How much does the ITER tokamak cost?

ITER is designed to show net energy output can be achieved, but it comes at a high cost—estimates start at about $25 billion for its construction—because of the complexity of the reactor and the huge superconducting magnets required to keep the hot gases in place.

How much does a tokamak reactor cost?

The initial budget was close to €6 billion, but the total price of construction and operations is projected to be from €18 to €22 billion; other estimates place the total cost between $45 billion and $65 billion, though these figures are disputed by ITER.

How much does the ITER reactor cost?

ITER is now expected to cost at least $21 billion and won't turn on until 2020 at the earliest. And a recent review slammed ITER's management. The cost of the U.S. contribution has increased, too, although by how much has been unclear.

How much does it cost to build a tokamak?

Laurent Schmieder, head of construction at ITER, said by 2019 the building that will house the so-called tokamak fusion reactor will be complete. The cost of the buildings alone at the complex will be about 2 billion euros, he said.

How much does a nuclear fusion plant cost?

Projected Nuclear Power Plant Construction Costs Are Soaring

Companies that are planning new nuclear units are currently indicating that the total costs (including escalation and financing costs) will be in the range of $5,500/kW to $8,100/kW or between $6 billion and $9 billion for each 1,100 MW plant.

ITER: The $65BN Power Plant of the Future

Is ITER a failure?

This, together with our incomplete knowledge of what to expect in the thermonuclear regime, makes ITER a risky project, whose failure could cause irreparable harm to the credibility of nuclear fusion.

Will ITER succeed?

Although the successful operation of ITER, still more than 6 years away, will be considered a major breakthrough for fusion energy, the new road map from the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA) includes a daunting list of the technical hurdles that fusion scientists and engineers still face over the next few ...

Can ITER explode?

"A nuclear explosion in ITER is simply not possible," says Loughlin. Loughlin went on to address the subject of radioactivity. During fusion, neutrons escape the plasma at high speeds and activate the surrounding walls.

How expensive is fusion power?

12, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- New research published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, demonstrates that inertial confinement fusion could deliver a Levelised Cost Of Energy (LCOE) as low as $25/MWh compared with $100/MWh for nuclear energy and up to $50/MWh for onshore wind.

Are fusion reactors expensive?

Six years later, the ITER Council approved the first comprehensive design of a fusion reactor based on well-established physics and technology with a price tag of $6 billion.

Is ITER still under construction?

The ITER Project is currently under construction on a 180-hectare site in southern France. Thirty-nine buildings and technical areas house the ITER Tokamak and its plant systems.

Is cold fusion possible?

There is currently no accepted theoretical model that would allow cold fusion to occur.

Is nuclear fusion cheap?

Electricity generated through fusion has no emissions, minimal waste, and there is no risk of out-of-control meltdowns like Chernobyl. The fuel, derived from helium or hydrogen, is cheap and plentiful. That's the theory.

Will ITER run continuously?

DEMO, a tokamak adapted from the ITER design which would also cost billions of euros, is intended to produce several hundred megawatts of electricity for the grid. To do so, it must run continuously for hours, days or ideally years at a time, as opposed to ITER, which will operate in bursts lasting just a few minutes.

Could a fusion reactor create a black hole?

So in short: No. Nuclear fission cannot generate black holes. Nor could nuclear fusion reactors (if they ever become feasible). However, micro-black holes ARE possible (in theory), but if one did form, it wouldn't be able to do any damage to Earth.

How big is a tokamak?

830 cubic metres. The ITER Tokamak will be the largest ever built, with a plasma volume of 830 cubic metres.

Will ITER produce nuclear waste?

No long-lived waste

Fusion reactors, unlike fission reactors, produce no high activity/long life radioactive waste. The "burnt" fuel in a fusion reactor is helium, an inert gas.

Will the tokamak work?

Tokamaks are not currently in use for energy production, as scientists still have to overcome the threshold of being able to create more energy than is used to start and maintain the fusion process. It is hoped that the ITER tokamak, which is being constructed in France, will be able to achieve this.

What happens if tokamak fails?

If any of the systems fail (such as the confining toroidal magnetic field) or if, by accident, too much fuel is put into the plasma, the plasma will naturally terminate (what we call “disrupt”) – losing its energy very quickly and extinguishing before any sustained damage is done to the structure.

Is fusion cheaper than solar?

The very high energy density of the fusion reaction — higher than fission, gas and coal, and vastly higher than solar, wind or hydro — means fusion plants will have small, efficient footprints and thus lower costs.

Is nuclear fusion cheaper than coal?

A fusion power plant producing 1 gigawatt (1 billion watts) of power would cost $2.7 billion, while a coal plant of the same output would cost $2.8 billion, according to their analysis.

How hot does nuclear fusion get?

In a nuclear fusion reactor, the hot, charged gas known as plasma reaches out of this world temperatures at 150 million degrees Celsius, or 10 times hotter than the center of the sun.

Is LENR possible?

The nuclear reaction called cold fusion or low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) has been rejected by conventional science for 25 years.

How far off is fusion?

There's huge uncertainty about when fusion power will be ready for commercialisation. One estimate suggests maybe 20 years. Then fusion would need to scale up, which would mean a delay of perhaps another few decades.

How much energy does the tokamak produce?

It will produce a field of 13 tesla, equivalent to 280,000 times the Earth's magnetic field.