NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/sci/physics/fusion/1773

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-22 | 5.5 KB

Xref: sparky sci.physics.fusion:1773 sci.energy:3545
Path: sparky!uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!dog.ee.lbl.gov!csa3.lbl.gov!jtchew
From: [e-mail] (JOSEPH T CHEW)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion,sci.energy
Subject: Re: ITER contracts
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 22 Jul 92 22:54:55 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Followup-To: sci.physics.fusion
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Lines: 98
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.198
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4

>Does anyone have any information on the signing of the ITER contracts for the
>start of the design phase?

Here's the news release, retyped by me from an nth-generation fax
peeled off somebody's window (i.e., any typos are presumed mine).
Reading it carefully, you'll see that it is indeed an agreement to
design, with construction decisions deferred until afterwards, and
that no explicit commitment about pulse length has been made.  This
bears upon the nuclear-engineering side of its mission (the original
goal of self-sustained two-week burn is still up in the air) and
thus upon the need for alternate sources of energetic neutrons and
possibly the need for neutral-beam injection.

Here goes...

--Joe
"Just another personal opinion from the People's Republic of Berkeley"

DOE NEWS
News Media Contact: Jeff Sherwood, 202/586-5806
For Immediate Release July 21, 1992

           AGREEMENT SIGNED ON INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
               TO DESIGN EXPERIMENTAL FUSION REACTOR

Representatives of the European Community, Japan, Russia and the
United States today signed an agreement to cooperate in the
engineering design of an International Thermonuclear Experimental
Reactor (ITER).

The ITER engineering design activities will extend for six years
and result in completion of a test facility that would, if built,
demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion
energy -- the same energy that powers the sun.  The estimated cost
of the engineering design and its associated research and development
is about $1.2 billion (1992 US dollars) to be shared equally among
the four parties.  The parties will decide at the end of the
engineering design work on construction of the reactor.

Secretary of Energy James D. Watkins signed the agreement for the
US, while Professor Viktor Mikhailov, Minister of the Russian
Federation for Atomic Energy, Minister Hiroshi Hirabayashi, Deputy
Chief of Mission in the Embassy of Japan in Washington, and Ambassador
Andreas van Agt, Head of the Delegation of the Commission of the
European Communities to the US, signed for their parties.

Dr. Hans Blix, the Director General of the International Atomic
Energy Agency, the agency under whose auspices the ITER work will
be conducted, participated at the signing ceremony that was held in
Washington, D.C.

"Today's agreement is truly a milestone in the development of a safe,
environmentally sound energy source for the next century," said
Admiral Watkins.  "The international nature of this team means that
the best scientists and engineers will be cooperating to produce a
world-class design."

The ITER project will be headed by a director from the EC.  A joint
central team will assist the director to coordinate and integrate the
design and the research and development work that will be done by
institutions located on the four parties' home territories.  This
joint team will be located in three cocenters of equicalent importance
at Garching near Munich, in Naka, Japan, and in San Diego, CA.

The R&D and design work will be assigned to the participating parties
through a joint decision process.  In the US, this R&D and design will
be performed by combined teams of industry, universities and national
laboratories and managed by the US Home Team Leader, Alexander Glass of
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  Dr. Glass will be assisted
by the Home Team Management Office, which includes personnel from the
Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Princeton Plasma Physics
Laboratory as well as Livermore.  The US cocenter will be operated by
the University of California at San Diego.

The ITER project will be overseen by a council composed of members from
each party.  This ITER Council will be chaired by a member from the
Russian Federation and co-chaired by a member from Japan.  The council
will be supported by an international Technical Advisory Commuttee,
chaired by the Japanese person who will also serve as the co-chair of
the council.  The formal seat for ITER Council meetings will be in Moscow.

The parties completed about three years of conceptual design activiuties
for ITER in December 1990,.  The conceptual design yielded a construction
cost estimate of $5 billion 1989 US dollars.  The encineering design will
develop a more detailed cost estimate.

Fusion is the process that provides the sun and other stars with their
energy.  The process involves combining fuel such as hydrogen into
heavier atoms such as helium, with a resultant release of energy. ITER
would be capable of confining the fusion fuel within strong magnetic
fields.  ITER's goial is to demonstrate the self-sustaining operation
of all the components and systems of a fusion reactor for extended
periods of time under realistic conditions.

US participation in ITER is a compponent of the administration's National
Energy Strategy, whose goals include proving fusion to be a technically
and economically credible energy source, with an operating demonstration
plant by about 2025 and operating commercial plant by about 2040.