over 100 millions of degrees C — and to be able to control it and sustain over long periods of time. This is done by heating isotopes of hydrogen, creating a plasma of charged particles, and confining them in a toroidal or doughnut-shaped reactor called tokamak with the help of powerful superconducting magnets.

The nuclei would then collide and fuse to produce high-energy helium nuclei and neutrons. The energy of the uncharged high-energy neutrons that escape from the tokamak can be converted to heat, which can be used to generate electricity. The chief problem has so far been to sustain the toroidal plasma for sufficiently long duration.

The aim of the ambitious multi-billion dollar International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), to which India has just been admitted as the seventh member of the consortium, is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion as a sustained long-term energy source of the future. The ITER, based on the frozen design of 1998, is expected to be up and running by 2015.

The other members include China, the European Union (EU), Japan, the Republic of Korea, Russia, and the United States. With India's entry, half of humanity is now participating in this unique scientific mission to devise ways of tapping this enormous source of energy for the long-term future. Experts believe that fusion as energy source may become a reality not before 2050.

As would be recalled, after protracted and acrimonious negotiations, the site for the reactor was selected as Cadarache in France in June this year. This paved the way for the project to move forward as well as to admit new entrants with demonstrated scientific and technological capability in the field.

The costs

The direct capital costs of ITER have been calculated as (at 1998 prices) $3800 million. Staff and research and development costs during construction add a further $760 million. Operation costs are estimated at $260 million a year and decommissioning costs at about $470 million. Following the decision on the construction site, the cost sharing formula till India's entry was as follows: Europe, the host partner, would contribute 50 per cent while the rest five would contribute 10 per cent each.

The individual contributions would essentially be "in kind"; that is, in the form of equipment, products, software, and personnel.

While India's entry has somehow got intimately linked to the nuclear deal of July 18 with the U.S., it must be pointed out that the deal itself did not have any direct role except perhaps to ensure that the U.S. would not oppose India's admission at the ITER negotiations.

India's participation was mooted as part of the India-EU Summit in 2004. More pertinently, India's interest in joining ITER was formally expressed through a letter of July 8 — ten days before the India-U.S. Agreement — to Achilleas Mitsos, Director-General (Research) of the EU, in which India's ongoing fusion research at the Institute of Plasma Research (IPR) at Ahmedabad, had been detailed.

India started its fusion research with the design and engineering of its first tokamak ADITYA in 1982. With the commissioning of ADITYA in 1989, full-fledged tokamak experiments started.

In 1995, the decision to build the second-generation tokamak, namely the Superconducting Steady State Tokamak (SST-1), aimed at plasma confining times longer than the record duration achieved so far, was taken.

Superconducting steady state forms the basic principle of the ITER design as well though it would be on a far bigger scale. India's participation in ITER is thus expected to benefit its own fusion programme greatly.

India's letter to EU was considered by the ITER Negotiations Meeting at Cadarache on September 12.

Following this, an exploratory fact-finding mission was in India in early October, which visited IPR at Ahmedabad as well appraised India's industrial capability to contribute to ITER's hardware and software needs.

The mission's favourable technical report was considered by the ITER Negotiations Committee at its November 7 meeting in Vienna. The ITER Negotiations Committee then called upon India to make a formal request for joining the project to the consortium members.

This formality done, India was admitted into ITER at the ongoing meeting at Jeju in South Korea.

With India' admission, the cost-sharing formula has been adjusted as follows. According to sources inside the ITER meeting at Jeju, the six non-host partners would now contribute 6/11th of the total cost — a little over half — while the EU would put in the rest.

As for the industrial contribution, following the compromise worked out between the EU and Japan (the other contender for the reactor site), the shares are slightly different: China, India, Korea, Russia, and the U.S. would contribute 1/11th each, Japan 2/11th, and Europe 4/11th.

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