Dear friends,
There are
many solutions to the energy crisis. Nuclear fusion is one which has recently
been embraced even by some of the world's major power brokers. Though the
below Los Angeles Times article asserts that it will be mid-century
before the first commercial fusion power plant is built, if we hit a real
oil crisis, that timeline could easily be shortened. Necessity is the mother
of invention. With the oil crisis starting in the 1970s, one might ask
why all along major funding has not been poured into this "nearly limitless
source of clean electric power."
If you are
interested in why so little money has been put into developing nuclear fusion
reactors, and why the United States is playing such a minor role in this,
I invite you to visit our New Energy Information Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/newenergyinformation
We have abundant, reliable evidence that the brokers of energy and
power have consciously suppressed new energy technologies in order to keep
the oil cash cow flowing. By spreading the word and calling for more funding
and research into nuclear fusion and other new energy technologies, we can
a will build a brighter, more abundant future for ourselves and our children.
You have a great day!
With best
wishes,
Fred Burks for the WantToKnow.info
Team
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2005/06/29/france_wins_battle_to_host_experimental_fusion_reactor
France
wins battle to host experimental fusion reactor
By David Holley, Los Angeles Times | June 29, 2005
MOSCOW --
In a bid to harness what backers say could be a nearly limitless source
of clean electric power, an international consortium chose France yesterday
as the site for an experimental fusion reactor that will aim to replicate
how the sun creates energy.
The planned $13 billion project is one of the most prestigious and expensive
international scientific efforts ever launched. But critics say the technological
hurdles to be overcome are so vast that the money could be better spent in other
ways.
Japan and France, backed by roughly equal factions in the consortium planning
the project, had competed fiercely for the prestige and economic benefits
of hosting the project. But Tokyo agreed to a compromise: The fusion reactor
is to be sited at Cadarache, near Marseille in southern France, while Japan
will have the next-largest role in the project. Cadarache has one of the biggest
civilian nuclear research centers in Europe.
''We are making scientific history," Janez Potocnik, the European Union's
science and research commissioner, said at a news conference in Moscow held
to announce the agreement for the International Thermonuclear Experimental
Reactor project.
''This is
a great success for France, for Europe, and for all of the partners in the
ITER," French President Jacques Chirac said in a statement. ''The
international community will now be able to take on an unprecedented scientific
and technological challenge, which opens great hopes for providing humanity
with an energy that has no impact on the environment and is practically inexhaustible."
Fusion is the process of atoms combining at extraordinarily high temperatures
that not only provides the energy of the sun and stars but also gives hydrogen
bombs their enormous power. The challenge faced by the international project
is to control that energy in a self-sustaining reaction in which the heat
released by fusion can be used to generate electricity, an engineering feat
of daunting complexity.
But the theoretical
attractions of the idea are also great. The reactor's main fuel, deuterium,
also known as heavy hydrogen, can be obtained from water. The project's website
states that Lake Geneva alone contains enough deuterium to meet global energy
needs for several thousand years.
Existing
nuclear reactors use fission, or the splitting of large atoms, to produce
power, a process that leaves waste that remains highly radioactive for hundreds
of thousands of years. Fusion reactors, by contrast, would produce minimal
waste that would be radioactive for a much shorter period, backers say.
A joint declaration signed yesterday at a meeting in Moscow of representatives
of the United States, the 25-member European Union, Russia, China, Japan,
and Korea, said the project would explore ''the long-term potential of fusion
energy as a virtually limitless, environmentally acceptable, and economically
competitive source of energy."
The project is important for ''the rapid realization of fusion energy for
peaceful purposes and the stimulation of the interest of succeeding generations
in fusion," it said.
The experimental reactor project was conceived at an international summit
in 1985 as a showpiece for cooperation during the Cold War. Construction of
the reactor is expected to take 10 years to complete. The reactor itself is
budgeted to cost about $6 billion and will produce about 10,000 jobs. The
rest of the $13 billion is for associated research, a significant portion
of it in Japan.
If the
project is successful, long-term plans call for a demonstration fusion power
plant to be built in the 2030s and the first commercial fusion plant to be
built in midcentury.
''As a project of unprecedented complexity spanning more than a generation,
ITER marks a major step forward in international science cooperation,"
said Potocnik, the EU commissioner. ''Now that we have reached consensus on
the site for ITER, we will make all efforts to finalize the agreement on the
project, so that construction can begin as soon as possible."
Vladimir Kuznetsov, director of the program for nuclear and radiation safety
of the Russian Green Cross, said that, ''Russia was the country that initiated
this kind of research" half a century ago, but that ''since then nothing
spectacular was achieved along that road." He expressed doubt that the
project would ever come to fruition.
According to the agreement reached yesterday, the European Union as a whole
will cover 40 percent of the cost and France alone will cover another 10 percent.
The remaining half will be paid by the other five partners, including the
United States, at 10 percent each. France will provide 40 percent of total
staffing and Japan 20 percent.
