Who is building a thermonuclear reactor? Iter - international thermonuclear reactor (iter) Fusion stations

Today, many countries are taking part in thermonuclear research. The leaders are the European Union, the United States, Russia and Japan, while programs in China, Brazil, Canada and Korea are rapidly expanding. Initially, fusion reactors in the USA and USSR were associated with the development of nuclear weapons and remained classified until the Atoms for Peace conference, which took place in Geneva in 1958. After the creation of the Soviet tokamak, nuclear fusion research became “big science” in the 1970s. But the cost and complexity of the devices increased to the point where international cooperation became the only way forward.

Thermonuclear reactors in the world

Since the 1970s, the commercial use of fusion energy has been continually delayed by 40 years. However, a lot has happened in recent years that may allow this period to be shortened.

Several tokamaks have been built, including the European JET, the British MAST and the TFTR experimental fusion reactor at Princeton, USA. The international ITER project is currently under construction in Cadarache, France. It will be the largest tokamak when it starts operating in 2020. In 2030, China will build CFETR, which will surpass ITER. Meanwhile, China is conducting research on the experimental superconducting tokamak EAST.

Another type of fusion reactor, stellators, is also popular among researchers. One of the largest, LHD, began work at the Japanese National Institute in 1998. It is used to find the best magnetic configuration for plasma confinement. The German Max Planck Institute carried out research on the Wendelstein 7-AS reactor in Garching between 1988 and 2002, and currently on the Wendelstein 7-X reactor, whose construction took more than 19 years. Another TJII stellarator is in operation in Madrid, Spain. In the US, Princeton Laboratory (PPPL), which built the first fusion reactor of this type in 1951, stopped construction of NCSX in 2008 due to cost overruns and lack of funding.

In addition, significant advances have been made in inertial fusion research. Construction of the $7 billion National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration, was completed in March 2009. The French Laser Mégajoule (LMJ) began operations in October 2014. Fusion reactors use lasers delivering about 2 million joules of light energy within a few billionths of a second to a target a few millimeters in size to trigger a nuclear fusion reaction. The primary mission of NIF and LMJ is research in support of national military nuclear programs.

ITER

In 1985, the Soviet Union proposed building a next-generation tokamak jointly with Europe, Japan and the United States. The work was carried out under the auspices of the IAEA. Between 1988 and 1990, the first designs for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ITER, which also means "path" or "journey" in Latin, were created to prove that fusion could produce more energy than it absorbed. Canada and Kazakhstan also took part, mediated by Euratom and Russia respectively.

Six years later, the ITER board approved the first comprehensive reactor design based on established physics and technology, costing $6 billion. Then the United States withdrew from the consortium, which forced them to halve costs and change the project. The result is ITER-FEAT, which costs $3 billion but achieves self-sustaining response and positive power balance.

In 2003, the United States rejoined the consortium, and China announced its desire to participate. As a result, in mid-2005 the partners agreed to build ITER in Cadarache in the south of France. The EU and France contributed half of the €12.8 billion, while Japan, China, South Korea, the US and Russia contributed 10% each. Japan provided high-tech components, maintained a €1 billion IFMIF facility designed to test materials, and had the right to build the next test reactor. The total cost of ITER includes half the costs for 10 years of construction and half for 20 years of operation. India became the seventh member of ITER at the end of 2005.

Experiments are due to begin in 2018 using hydrogen to avoid activating the magnets. The use of D-T plasma is not expected before 2026.

ITER's goal is to generate 500 MW (at least for 400 s) using less than 50 MW of input power without generating electricity.

Demo's two-gigawatt demonstration power plant will produce large-scale on an ongoing basis. The Demo's conceptual design will be completed by 2017, with construction beginning in 2024. The launch will take place in 2033.

JET

In 1978 the EU (Euratom, Sweden and Switzerland) started the joint European project JET in the UK. JET is today the largest operating tokamak in the world. A similar JT-60 reactor operates at Japan's National Fusion Institute, but only JET can use deuterium-tritium fuel.

The reactor was launched in 1983, and became the first experiment, which resulted in controlled thermonuclear fusion with a power of up to 16 MW for one second and 5 MW of stable power on deuterium-tritium plasma in November 1991. Many experiments have been carried out to study various heating schemes and other techniques.

Further improvements to the JET involve increasing its power. The MAST compact reactor is being developed together with JET and is part of the ITER project.

K-STAR

K-STAR is a Korean superconducting tokamak from the National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) in Daejeon, which produced its first plasma in mid-2008. ITER, which is the result of international cooperation. The 1.8 m radius Tokamak is the first reactor to use Nb3Sn superconducting magnets, the same ones planned for ITER. During the first phase, completed by 2012, K-STAR had to prove the viability of the underlying technologies and achieve plasma pulses lasting up to 20 seconds. At the second stage (2013-2017), it is being modernized to study long pulses up to 300 s in H mode and transition to a high-performance AT mode. The goal of the third phase (2018-2023) is to achieve high productivity and efficiency in the long-pulse mode. At stage 4 (2023-2025), DEMO technologies will be tested. The device is not capable of working with tritium and does not use D-T fuel.

K-DEMO

Developed in collaboration with the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and South Korea's NFRI, K-DEMO is intended to be the next step in commercial reactor development beyond ITER, and will be the first power plant capable of generating power into the electrical grid, namely 1 million kW within a few weeks. It will have a diameter of 6.65 m and will have a reproduction zone module created as part of the DEMO project. The Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology plans to invest about a trillion Korean won ($941 million) in it.

EAST

China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) at the Institute of Physics of China in Hefei created hydrogen plasma at a temperature of 50 million °C and maintained it for 102 s.

TFTR

At the American laboratory PPPL, the experimental fusion reactor TFTR operated from 1982 to 1997. In December 1993, TFTR became the first magnetic tokamak to conduct extensive deuterium-tritium plasma experiments. The following year, the reactor produced a then-record 10.7 MW of controllable power, and in 1995 a temperature record of 510 million °C was reached. However, the facility did not achieve the break-even goal of fusion energy, but successfully met the hardware design goals, making a significant contribution to the development of ITER.

LHD

The LHD at Japan's National Fusion Institute in Toki, Gifu Prefecture, was the largest stellarator in the world. The fusion reactor was launched in 1998 and demonstrated plasma confinement properties comparable to other large facilities. An ion temperature of 13.5 keV (about 160 million °C) and an energy of 1.44 MJ were achieved.

Wendelstein 7-X

After a year of testing, which began in late 2015, helium temperatures briefly reached 1 million °C. In 2016, a hydrogen plasma fusion reactor using 2 MW of power reached a temperature of 80 million °C within a quarter of a second. W7-X is the largest stellarator in the world and is planned to operate continuously for 30 minutes. The cost of the reactor was 1 billion €.

NIF

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) was completed in March 2009. Using its 192 laser beams, NIF is able to concentrate 60 times more energy than any previous laser system.

Cold fusion

In March 1989, two researchers, American Stanley Pons and British Martin Fleischman, announced that they had launched a simple tabletop cold fusion reactor operating at room temperature. The process involved the electrolysis of heavy water using palladium electrodes on which deuterium nuclei were concentrated to a high density. The researchers say it produced heat that could only be explained in terms of nuclear processes, and there were fusion byproducts including helium, tritium and neutrons. However, other experimenters were unable to repeat this experiment. Most of the scientific community does not believe that cold fusion reactors are real.

Low energy nuclear reactions

Initiated by claims of "cold fusion", research has continued in the low-energy field with some empirical support, but no generally accepted scientific explanation. Apparently, weak nuclear interactions are used to create and capture neutrons (and not a powerful force, as in their fusion). Experiments involve hydrogen or deuterium passing through a catalytic layer and reacting with a metal. Researchers report an observed release of energy. The main practical example is the interaction of hydrogen with nickel powder, releasing heat in an amount greater than any chemical reaction can produce.

CADARACHE (France), May 25 - RIA Novosti, Victoria Ivanova. The south of France is usually associated with holidays on the Cote d'Azur, lavender fields and the Cannes Festival, but not with science, although the “construction of the century” has been going on near Marseille for several years now - an international thermonuclear experimental reactor (ITER) is being built near the Cadarache research center.

A RIA Novosti correspondent learned how the world's largest construction of a one-of-a-kind installation is progressing and what kind of people are building a “prototype of the Sun” capable of generating 7 billion kilowatt-hours of energy per year.

Initially, the international thermonuclear experimental reactor project was called ITER, an acronym for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. However, later a more beautiful interpretation appeared for the name: the name of the project is explained by the translation of the Latin word iter - “path”, and some countries began to carefully move away from mentioning the word “reactor” so as not to arouse associations with danger and radiation in the minds of citizens.

The whole world is building a new reactor. To date, Russia, India, Japan, China, South Korea and the United States, as well as the European Union, are participating in the project. The Europeans, acting as a single group, are responsible for the implementation of 46% of the project, each of the other participating countries took on 9%.

To simplify the system of mutual settlements, a special currency was invented within the organization - the ITER unit of account - IUA. All agreements on the supply of components by participants are carried out in these units. Thus, the result of construction became independent of fluctuations in national currency exchange rates and the cost of producing parts in each specific country.

For this investment, expressed not in money, but in components of the future installation, participants receive full access to the entire range of technologies involved in ITER. Thus, the “International School for the Creation of Thermonuclear Reactor” is currently being built in France.

"The Hottest Thing in the Solar System"

Journalists, and even the ITER employees themselves, so often compare the project with the Sun that it is quite difficult to come up with another association for the thermonuclear installation. The head of one of the divisions of the International ITER Organization, Mario Merola, was able to, calling the reactor “the hottest thing in our Solar System.”

“The temperature inside the device will be about 150 million degrees Celsius, which is 10 times higher than the temperature of the Sun’s core. The magnetic field of the installation will be about 200 thousand times greater than that of the Earth itself,” says Mario about the project.

ITER is based on a system of tokamak - toroidal chambers with magnetic coils. The idea of ​​magnetic confinement of high-temperature plasma was developed and technologically implemented for the first time in the world at the Kurchatov Institute in the middle of the last century. Russia, which was at the origins of the project, among other components, manufactures one of the most essential parts of the installation, the “heart of ITER” - the superconducting magnetic system. It consists of various types of superconductors containing tens of thousands of filaments with a special nanostructure.

To create such a large-scale system, hundreds of tons of such superconductors are required. Six of the seven participating countries are involved in their production. Among them is Russia, which supplies superconductors based on niobium-titanium and niobium-tin alloys, which turn out to be among the best in the world. The production of these materials in Russia is carried out by Rosatom enterprises and the Kurchatov Institute.

© Photo: courtesy of ITER Organization

© Photo: courtesy of ITER Organization

Common difficulties

However, Russia and China, fulfilling their obligations on time, unwittingly became hostages of other project participants who do not always manage to complete their part of the work on time. The specificity of the ITER project is the close interaction of all parties, and therefore the lag of any one country leads to the fact that the entire project begins to “slip”.

To rectify the situation, the new head of the ITER organization, Bernard Bigot, decided to change the time frame of the project. A new version of the schedule - expected to be more realistic - will be presented in November.

At the same time, Bigo did not rule out the redistribution of work between the participants.

“I would be glad if there were no delays at all. But I must admit that in some areas the implementation of our global project has encountered difficulties. I am open to any solutions other than reducing the capacity of ITER. I don’t see anything in redistributing work bad, but this issue must be seriously discussed,” said the organization’s general director.

Bigot noted that work on the creation of ITER is being carried out by hundreds of companies and organizations from seven participating countries. “You can’t just snap your fingers and execute the plan. Everyone thought that it would be easy to meet the deadlines thanks to good faith and good intentions. Now we understand that without strict management nothing will happen,” Bigo emphasized.

According to him, difficulties in the construction of ITER are caused by the difference in the cultures of the participating countries, and the fact that there were no similar projects in the world before, so many mechanisms and installations being produced for the first time require additional tests and certification from regulators, which takes additional time .

One of the measures of Bigot's proposed "strict management" would be the creation of another management body, which would include directors of national agencies and a director general. The decisions of this body will be binding for all participants in the project - Bigot hopes that this will spur the process of interaction.

© Photo

"Construction of the century"

In the meantime, a huge construction project is underway on the ITER territory. The “heart” of the facility—the tokamak itself and office premises—will occupy an area measuring one kilometer by 400 meters.

A pit 20 meters deep was dug for the reactor, to the bottom of which fittings and other components necessary at this stage are brought along mirror-smooth asphalt. First, the wall segments are assembled horizontally, connecting metal structures with special plates. Then, with the help of four construction cranes, they are finally placed in the desired position.

Several years will pass, and the site will be unrecognizable. Instead of a huge hole in the platform, a colossus approximately the size of the Bolshoi Theater will rise above it - about 40 meters in height.

Somewhere on the site, construction has not yet begun - and because of this, other countries cannot accurately calculate the delivery time for components of a thermonuclear reactor, and somewhere it has already been completed. In particular, the ITER headquarters, the building for winding poloidal coils of the magnetic system, the power substation, and several other auxiliary buildings are ready for operation.

"Happiness lies in the continuous knowledge of the unknown"

At a time when scientific work is not popular and respected everywhere, ITER brought together 500 scientists, engineers and representatives of many other specialties from different countries on its platform. These specialists are real dreamers and dedicated people, just like the Strugatskys, “they accepted the working hypothesis that happiness lies in the continuous knowledge of the unknown and the meaning of life lies in the same.”

But the living conditions for the project’s employees are fundamentally different from those at NIICHAVO - the Research Institute of Witchcraft and Wizardry - where the heroes of the story by Soviet science fiction writers “Monday Begins on Saturday” worked. There are no hostels for foreigners on the territory of ITER - they all rent housing in villages and towns nearby.

Inside one of the already constructed buildings, in addition to the work premises, there is a huge canteen, where project employees can have a snack or a hearty lunch for a very modest amount. There are always dishes of national cuisines on the menu, be it Japanese noodles or Italian minestrone.

At the entrance to the dining room there is a notice board. It contains offers for joint rental of apartments and “French classes, high quality and inexpensive.” A white piece of paper is displayed - “The Cadarache Choir is recruiting participants. Come to the main ITER building.” In addition to the choir, the formation of which has not yet been completed, the project staff also organized their own orchestra. The Russian Evgeny Veshchev, who has been working in Cadarache for several years, also plays the saxophone.

Road to the Sun

“How do we live here? We work, rehearse, play. Sometimes we go to the sea and to the mountains, it’s not far from here,” says Evgeniy. “Of course, I miss Russia, I root for it. But this is not my first long-term foreign business trip, I’m used to it.” ".

Evgeniy is a physicist and is involved in the integration of diagnostic systems on the project.

“Since my student days, I was inspired by the ITER project, the opportunities and prospects that lay ahead, there was a feeling that the future lay behind it. However, my path here was thorny, like many others. After graduation, I was not very good with money, I I even thought about leaving science for business, opening something of my own. But I went on a business trip, then another. So, ten years after I first heard about ITER, I ended up in France, on a project,” says the physicist. .

According to the Russian scientist, “each employee has his own story of getting into the project.” Whatever the “roads to the Sun” of its adherents, even after the shortest conversation with any of them it becomes clear that fans of their craft work here.

For example, American Mark Henderson is a specialist in plasma heating at ITER. He came to the meeting - short-haired, dry, wearing glasses - in the guise of one of the founders of Apple, Steve Jobs. Black shirt, faded jeans, sneakers. It turned out that the peculiar closeness of Henderson and Jobs is not limited to external similarity: both of them are dreamers, inspired by the idea of ​​​​changing the world with their invention.

“We, as humanity, are increasingly dependent on resources and do nothing but consume them. Is our collective intelligence equivalent to the collective intelligence of a bowl of yeast? We need to think about the next generations. We need to start dreaming again,” Henderson is convinced.

And they think, dream, and bring to life the most incredible and fantastic ideas. And no issues on the foreign policy agenda can interfere with the work of scientists: disagreements will sooner or later end, and the heat obtained as a result of a thermonuclear reaction will warm everyone, regardless of the continent and state.

ITER (ITER, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, "International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor") is a large-scale scientific and technical project aimed at building the first international experimental thermonuclear reactor.

Implemented by seven main partners (European Union, India, China, Republic of Korea, Russia, USA, Japan) in Cadarache (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, France). ITER is based on a tokamak installation (named after its first letters: a toroidal chamber with magnetic coils), which is considered the most promising device for implementing controlled thermonuclear fusion. The first tokamak was built in the Soviet Union in 1954.

The goal of the project is to demonstrate that fusion energy can be used on an industrial scale. ITER should generate energy through a fusion reaction with heavy hydrogen isotopes at temperatures above 100 million degrees.

It is assumed that 1 g of fuel (a mixture of deuterium and tritium) that will be used in the installation will provide the same amount of energy as 8 tons of oil. The estimated thermonuclear power of ITER is 500 MW.

Experts say that a reactor of this type is much safer than current nuclear power plants (NPPs), and seawater can provide fuel for it in almost unlimited quantities. Thus, the successful implementation of ITER will provide an inexhaustible source of environmentally friendly energy.

Project history

The reactor concept was developed at the Institute of Atomic Energy named after. I.V.Kurchatova. In 1978, the USSR put forward the idea of ​​​​implementing the project at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). An agreement on the implementation of the project was reached in 1985 in Geneva during negotiations between the USSR and the USA.

The program was later approved by the IAEA. In 1987, the project received its current name, and in 1988, a governing body was created - the ITER Council. In 1988-1990 Soviet, American, Japanese and European scientists and engineers carried out a conceptual study of the project.

On July 21, 1992, in Washington, the EU, Russia, the USA and Japan signed an agreement on the development of the ITER technical project, which was completed in 2001. In 2002-2005. South Korea, China and India joined the project. The agreement to build the first international experimental fusion reactor was signed in Paris on November 21, 2006.

A year later, on November 7, 2007, an agreement was signed on the construction site of ITER, according to which the reactor will be located in France, at the Cadarache nuclear center near Marseille. The control and data processing center will be located in Naka (Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan).

Preparation of the construction site in Cadarache began in January 2007, and full-scale construction began in 2013. The complex will be located on an area of ​​180 hectares. The reactor, 60 m high and weighing 23 thousand tons, will be located on a site 1 km long and 400 m wide. Work on its construction is coordinated by the International Organization ITER, created in October 2007.

The cost of the project is estimated at 15 billion euros, of which the EU (through Euratom) accounts for 45.4%, and six other participants (including the Russian Federation) contribute 9.1% each. Since 1994, Kazakhstan has also been participating in the project under Russia’s quota.

The reactor elements will be delivered by ship to the Mediterranean coast of France and from there transported by special caravans to the Cadarache region. To this end, in 2013, sections of existing roads were significantly re-equipped, bridges were strengthened, new crossings and tracks with especially strong surfaces were built. In the period from 2014 to 2019, at least three dozen super-heavy road trains should pass along the fortified road.

Plasma diagnostic systems for ITER will be developed in Novosibirsk. An agreement on this was signed on January 27, 2014 by the director of the International Organization ITER Osamu Motojima and the head of the national agency ITER in the Russian Federation Anatoly Krasilnikov.

The development of a diagnostic complex within the framework of the new agreement is being carried out on the basis of the Physico-Technical Institute named after. A.F. Ioffe Russian Academy of Sciences.

It is expected that the reactor will go into operation in 2020, the first nuclear fusion reactions will be carried out on it no earlier than 2027. In 2037 it is planned to complete the experimental part of the project and by 2040 to switch to electricity production. According to preliminary forecasts of experts, the industrial version of the reactor will be ready no earlier than 2060, and a series of reactors of this type can only be created by the end of the 21st century.

Fusion power plant.

Currently, scientists are working on the creation of a thermonuclear power plant, the advantage of which is to provide humanity with electricity for an unlimited time. A thermonuclear power plant operates on the basis of thermonuclear fusion - the reaction of synthesis of heavy hydrogen isotopes with the formation of helium and the release of energy. The thermonuclear fusion reaction does not produce gaseous or liquid radioactive waste and does not produce plutonium, which is used to produce nuclear weapons. If we also take into account that the fuel for thermonuclear stations will be the heavy hydrogen isotope deuterium, which is obtained from simple water - half a liter of water contains fusion energy equivalent to that obtained by burning a barrel of gasoline - then the advantages of power plants based on thermonuclear reactions become obvious .

During a thermonuclear reaction, energy is released when light atoms combine and transform into heavier ones. To achieve this, it is necessary to heat the gas to a temperature of over 100 million degrees - much higher than the temperature at the center of the Sun.

Gas at this temperature turns into plasma. At the same time, atoms of hydrogen isotopes merge, turning into helium atoms and neutrons and releasing a large amount of energy. A commercial power plant operating on this principle would use the energy of neutrons moderated by a layer of dense material (lithium).

Compared to a nuclear power plant, a fusion reactor will leave behind much less radioactive waste.

International thermonuclear reactor ITER

Participants in the international consortium to create the world's first thermonuclear reactor, ITER, signed an agreement in Brussels that launches the practical implementation of the project.

Representatives of the European Union, the United States, Japan, China, South Korea and Russia intend to begin construction of the experimental reactor in 2007 and complete it within eight years. If everything goes according to plan, then by 2040 a demonstration power plant operating on the new principle could be built.

I would like to believe that the era of environmentally hazardous hydroelectric and nuclear power plants will soon end, and the time will come for a new power plant - a thermonuclear one, the project of which is already being implemented. But, despite the fact that the ITER (International Thermonuclear Reactor) project is almost ready; Despite the fact that already at the first operating experimental thermonuclear reactors a power exceeding 10 MW was obtained - the level of the first nuclear power plants, the first thermonuclear power plant will not start working earlier than in twenty years, because its cost is very high. The cost of the work is estimated at 10 billion euros - this is the most expensive international power plant project. Half of the costs of constructing the reactor are covered by the European Union. Other consortium participants will allocate 10% of the estimate.

Now the plan for the construction of the reactor, which will become the most expensive joint scientific project ever, must be ratified by parliamentarians of the consortium member countries.

The reactor will be built in the southern French province of Provence, in the vicinity of the city of Cadarache, where the French nuclear research center is located.

How did it all start? The “energy challenge” arose as a result of a combination of the following three factors:

1. Humanity now consumes a huge amount of energy.

Currently, the world's energy consumption is about 15.7 terawatts (TW). Dividing this value by the world population, we get approximately 2400 watts per person, which can be easily estimated and visualized. The energy consumed by every inhabitant of the Earth (including children) corresponds to the round-the-clock operation of 24 hundred-watt electric lamps. However, the consumption of this energy across the planet is very uneven, as it is very large in several countries and negligible in others. Consumption (in terms of one person) is equal to 10.3 kW in the USA (one of the record values), 6.3 kW in the Russian Federation, 5.1 kW in the UK, etc., but, on the other hand, it is equal only 0.21 kW in Bangladesh (only 2% of US energy consumption!).

2. World energy consumption is increasing dramatically.

According to the International Energy Agency (2006), global energy consumption is expected to increase by 50% by 2030. Developed countries could, of course, do just fine without additional energy, but this growth is necessary to lift people out of poverty in developing countries, where 1.5 billion people suffer from severe power shortages.

3. Currently, 80% of the world's energy comes from burning fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas), the use of which:
a) potentially poses a risk of catastrophic environmental changes;
b) must inevitably end someday.

From what has been said, it is clear that now we must prepare for the end of the era of using fossil fuels

Currently, nuclear power plants produce energy released during fission reactions of atomic nuclei on a large scale. The creation and development of such stations should be encouraged in every possible way, but it must be taken into account that the reserves of one of the most important materials for their operation (cheap uranium) can also be completely used up within the next 50 years. The possibilities of nuclear fission-based energy can (and should) be significantly expanded through the use of more efficient energy cycles, allowing the amount of energy produced to almost double. To develop energy in this direction, it is necessary to create thorium reactors (the so-called thorium breeder reactors or breeder reactors), in which the reaction produces more thorium than the original uranium, as a result of which the total amount of energy produced for a given amount of substance increases by 40 times . It also seems promising to create plutonium breeders using fast neutrons, which are much more efficient than uranium reactors and can produce 60 times more energy. It may be that to develop these areas it will be necessary to develop new, non-standard methods for obtaining uranium (for example, from sea water, which seems to be the most accessible).

Fusion power plants

The figure shows a schematic diagram (not to scale) of the device and operating principle of a thermonuclear power plant. In the central part there is a toroidal (donut-shaped) chamber with a volume of ~2000 m3, filled with tritium-deuterium (T-D) plasma heated to a temperature above 100 M°C. The neutrons produced during the fusion reaction (1) leave the “magnetic bottle” and enter the shell shown in the figure with a thickness of about 1 m.

Inside the shell, neutrons collide with lithium atoms, resulting in a reaction that produces tritium:

neutron + lithium → helium + tritium

In addition, competing reactions occur in the system (without the formation of tritium), as well as many reactions with the release of additional neutrons, which then also lead to the formation of tritium (in this case, the release of additional neutrons can be significantly enhanced, for example, by introducing beryllium atoms into the shell and lead). The overall conclusion is that this facility could (at least theoretically) undergo a nuclear fusion reaction that would produce tritium. In this case, the amount of tritium produced should not only meet the needs of the installation itself, but also be even somewhat larger, which will make it possible to supply new installations with tritium. It is this operating concept that must be tested and implemented in the ITER reactor described below.

In addition, neutrons must heat the shell in so-called pilot plants (in which relatively “ordinary” construction materials will be used) to approximately 400°C. In the future, it is planned to create improved installations with a shell heating temperature above 1000°C, which can be achieved through the use of the latest high-strength materials (such as silicon carbide composites). The heat generated in the shell, as in conventional stations, is taken by the primary cooling circuit with a coolant (containing, for example, water or helium) and transferred to the secondary circuit, where water steam is produced and supplied to the turbines.

1985 - The Soviet Union proposed the next generation Tokamak plant, using the experience of four leading countries in creating fusion reactors. The United States of America, together with Japan and the European Community, put forward a proposal for the implementation of the project.

Currently, in France, construction is underway on the international experimental thermonuclear reactor ITER (International Tokamak Experimental Reactor), described below, which will be the first tokamak capable of “igniting” plasma.

The most advanced existing tokamak installations have long reached temperatures of about 150 M°C, close to the values ​​​​required for the operation of a fusion station, but the ITER reactor should be the first large-scale power plant designed for long-term operation. In the future, it will be necessary to significantly improve its operating parameters, which will require, first of all, increasing the pressure in the plasma, since the rate of nuclear fusion at a given temperature is proportional to the square of the pressure. The main scientific problem in this case is related to the fact that when the pressure in the plasma increases, very complex and dangerous instabilities arise, that is, unstable operating modes.

Why do we need this?

The main advantage of nuclear fusion is that it requires only very small amounts of substances that are very common in nature as fuel. The nuclear fusion reaction in the described installations can lead to the release of enormous amounts of energy, ten million times higher than the standard heat released during conventional chemical reactions (such as the combustion of fossil fuels). For comparison, we point out that the amount of coal required to power a thermal power plant with a capacity of 1 gigawatt (GW) is 10,000 tons per day (ten railway cars), and a fusion plant of the same power will consume only about 1 kilogram of the D+T mixture per day .

Deuterium is a stable isotope of hydrogen; In about one out of every 3,350 molecules of ordinary water, one of the hydrogen atoms is replaced by deuterium (a legacy from the Big Bang). This fact makes it easy to organize fairly cheap production of the required amount of deuterium from water. It is more difficult to obtain tritium, which is unstable (half-life is about 12 years, as a result of which its content in nature is negligible), however, as shown above, tritium will appear directly inside the thermonuclear installation during operation, due to the reaction of neutrons with lithium.

Thus, the initial fuel for a fusion reactor is lithium and water. Lithium is a common metal widely used in household appliances (cell phone batteries, etc.). The installation described above, even taking into account non-ideal efficiency, will be able to produce 200,000 kWh of electrical energy, which is equivalent to the energy contained in 70 tons of coal. The amount of lithium required for this is contained in one computer battery, and the amount of deuterium is in 45 liters of water. The above value corresponds to the current electricity consumption (calculated per person) in the EU countries over 30 years. The very fact that such an insignificant amount of lithium can ensure the generation of such an amount of electricity (without CO2 emissions and without the slightest air pollution) is a fairly serious argument for the fastest and most vigorous development of thermonuclear energy (despite all the difficulties and problems) and even without one hundred percent confidence in the success of such research.

Deuterium should last for millions of years, and reserves of easily mined lithium are sufficient to supply needs for hundreds of years. Even if lithium in rocks runs out, we can extract it from water, where it is found in concentrations high enough (100 times the concentration of uranium) to make its extraction economically viable.

An experimental thermonuclear reactor (International thermonuclear experimental reactor) is being built near the city of Cadarache in France. The main goal of the ITER project is to implement a controlled thermonuclear fusion reaction on an industrial scale.

Per unit weight of thermonuclear fuel, about 10 million times more energy is obtained than when burning the same amount of organic fuel, and about a hundred times more than when splitting uranium nuclei in the reactors of currently operating nuclear power plants. If the calculations of scientists and designers come true, this will give humanity an inexhaustible source of energy.

Therefore, a number of countries (Russia, India, China, Korea, Kazakhstan, USA, Canada, Japan, European Union countries) joined forces in creating the International Thermonuclear Research Reactor - a prototype of new power plants.

ITER is a facility that creates conditions for the synthesis of hydrogen and tritium atoms (an isotope of hydrogen), resulting in the formation of a new atom - a helium atom. This process is accompanied by a huge burst of energy: the temperature of the plasma in which the thermonuclear reaction occurs is about 150 million degrees Celsius (for comparison, the temperature of the Sun’s core is 40 million degrees). In this case, the isotopes burn out, leaving virtually no radioactive waste.
The scheme of participation in the international project provides for the supply of reactor components and financing of its construction. In exchange for this, each of the participating countries receives full access to all technologies for creating a thermonuclear reactor and to the results of all experimental work on this reactor, which will serve as the basis for the design of serial power thermonuclear reactors.

The reactor, based on the principle of thermonuclear fusion, has no radioactive radiation and is completely safe for the environment. It can be located almost anywhere in the world, and the fuel for it is ordinary water. Construction of ITER is expected to last about ten years, after which the reactor is expected to be in use for 20 years.

In the coming years, the interests of Russia in the Council of the International Organization for the Construction of the ITER Thermonuclear Reactor will be represented by Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Mikhail Kovalchuk, Director of the Russian Research Center Kurchatov Institute, Institute of Crystallography of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Scientific Secretary of the Presidential Council on Science, Technology and Education. Kovalchuk will temporarily replace academician Evgeniy Velikhov in this post, who was elected chairman of the ITER International Council for the next two years and does not have the right to combine this position with the duties of an official representative of a participating country.

The total cost of construction is estimated at 5 billion euros, and the same amount will be required for trial operation of the reactor. The shares of India, China, Korea, Russia, the USA and Japan each account for approximately 10 percent of the total value, 45 percent comes from the countries of the European Union. However, the European states have not yet agreed on how exactly the costs will be distributed between them. Because of this, the start of construction was postponed to April 2010. Despite the latest delay, scientists and officials involved in ITER say they will be able to complete the project by 2018.

The estimated thermonuclear power of ITER is 500 megawatts. Individual magnet parts reach a weight of 200 to 450 tons. To cool ITER, 33 thousand cubic meters of water per day will be required.

In 1998, the United States stopped funding its participation in the project. After the Republicans came to power and rolling blackouts began in California, the Bush administration announced increased investment in energy. The United States did not intend to participate in the international project and was engaged in its own thermonuclear project. In early 2002, President Bush's technology adviser John Marburger III said that the United States had changed its mind and intended to return to the project.

In terms of the number of participants, the project is comparable to another major international scientific project - the International Space Station. The cost of ITER, which previously reached 8 billion dollars, then amounted to less than 4 billion. As a result of the withdrawal of the United States from participation, it was decided to reduce the reactor power from 1.5 GW to 500 MW. Accordingly, the price of the project has also decreased.

In June 2002, the symposium “ITER Days in Moscow” was held in the Russian capital. It discussed the theoretical, practical and organizational problems of reviving the project, the success of which can change the fate of humanity and give it a new type of energy, comparable in efficiency and economy only to the energy of the Sun.

In July 2010, representatives of the countries participating in the ITER international thermonuclear reactor project approved its budget and construction schedule at an extraordinary meeting held in Cadarache, France. .

At the last extraordinary meeting, the project participants approved the start date for the first experiments with plasma - 2019. Full experiments are planned for March 2027, although the project management asked technical specialists to try to optimize the process and begin experiments in 2026. The meeting participants also decided on the costs of constructing the reactor, but the amounts planned to be spent on creating the installation were not disclosed. According to information received by the editor of the ScienceNOW portal from an unnamed source, by the time experiments begin, the cost of the ITER project could reach 16 billion euros.

The meeting in Cadarache also marked the first official working day for the new project director, Japanese physicist Osamu Motojima. Before him, the project had been led since 2005 by the Japanese Kaname Ikeda, who wished to leave his post immediately after the budget and construction deadlines were approved.

The ITER fusion reactor is a joint project of the European Union, Switzerland, Japan, USA, Russia, South Korea, China and India. The idea of ​​creating ITER has been under consideration since the 80s of the last century, however, due to financial and technical difficulties, the cost of the project is constantly growing, and the construction start date is constantly being postponed. In 2009, experts expected that work on creating the reactor would begin in 2010. Later, this date was moved, and first 2018 and then 2019 were named as the launch time of the reactor.

Thermonuclear fusion reactions are reactions of fusion of nuclei of light isotopes to form a heavier nucleus, which are accompanied by a huge release of energy. In theory, fusion reactors can produce a lot of energy at low cost, but at the moment scientists spend much more energy and money to start and maintain the fusion reaction.

Thermonuclear fusion is a cheap and environmentally friendly way to produce energy. Uncontrolled thermonuclear fusion has been occurring on the Sun for billions of years - helium is formed from the heavy hydrogen isotope deuterium. This releases a colossal amount of energy. However, people on Earth have not yet learned to control such reactions.

The ITER reactor will use hydrogen isotopes as fuel. During a thermonuclear reaction, energy is released when light atoms combine into heavier ones. To achieve this, the gas must be heated to a temperature of over 100 million degrees - much higher than the temperature at the center of the Sun. Gas at this temperature turns into plasma. At the same time, atoms of hydrogen isotopes merge, turning into helium atoms with the release of a large number of neutrons. A power plant operating on this principle will use the energy of neutrons slowed down by a layer of dense material (lithium).

Why did the creation of thermonuclear installations take so long?

Why have such important and valuable installations, the benefits of which have been discussed for almost half a century, not yet been created? There are three main reasons (discussed below), the first of which can be called external or social, and the other two - internal, that is, determined by the laws and conditions of the development of thermonuclear energy itself.

1. For a long time, it was believed that the problem of the practical use of thermonuclear fusion energy did not require urgent decisions and actions, since back in the 80s of the last century, fossil fuel sources seemed inexhaustible, and environmental problems and climate change did not concern the public. In 1976, the U.S. Department of Energy's Fusion Energy Advisory Committee attempted to estimate the time frame for R&D and a demonstration fusion power plant under various research funding options. At the same time, it was discovered that the volume of annual funding for research in this direction is completely insufficient, and if the existing level of appropriations is maintained, the creation of thermonuclear installations will never be successful, since the allocated funds do not correspond even to the minimum, critical level.

2. A more serious obstacle to the development of research in this area is that a thermonuclear installation of the type under discussion cannot be created and demonstrated on a small scale. From the explanations presented below, it will become clear that thermonuclear fusion requires not only magnetic confinement of the plasma, but also sufficient heating of it. The ratio of expended and received energy increases at least in proportion to the square of the linear dimensions of the installation, as a result of which the scientific and technical capabilities and advantages of thermonuclear installations can be tested and demonstrated only at fairly large stations, such as the mentioned ITER reactor. Society was simply not ready to finance such large projects until there was sufficient confidence in success.

3. The development of thermonuclear energy has been very complex, however (despite insufficient funding and difficulties in selecting centers for the creation of JET and ITER installations), clear progress has been observed in recent years, although an operating station has not yet been created.

The modern world is facing a very serious energy challenge, which can more accurately be called an “uncertain energy crisis.” The problem is related to the fact that reserves of fossil fuels may run out in the second half of this century. Moreover, burning fossil fuels may result in the need to somehow sequester and “store” the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere (the CCS program mentioned above) to prevent major changes in the planet’s climate.

Currently, almost all the energy consumed by humanity is created by burning fossil fuels, and the solution to the problem may be associated with the use of solar energy or nuclear energy (the creation of fast breeder reactors, etc.). The global problem caused by the growing population of developing countries and their need to improve living standards and increase the amount of energy produced cannot be solved on the basis of these approaches alone, although, of course, any attempts to develop alternative methods of energy production should be encouraged.

Strictly speaking, we have a small choice of behavioral strategies and the development of thermonuclear energy is extremely important, even despite the lack of a guarantee of success. The Financial Times newspaper (dated January 25, 2004) wrote about this:

Let's hope that there will be no major and unexpected surprises on the path to the development of thermonuclear energy. In this case, in about 30 years we will be able to supply electric current from it to energy networks for the first time, and in just over 10 years the first commercial thermonuclear power plant will begin to operate. It is possible that in the second half of this century, nuclear fusion energy will begin to replace fossil fuels and gradually begin to play an increasingly important role in providing energy to humanity on a global scale.

There is no absolute guarantee that the task of creating thermonuclear energy (as an effective and large-scale source of energy for all humanity) will be completed successfully, but the likelihood of success in this direction is quite high. Considering the enormous potential of thermonuclear stations, all costs for projects for their rapid (and even accelerated) development can be considered justified, especially since these investments look very modest against the backdrop of the monstrous global energy market ($4 trillion per year8). Meeting humanity's energy needs is a very serious problem. As fossil fuels become less available (and their use becomes undesirable), the situation is changing, and we simply cannot afford not to develop fusion energy.

To the question “When will thermonuclear energy appear?” Lev Artsimovich (a recognized pioneer and leader of research in this field) once responded that “it will be created when it becomes truly necessary for humanity”

ITER will be the first fusion reactor to produce more energy than it consumes. Scientists measure this characteristic using a simple coefficient they call "Q." If ITER achieves all its scientific goals, it will produce 10 times more energy than it consumes. The last device built, the Joint European Torus in England, is a smaller prototype fusion reactor that, in its final stages of scientific research, achieved a Q value of almost 1. This means that it produced exactly the same amount of energy as it consumed. ITER will go beyond this by demonstrating energy creation from fusion and achieving a Q value of 10. The idea is to generate 500 MW from an energy consumption of approximately 50 MW. Thus, one of the scientific goals of ITER is to prove that a Q value of 10 can be achieved.

Another scientific goal is that ITER will have a very long "burn" time - a pulse of extended duration up to one hour. ITER is a research experimental reactor that cannot produce energy continuously. When ITER starts operating, it will be on for one hour, after which it will need to be turned off. This is important because until now the standard devices we have created have been capable of having a burning time of several seconds or even tenths of a second - this is the maximum. The "Joint European Torus" reached its Q value of 1 with a burn time of approximately two seconds with a pulse length of 20 seconds. But a process that lasts a few seconds is not truly permanent. By analogy with starting a car engine: briefly turning on the engine and then turning it off is not yet real operation of the car. Only when you drive your car for half an hour will it reach a constant operating mode and demonstrate that such a car can really be driven.

That is, from a technical and scientific point of view, ITER will provide a Q value of 10 and an increased burn time.

The thermonuclear fusion program is truly international and broad in nature. People are already counting on the success of ITER and are thinking about the next step - creating a prototype of an industrial thermonuclear reactor called DEMO. To build it, ITER needs to work. We must achieve our scientific goals because this will mean that the ideas we put forward are entirely feasible. However, I agree that you should always think about what comes next. In addition, as ITER operates for 25-30 years, our knowledge will gradually deepen and expand, and we will be able to more accurately outline our next step.

Indeed, there is no debate about whether ITER should be a tokamak. Some scientists pose the question quite differently: should ITER exist? Experts in different countries, developing their own, not so large-scale thermonuclear projects, argue that such a large reactor is not needed at all.

However, their opinion should hardly be considered authoritative. Physicists who have been working with toroidal traps for several decades were involved in the creation of ITER. The design of the experimental thermonuclear reactor in Karadash was based on all the knowledge gained during experiments on dozens of predecessor tokamaks. And these results indicate that the reactor must be a tokamak, and a large one at that.

JET At the moment, the most successful tokamak can be considered JET, built by the EU in the British town of Abingdon. This is the largest tokamak-type reactor created to date, the large radius of the plasma torus is 2.96 meters. The power of the thermonuclear reaction has already reached more than 20 megawatts with a retention time of up to 10 seconds. The reactor returns about 40% of the energy put into the plasma.

It is the physics of plasma that determines the energy balance,” Igor Semenov told Infox.ru. MIPT associate professor described what energy balance is with a simple example: “We have all seen a fire burn. In fact, it is not wood that burns there, but gas. The energy chain there is like this: the gas burns, the wood heats, the wood evaporates, the gas burns again. Therefore, if we throw water on a fire, we will abruptly take energy from the system for the phase transition of liquid water into a vapor state. The balance will become negative and the fire will go out. There is another way - we can simply take the firebrands and spread them in space. The fire will also go out. It’s the same in the thermonuclear reactor we are building. The dimensions are chosen to create an appropriate positive energy balance for this reactor. Sufficient to build a real nuclear power plant in the future, solving at this experimental stage all the problems that currently remain unresolved.”

The dimensions of the reactor were changed once. This happened at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries, when the United States withdrew from the project, and the remaining members realized that the ITER budget (by that time it was estimated at 10 billion US dollars) was too large. Physicists and engineers were required to reduce the cost of installation. And this could only be done due to size. The “redesign” of ITER was led by the French physicist Robert Aymar, who previously worked on the French Tore Supra tokamak in Karadash. The outer radius of the plasma torus has been reduced from 8.2 to 6.3 meters. However, the risks associated with the reduction in size were partly compensated for by several additional superconducting magnets, which made it possible to implement the plasma confinement mode, which was open and studied at that time.