ScribbleLive

@Edano This Euro-Japanese consortium is putting a hell of money into it. I'm sure they already know how to make it work. According to the last article I read on New Scientist last year they were going to build one plant in France and a similar one in Japan because they could not agree on where to build the experimental nuclear fusion plant. That's all I know.

@Pedro Jesus "ITER is designed to produce approximately 500 MW of fusion power sustained for up to 1,000 seconds". lots of money for nothing.

@Rob - yes, and hydrogen fusion as in H-bomb as opposed to fission as in A-bomb and Fukushima. Wikipedia says of fusion "commercial power production is still believed to be unlikely before 2040"

ITER is based on the 'tokamak' concept of magnetic confinement, in which the plasma is contained in a doughnut-shaped vacuum vessel. The fuel—a mixture of Deuterium and Tritium, two isotopes of Hydrogen—is heated to temperatures in excess of 150 million°C, forming a hot plasma. Strong magnetic fields are used to keep the plasma away from the walls; these are produced by superconducting coils surrounding the vessel, and by an electrical current driven through the plasma. Scroll over the machine with your cursor to identify the different parts of the machine.

Cool interactive image...
www.iter.org

Commercial fusion power is the most wonderful theoretical commercial energy solution. Unfortunately at the moment it is just that, theoretical.

@Edano That's the main problem with Greenpeace. They don't believe in research. They just want us to go back to the dark ages to "save the planet" but they still drive the fast cars and ultra-fast racing boats that consume a lot of fossil fuel. I don't quite trust their policy.

@edano - unbelievably!!

I think the dark ages may be ahead rather than behind us at the present rate

@hudebnik Sadly I think you may be right both physically & metaphorically

@ukval - google indexes this page about every 5 minutes. I suspect they have an algorythm to index often for pages that change often

@Rob in SF Ah that's good to know!

@hudebnik Google research engine could be called intelligent. I'm pretty sure it keeps track of frequent updating sources. Bless them. ;)

Seems like Disneyland should co-develop Yucca Mountain. Could be a helluva' roller coaster...

Yucca Mountain, "I'm not dead yet. It's just a flesh wound."

@UKVal Indeed. It didn't surprise me since I'm pretty well acquainted with the Scandinavian mentality. They trust their Governments and their scientists and, unlike the rest of us, they have good reasons to do so.

Status of Used Nuclear Fuel Storage at U.S. Commercial Nuclear Plants


This list details when commercial nuclear plants in the United States will run out of on-site storage space in the pools that hold used fuel assemblies after their removal from the reactor:

www.nei.org

TEPCO rules out quake as causing coolant loss at crippled nuke plant
TOKYO, May 23, Kyodo
The powerful March 11 earthquake did not cause any major damage to reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, such as a loss of coolant water, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Monday, denying the temblor was responsible for a nuclear fuel meltdown at the plant's No. 1 reactor.
It had been suspected that the No. 1 reactor core suffered a meltdown shortly after the plant was rattled by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake.
But the plant operator, known as TEPCO, has attributed the meltdown to the massive tsunami that followed the quake, saying that the tsunami crippled backup generators at the six-reactor plant, leading to the loss of cooling functions at the reactors' cores.
english.kyodonews.jp