The world's most complex machine, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a project to prove that fusion power can be produced on a commercial scale, is now 50 per cent built, it was announced on Wednesday.

Carbon-free and environmentally sustainable fusion is the same energy source from the sun that gives the earth its light and warmth.

ITER, the most complex science project in human history, will use hydrogen fusion, controlled by superconducting magnets, to produce massive heat energy.

ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor and Latin for "the way" is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject, which will be the world's largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment. It is an experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor that is being built next to the Cadarache facility in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, in southern France.

The ITER fusion reactor has been designed to produce a fusion plasma equivalent to 500 megawatts of thermal output power for around twenty minutes while 50 megawatts of thermal power are injected into the tokamak, resulting in a ten-fold gain of plasma heating power. Thereby the machine aims to demonstrate the principle of producing more thermal power from the fusion process than is used to heat the plasma, something that has not yet been achieved in any fusion reactor.

Scientists say a pineapple-sized amount of hydrogen offers as much fusion energy as 10,000 tonnes of fossil fuel coal.

The ITER will produce 500 megawatts of thermal power.

This size of the plant is suitable for studying "burning" or largely self-heating plasma, a state of matter that has never been produced in a controlled environment on earth.

In "burning" plasma, most of the plasma heating comes from the fusion reaction itself. Studying the fusion science and technology at ITER's scale will enable optimization of the plants that follow.

A commercial fusion plant will be designed with a slightly larger plasma chamber, for 10-15 times more electrical power. A 2,000-megawatt fusion electricity plant, for example, would supply two million homes.

The concept of the project was conceived at the 1985 Geneva Summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.

When the ITER Agreement was signed in 2006, it was supported by leaders like French President Jacques Chirac, US President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The ITER project is funded and run by seven member countries

1.European Union
2.China
3.India
4.Japan
5.Korea
6.Russia
7.US

The ITER project cost is about $22 billion. The European Union is paying 45 per cent of the cost; China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the US each contribute 9 per cent equally. ITER's member countries finance the manufacturing of project components via their own national companies, shipping the parts for assembly at the reactor's site at Cadarache, in southern France.

All members share in ITER's technology; they receive equal access to the intellectual property and innovation that comes from building the ITER.

20 billion dollars! Some God forsaken homospients would happily loot that money for their selfish interests. Is Africa truely cursed?

THE ITER FUSION REACTOR - WORLDS LARGEST TOKAMAK

ITER International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor consists of

Vacuum vessel

The vacuum vessel is the central part of the ITER machine: a double walled steel container in which the plasma is contained by means of magnetic fields.

The ITER vacuum vessel will be twice as large and 16 times as heavy as any previously manufactured fusion vessel: each of the nine torus shaped sectors will weigh between 390 and 430 tonnes. When all the shielding and port structures are included, this adds up to a total of 5,116 tonnes. Its external diameter will measure 19.4 metres (64 ft), the internal 6.5 metres (21 ft). Once assembled, the whole structure will be 11.3 metres (37 ft) high.

The primary function of the vacuum vessel is to provide a hermetically sealed plasma container. Its main components are the main vessel, the port structures and the supporting system. The main vessel is a double walled structure with poloidal and toroidal stiffening ribs between 60-millimetre-thick (2.4 in) shells to reinforce the vessel structure. These ribs also form the flow passages for the cooling water. The space between the double walls will be filled with shield structures made of stainless steel. The inner surfaces of the vessel will act as the interface with breeder modules containing the breeder blanket component. These modules will provide shielding from the high-energy neutrons produced by the fusion reactions and some will also be used for tritium breeding concepts.

The vacuum vessel has 18 upper, 17 equatorial and 9 lower ports that will be used for remote handling operations, diagnostic systems, neutral beam injections and vacuum pumping.

Breeder blanket

Owing to very limited terrestrial resources of tritium, a key component of the ITER reactor design is the breeder blanket. This component, located adjacent to the vacuum vessel, serves to produce tritium through reaction of 6Li isotopes with high energy neutrons from the plasma. Concepts for the breeder blanket include helium cooled lithium lead (HCLL) and helium cooled pebble bed (HCPB) methods. Test blanket modules based on both concepts will be tested in ITER and will share a common box geometry. Materials for use as breeder pebbles in the HCPB concept include lithium metatitanate and lithium orthosilicate. Requirements of breeder materials include good tritium production and extraction, mechanical stability and low activation levels.

Magnet system

The central solenoid coil will use superconducting niobium-tin to carry 46 kA and produce a field of up to 13.5 teslas. The 18 toroidal field coils will also use niobium-tin. At their maximum field strength of 11.8 teslas, they will be able to store 41 gigajoules. They have been tested at a record 80 kA. Other lower field ITER magnets (PF and CC) will use niobium-titanium for their superconducting elements. As of now the in-wall shielding blocks to protect the magnets from high energy neutrons are being manufactured and transported from the Avasarala technologies in Bangalore India to the ITER center.

Additional heating

There will be three types of external heating in ITER:

Two Heating Neutral Beam injectors (HNB), each providing about 17MW to the burning plasma, with the possibility to add a third one. The requirements in terms of deuterium beam energy (1MeV), total current (40A) and beam pulse duration (up to 1h). The prototype is being built at the Neutral Beam Test Facility (NBTF) prototype is being constructed in Padova
Ion Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ICRH)
Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH)

Cryostat

The cryostat is a large 3,800-tonne stainless steel structure surrounding the vacuum vessel and the superconducting magnets, in order to provide a super-cool vacuum environment. Its thickness ranging from 50 to 250 mm will allow it to withstand the atmospheric pressure on the area of a volume of 8,500 cubic meters. The total of 54 modules of the cryostat will be engineered, procured, manufactured, and installed by Larsen & Toubro Heavy Engineering India.

Cooling systems

The ITER tokamak will use three interconnected cooling systems. Most of the heat will be removed by a primary water cooling loop, itself cooled by water through a heat exchanger within the tokamak building's secondary confinement. The secondary cooling loop will be cooled by a larger complex, comprising a cooling tower, a 5 km pipeline supplying water from Canal de Provence, and basins that allow cooling water to be cooled and tested for chemical contamination and tritium before being released into the Durance River. This system will need to dissipate an average power of 450 MW during the tokamak's operation. A liquid nitrogen system will provide a further 1,300 kW of cooling to 80 kelvins, and a liquid helium system will provide 75 kW of cooling to 4.5 K. The liquid helium system will be designed, manufactured, installed and commissioned by Air Liquide.

ITER project and fun facts

ITER (International Thermonuclear Energy Reactor) is a joint international research and development project that aims to demonstrate the scientific and technical feasibility of fusion power.

The aim of ITER is to show fusion could be used to generate electrical power, and to gain the necessary data to design and operate the first electricity-producing plant.

The partners in the ITER project are the European Union (represented by EURATOM), Japan, the People’s Republic of China, India, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the USA.

ITER is a tokamak, in which strong magnetic fields confine a torus-shaped fusion plasma. The device’s main aim is to demonstrate prolonged fusion power production in deuterium-tritium plasma.

The ITER device is based on the tokamak concept, in which a hot gas is confined in a torus-shaped vessel using a magnetic field. The gas is heated to over 100 million degrees, and will produce 500 MW of fusion power.

The ITER Tokamak will be nearly 30 metres tall, and weigh 23,000 tons. The ITER Tokamak is made up of an estimated one million parts.

ITER will consume about 16 kg of tritium over its 20 year life, and thus need 17.5 kg to be delivered to the site taking account of radioactive decay. During the first 10 years of operation the need is about 7 kg.

If all goes well with the operation of ITER and the construction of the first electricity-generating plant that follows it, the first reliable commercially available electrical power from fusion should be available around 2045.

100,000 kilometres of niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) superconducting strands are necessary for ITER's toroidal field magnets.Stretched end to end, the Nb3Sn strand produced for ITER would wrap around the Earth at the equator twice.

The temperature at our Sun's surface is 6,000°C, and at its core—15 million°C. Temperature combines with density in our Sun's core to create the conditions necessary for the fusion reaction to occur. The gravitational forces of our stars can not be recreated here on Earth, and much higher temperatures are necessary in the laboratory to compensate. In the ITER Tokamak, temperatures will reach 150 million°C—or ten times the temperature at the core of our Sun.

The ITER machine will weigh 23,000 tonnes. The metal contained in the Eiffel Tower (7,300 tonnes) can't compare ... the ITER Tokamak will be as heavy as three Eiffel Towers. The vacuum vessel alone, with its ports, blanket and divertor, weighs 8,000 tonnes. Approximately one million components will be integrated into this complex machine.

Some 400,000 tonnes will rest on the lower basemat of the Tokamak Complex, including the buildings, the 23,000-tonne machine and equipment. 400,000 tonnes—that's more than the weight of New York's Empire State Building.

Every one of the ITER Tokamak's 18 D-shaped toroidal field coils will weigh 310 tonnes. The coils will be unloaded from ocean-going vessels before being transported along the ITER Itinerary on radio-controlled transporters. 310 tonnes is the approximate weight of a fully loaded Boeing 747-300 airplane. Each toroidal field coil is 17 metres high and 9 metres wide.

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iamnlia:
Hello Sir,
Can I copy your post for my site?

sure


Some of you might be wondering why the need for sensing the thermal differential within the target. Generally the ability to differentiate between the the thermal signature of the target against the background thermal signature should be enough.

But it becomes important because of the need for
1. The ability to engage via top attack mode or direct attack mode via profiling the thermal variation between the turret and the hull.

2. The ability to defeat soft counter measures like IR/thermal signature suppressing camouflage/paint.

3. The ability to detect and hit targets with a very low thermal contrast vis a vis the surroundings to the tune of a mere 0.2 degree Celsius. This is achieved in part by the efficient real-time image processing algorithms and high end onboard integrated electronics (INEL), which with the IIR seeker can even detect and resolve the differential residual latent thermal signatures of the target. Eg smoke exhaust, the engine block, side skirts etc.





I will post it here

First things first.

There is no heaven or hell after death

Look around u , everything from living things to non living things , be it at quantum level, be it at cosmological level , everything follows a set of patterns - a set of rules , even chaos is deterministic.

Then why should there be a break in the general scheme of things of the whole universe ?

Isn't it crazy to keep propogating a idea which is brainwashed into us via religious groundings, societal and family groundings.

Just becz people in the dark ages came up with some assumptions to get people in line regarding the moral standing of a human being ie what is right and what is wrong . And every body kept repeating it generations after generations that now it is the truth.

How u look at things, is what matters the most.

On a energy level

I love this particularly, where it is sited. OR maybe because many super countries are part of it.

This reduces fear of what may become of the plant.

This is one super project, reminds me of the types I see in space sci-fi movies

wow!

Indian Made Cryostat Installation at ITER fusion reactor

In a 5,000-square-metre workshop on site, the Indian L&T is assembling the cryostat—a huge vacuum containment vessel that is also the single largest component of the ITER machine.

Completely surrounding the vacuum vessel and superconducting magnets, the 29 x 29 metre cryostat has two important roles to play—providing a vacuum environment to critical "cold" components (the magnets operating at 4.5 K and thermal shield operating at 80 K), and contributing structural reinforcement by supporting the mass of the machine and transferring horizontal and rotational forces to the radial walls.

The cryostat is a fully welded single wall stainless steel structure with a flat bottom, a rounded lid and wall thicknesses that range from 25 to 200 millimetres. A number of large openings provide access to vacuum vessel ports at three levels; others allow access for coolant pipework, cryo and current feedlines, and remote handling. Advanced welding techniques such as automated, all-position narrow groove gas tungsten arc welding have been specially developed for the fabrication of this challenging component.

Manufacturing is taking place in three stages:
1. The fabrication of 54 segments in India;

2. Their subsequent assembly at ITER into four large sections (base, lower cylinder, upper cylinder, top lid)

3. And the final assembly and welding of the large sections in the Tokamak Pit.

The cryostat is a vacuum-tight container that will completely surround the machine and provide an ultra-cool vacuum environment for the vacuum vessel and superconducting magnets. Welding operations are underway now on the cryostat base and lower cylinder, two of the four large sections that will be assembled and welded on site.

Cryostat segments fabricated in India are shipped according to need dates to the ITER site and stored in the Cryostat Workshop.

Beginning with the cryostat base—the first cryostat section needed in the Tokamak assembly sequence—and ending with the cryostat lid, the sections are assembled and welded on large assembly frames. These frames act both as support platforms during the welding activities and as support fixtures that interface with the transport vehicles when the time comes to move the completed components out of the workshop.

Using optical metrology techniques and strict dimensional control, operators carefully align the segments to be welded on the assembly frames. A small team of highly specialized technicians—working singly or in teams (one above, one below)—fill the gaps between each segment with weld material. Given the importance of high vacuum in the cryostat, each weld is verified through a variety of leak detection techniques.

In helium leak detection, one-metre sections of the weld to be verified are "enclosed" within leak-tight boxes positioned on opposite surfaces. Helium injected on one side of the weld can be detected—if it has filtered through a crack—by a mass spectrometer on the other side, thereby signalling a leak that must be repaired by grinding out the faulty weld and replacing it.

Three other quality assurance techniques will be used: radiographic and ultrasonic testing to detect the presence of flaws that could challenge the structural integrity of the welds, and liquid penetrant testing (LPT) for surface checks.

In total, the Indian Domestic Agency estimates that one kilometre of full penetration weld joints will have to be carried out to exacting standards for the sub-assemblies in the site workshop, followed by several hundred metres of weld joints to assemble the cryostat sections in the Tokamak Pit.

It took approximately three years (2016 to 2019) to finalize the on-site assembly and welding operations for the cryostat base—a 1,250-tonne component formed from a tier 1 "disk" and a tier 2 vertical ring and pedestal.

On an adjacent assembly platform, the less-complex lower cylinder (490 tonnes) was assembled in two years (2017 to 2019) and removed to storage on the platform to make room for the assembly of the upper cylinder, which was completed in March 2020. The steel segments required for top lid assembly are expected on site in mid-2020.

India handed over crucial Parts for ITER - The Upper Cylinder, one of the four major sections of the Cryostat, weighing nearly 430 tons, has been completely manufactured along with sub-assembly, and handed over to ITER Organization, France.

With the completion 3 of 4 sections of the Cryostat viz. Base Section, Lower Cylinder, Upper Cylinder, now the Cryostat manufacturing is 80% complete.

The Base Section previously handed over by India to IO, has now been moved into the ITER Assembly Hall, initiating preparations for its installation in the Tokamak pit soon.

The Indian designed and manufactured Cryostat when fully manufactured and assembled will be the largest vessel of its kind in the world. It is the outer vacuum boundary of the ITER Tokamak.

Pics of the on-site installation and integration process of Cryostat built in India for ITER by L&T India .

1. Lifting Operation of Cryostat Base Section ~1250 tons.

2. Cryostat Base Section being lowered in the Tokamak pit.

3. Cryostat Base Section positioned in the Tokamak Pit1.

4. Cryostat Base Section positioned in the Tokamak Pit2.

List of some of contribution of Indian R & D and manufacturing for ITER as part of its work share.

1. Cryostat : 30 m high and 30 m diameter Outer vacuum shell of ITER.

2. Cryolines and cryo distribution system : 4 km cryolines, 7 km warm lines and 7 cryodistribution boxes for ITER cryo-plants of capacities 75 kW at 4.5K, 1 MW at 80K & their supply.

3. In wall shielding : ~80 % volume between the two shells of vacuum vessel is filled with borated steel (SS304B4, SS304B7) and ferritic steel for neutron shielding and reducing toroidal field ripple. Requires ~9000 blocks from 70,000 precision cut plates.

4. ITER Cooling water & Heat Rejection System :

a. 10 cells of Cooling Tower : Avg. 510 MW : Highest heat rejection capacity – Peak ~ 1.2 GW.

b. 14 Plate type Heat Exchanger: 70 MW each: Possibly at the highest range of design.

c. 6 Air cooled Chillers: 450 kW each: First, with requirement of seismic qualification for nuclear site.

5. ICRF source system :

9 RF sources : 2.5 MW at VSWR 2.0/35-65MHz/CW OR 3.0 MW at VSWR 1.5/40-55MHz/CW

6. Diagnostic neutral beam system : Detect He ash during D-T phase of ITER plasma and plasma diagnostics using 100 keV 20 A H neutral beam @ 20.7 m from the ion source. This requires extracting and accelerating 100 keV 60 A H- beam from the ion source at an extracted current density of 35 mA/cm2.

7. Power supplies for DNB, ICRF and ECRF systems :

a. DNB: 10 kV, 140 A Extraction PS
90 kV, 70 A Acceleration PS

b. ICRH Driver Stage : 8-18 kV, 250 kW, End stage : 27 kV, 2.8 MW

c. ECRH : 55 kV, 5.5 MW

8. ECRH :

2 gyrotron sources : 1 MW power output at 170 GHz for 3600s pulse length.

9. Diagnostics: Essential to monitor plasma impurities and emission. Ports are needed to house the Diagnostic systems in position and act as shielding from neutrons.

a. X-Ray Crystal Spectroscopy (XRCS) : Set of spectrometers((X-ray crystals, Detectors , Vacuum chamber).

b. Electron Cyclotron Emission (ECE) : Set of Michelson Interferometers & Radiometers, Polarization splitter unit, Transmission lines.

c. CXRS : Optical Fibers, Detectors, Visible Spectrometers, Opto-mechanical components like filters, mounts, I&C.

10. Special material development
CuCrZr with % compositions controlled to Cr : 0.6 – 0.8%; Zr : 0.07% to 0.15% ; Cd : 0.01%; Co : 0.05% ; total impurities not to exceed 0.1%.

Some of the pics

Pic 1 Cyrostat

Pic 2 Ion cyclotron RF heating system

Pic 3 Cooling system

Pic 4 Ozonation System

Indian nuclear fusion reactor program

Indian domestic R & D facilities

1. ADITYA-U TOKAMAK : It is a indigenously designed and fabricated medium size tokamak installed at the Institute for Plasma Research in India. It was commissioned in 1989.

(Tokamak in layman's term is a machine for controlling thermonuclear fusion)

It has a major radius of 0.75 metres and a minor radius of 0.25 metres. The maximum field strength is 1.2 tesla produced by 20 toroidal field coils spaced symmetrically in the toroidal direction. It is operated by two power supplies, a capacitor bank and the APPS (ADITYA pulse power supply).

Aditya tokamak is being used to conduct experiments with high plasma current at high temperatures , disruption mitigation, spontaneous and deliberately triggered disruptions and runaway electron generation and mitigation.

**********

2. SST-1 (STEADY STATE SUPERCONDUCTING TOKAMAK-1) : It is a plasma confinement experimental device. It belongs to a new generation of tokamaks with the major objective being steady state operation of an advanced configuration ('D' Shaped) plasma. SST-1 was fully commissioned in 2013.

The SST-1 places India among only 6 countries in the world who are capable of conceptualizing and making a fully functional fusion based reactor device.

SST-1 produces repeatable plasma discharges up to ~ 500 ms with plasma currents in excess of 75000 A at a central field of 1.5 T at temperatures of 2.5 million degrees celsius.

SST-1 routinely operates with an ITER-like electric field of ~ 0.35 V/m assisted by electron cyclotron resonance pre-ionizations in both fundamental and second harmonic modes.

SST-1 is also the only tokamak in the world with superconducting toroidal field magnets operating in two-phase helium instead of supercritical helium in a cryo-stable manner, thereby demonstrating reduced cold helium consumption.

The SST-1 makes use of extreme heat and strong magnetic field to fuse hydrogen isotopes and perform thermo-nuclear fusion. This results in temperatures 20 times greater than the sun’s core and a magnetic field equivalent to 1,000 times that of the earth’s normal magnetic field.

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3. SST-2 (STEADY STATE SUPERCONDUCTING TOKAMAK-1) : It is fusion reactor, dubbed as 'DEMO' and currently under development. It will be a full-fledged fusion reactor capable of producing electricity

Yes it good to see some cooperation among these Scientific nations. You see these all Technically advanced countries dont have trust between them.

Like India and China, Japan and China, US and China, S Korea and Japan yet they are doing something good.

greatface:
I love this particularly, where it is sited. OR maybe because many super countries are part of it.

This reduces fear of what may become of the plant.

rationalhuman:
I hope by then we will be able to grasp these latest ideas.

Africa has a large landmass with ample natural resources where cleaner cheaper and less money intensive and importantly already available sustainable energy harvesting technologies can be utilised to build solar farms , wind farms, tidal farms , small scale hydroelectric power plants to easily supply the requirements and also generate revenue.

Thorium based nuclear power is clean and safer but requires huge initial monetary investment. The technology is yet to mature . Many countries are trying to develop it though.

The fusion reactor is also safer cleaner and an almost limitless power supply. But same problems as above with regard to maturity of technology and huge initial costs.

The above two technologies will need 2-5 decades IMO to reach a point where it can be put to use in a commercially feasible way.

So till than best to harvest solar , wind energy till the above technologies mature.

Also I think why India is also investing in solar energy in a big way .

@rationalhuman

PFBR prototype fast breeder reactor is part of Indian 3 stage thorium nuclear power program which was started in 1958.

It is pool-type reactor with 1,750 tonnes of sodium as coolant.

It is designed to generate 500 MWe of electrical power, with operational life of 40 years.

It generates power by burning mixed uranium-plutonium MOX fuel, a mixture of PuO2 and UO2.

PFBR design is build on decades of experience gained from operating lower power Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR).

It comes under second stage of India’s three stage nuclear power programme which seeks to overcome India's limited Uranium reserve's and exploit the large thorium reserve's.

Thorium is not fissionable so in first stage reactors ( pressurized heavy water reactor PHWR ) which use uranium as fuel is built ( will also generate electricity ) . Plutonium produced in the 1st stage reactors as a by product will then be used as a fuel in a different type of 2nd stage reactor ( fast breeder reactors FBR ) which will convert thorium into U-233 ( will also generate electricity ) . The 3rd stage will be an Advanced nuclear power system involving a self sustaining U-233 fuelled reactors. This would be a thermal breeder reactor, which in principle can be refueled – after its initial fuel charge and using only naturally occurring thorium ( will produce limitless electricity sort of ) .

Other options like Indian Accelerator Driven Systems (IADS), Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) and Compact High Temperature Reactor. Molten Salt Reactor are under consideration and being studied.

However there is problems being faced as is expected from a technologically complex and challenging program. Criticality of the reactor is expected this year or next year.

Still thorium powered reactor is still far way off.
Only by 2050 if successful Indian 3rd stage thorium nuclear plants will be able to generate 150-350 TW of electricity annually and continuously for 10,000-60,000 years ( based on thorium reserves )

1 TW ( terawatt ) = 1000 GW ( gigawatt )

Pic 1 PFBR reactor containment vessel

Pic 2 PFBR construction stages

Pic 3 PFBR and FBR schematics

Pic 4 Thorium 3 stage nuclear power program

This is complex indeed :PThis is complex indeed