Features editor
Two of Europe’s mega-science projects have been in the news this week, although you could be forgiven for only noticing one of them. The latest findings from the Large Hadron Collider were widely reported, if poorly understood by pretty much everybody except the other CERN researchers and Prof Jim Al-Khalili — we might have glimpsed some Higgs Bosons, but we’ll have to wait until next year to be sure. Or more sure. Or something.
The other story didn’t make as many headlines. The ITER project, which aims to build the world’s largest magnetic confinement nuclear fusion experiment, succeeded in securing €1.3bn in extra funding for 2012 and 2013, which should keep the project on course to complete the building phase by 2018.
ITER and the LHC tend to be lumped togther as archetypal Big Science, particle physics experiments; for the cynics, of whom there are many, they are big holes into which money is poured to keep egg-heads happy. You’d expect us to be less cynical than that, and you’d be right; unsurprisingly we’re big fans of both projects here, but if you had to push us, ITER grabs our imagination a bit more.

There are several reasons for that. Firstly, ITER is — at the moment at least — very much an engineering project. Concrete has been poured at the site in Cadarache, in the South of France, and a massive plinth of foundations has taken shape. Components are under construction around the world, including parts for what will be the world’s largest superconducting magnets (taking the crown from the ones that currently bend the clouds of obscure fundamental particles into detectors at ATLAS, the LHC’s biggest experiment). And work is underway to characterise the type of materials that will protect the interior of the doughnut-shaped reactor vessel itself.
The other reason is that, fascinating and inspiring as the LHC might be, the significance of its results is obscure. There can be no doubt that expanding humanity’s understanding of the universe, how it was formed and the rules that govern its existance are noble and worthwhile goals (and I’d still rather my tax money was spent on that sort of thing than many of the policies the government sees fit to fund), but it’s still a struggle to see the significance. For me, at least, the real significance of the LHC is that it proves that thousands of people from dozens of countries speaking a dizzying array of languages can all work together on a common goal without coming to blows.
By contrast, ITER’s goals are very clear, and part of a continuum — is it possible to use magnetic confinement technology to ceate a self-sustaining nuclear fusion reaction that can be harnessed to produce usable, non-polluting, and economic energy? That’s an engineering goal — the application of pure science to one of society’s most pressing problems. In fact, when discussing the project with some of the lead researchers, they were adamant that ITER is entirely engineering. Magnetic fusion works, they told me; we know it works because we’ve proved it, operated it, and learned a lot from it. ITER is a scale-up operation; not an easy one, to be certain, and one with lots of unknowns, but it’s still a matter of developing technologies we’ve already investigated.

Nevertheless, ITER is still a physics experiment; that’s to say, it isn’t a power station. There’s a desire to connect a small heat exchanger and turbine to part of the reactor, just to prove that the heat produced can be used to generate electricity, but the point of the project is to create and sustain large-scale fusion. If this works, the next stage of the project is to build another fusion reactor, called DEMO, which would be optimised for industrial application and fully linked up to generating machinery. And all this brings the cost into focus.
There’s some thinking among opponents of the scheme that it’s just too expensive, that it can’t possibly justify the huge sums that it’s demanding, and that the growing budget is proof of that. Its full cost is currently estimated at €15bn (£13bn) — how can it possibly be worth that, they ask, especially at a time when Europe’s economies show every sign of teetering on the brink of recesssion or crumbling altogether?
But that ignores a few important facts. Firstly, ITER isn’t solely a European project; it also involves, and gets funding from, the US, China, Russia, India, Japan and South Korea (although the €1.3bn is a block solely from EU sources). Secondly, as the director-general of research and innovation at the European Commission, Robert Jan Smits, said, the goal of fusion ‘is so crucial for Europe and the whole world that we simply had to bite the bullet and try to find an agreement.’
And anyway, let’s put that funding into context, shall we? €1.3bn over two years from 27 countries? Sounds like a lot of money. Unless you have a look at the profits that oil companies make. In October, BP posted a first-quarter operating profit of €3.97bn. Look at that, and ITER starts to look like very good value indeed.
The money spent on ITER represents genuine economic activity and as such does not just disappear.
My bet is that it will work and the next stage will happen quickly.
One doesn’t need to study the worthwhileness, fusion is THE holy grail for energy.
If we find some distant planet, but which is far advanced from our world then they will have fusion.
Stop wasting money on windfarms which produce a trickle of money, although good in some circumstances, and spend money developing something with long term future.
this is just so logical, lets get more funding and push this project on, one day these oil companies will be gone, lets do something and get them involved and invest some of the profits in this
bigger and bigger ! ….. is there any article i have missed that takes these technologies and the no doubt equally stimulating engineering and scientific challenges in the opposite direction towards commercial desktop solutions ……. regards
How about a mention for the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) in Oxfordshire which has been running fusion technology for sometime in support of the ITER project
I have no doubt it will work and within 20 years every home will have a small fusion reactor about the size of a conventional boiler which will provide clean electricity for heating and power.
No more power companies, no national grid, and zero emmisions. Is’nt that worth the investment.
A quick google gave me this:Global subsidies for fossil fuel consumption are set to reach $660 billion in 2020, acc. reuters report.
Who are these people against ITER? are they coal companies?
Discouragingly the scientists involved put the chances of us getting fusion power at 50%. Worth a try though.
ITER looks like a sound investment provided that there are not too many ITERations before we see a return
At a first glance ITER is an advanced engineering test project and LHC a pure physics experiment. Think deeper and the ITER project could not exist without earlier pure physics experiments. They really are different sides of the same coin – both vital for us and the planet.
Money well spent – and as you say a lot better than they way other government (our) money is spent (wasted).
Compared to the colossal sums recently poured into the banking sector, which show little sign of boosting the economy; ITER and similar large infrastructure projects actually generate economic activity. On that basis, it makes a lot of sense!
ITER is a first-of-a-kind. These always cost more, sometimes much more, because the participants want it to work and are therefore very conservative in their choice of design parameters. Once ITER proves itself it is likely that the cost of future machines will drop as the knowledge gained allows for a relaxation of these parameters.
Nevertheless, like the Space Shuttle, ITER is indeed a funding sink. The quests for alternate approaches to fusion, that could simplify designs and reduce costs, have dropped to insignificant.
If fusion is successfully developed to allow the building of durable reactors – the implications of low cost low CO2 producing electricity are very exciting. It is the most globally important research project and deserves whatever funding it needs.
When you look at how much our lives have been changed by the research done for the space program it is clear how well this sort of basic research pays off in the long run.
If officials want to cut costs they should start by cutting their own salaries and reduce the hordes of bureaucrats that surround them.
It’s far better value for money than a few hundred billion quid worth of windmills and new power lines.
We should be spending far more on fusion and trying to bring it online faster.
The road to fusion power has been long and difficult, but the payoff is so great that the road must be traveled! I’m sorry that the US is not a more active partner in ITER.
The money would be more well spent on electrostatic fusion machines, just few millions instead of billions.
http://www.crossfirefusion.com/nuclear-fusion-reactor/overview.html
At last some real movement on this technology, albeit research. At some point surely we have to realise that investment in this is totally worthwhile, fossil fuels fast disappearing, wind technology somewhat of a joke. If steam power had been viewed in the same way when it came about, where would we be now? If I had the money I would gladly offer it towards costs
The next great thing in energy production will come as a surprise to most of us….. I am sure it will not be windfarms, or wavefarms. Maybe some form of solar ; quite different from current technology in solar. Maybe zero point energy. What a pleasure to watch private enterprise beat government nearly every time. We will still have to deal with thermal pollution.
Follow the money? Alternatives that are pointless without c.100% fossil back up cost c.£1M per GW pa real delivery for Chris Huhne’s barking offshore windfarms simply on the ROC money given to generators for no benefit toa the bill payer (ROCs = £50/MWh x 2) = £100/MWh x 1 GW x 365 x 24 average = £876K pa for offshore windmills). Wasted and useless when fossil is gone unless you create the same in hydo/pumped storage backup to replace fossil backup – unrealistic in the extreme and massive pointless expense by any technical standards. Nuclear is zero carbon, relatively cheap and needs no backup. Doesn’t need a degree in hard sums or logic. The money wasted on alternatives massively exceeds the cost of the real future. Better fission, fuel cycles and fuel recycling – then fusion power. Not IMO, do the maths.
Iter is very very important, and you never know the LHC may make discoveries, of equal importance, it may complement Iter if were patient,
as for current wind turbines the designs are hopelessly flawed,.
Science Engineering and Vision are coming together in ITER and LHC. My son is determined to study physics at uni in 3 years time. What great projects to be involved in! There isn’t a better time to encourage young people into these fields.
For years the world has suffered from a system of western government that is run by lawyers and bankers for lawyers and bankers.
The end result of this systematic theft of our countries wealth by these non producing sectors.
It is good to see some money come back into the sectors responsible for producing that wealth.
ITER, like CERN is “The Dole” for physicists and engineers, and a very good welfare scheme it is at that. It even has a small chance of something useful coming out of the other end of the pipe, which is an extra bonus.
It’s also a good way to keep everyone quiet and in their boxes. The last thing Bankers Lawyers and Politicians want is a few hundred thousand highly intelligent engineers asking questions about who and what the economic-legal-political nexus system is actually designed for…..
There are myriad problems facing humanity but is Large Scale Energy generation one of the most important? Very “successful” civilisations have come and gone over the years, all of them had some kind of theology behind them. It looks to me that Unlimited Energy On Demand is becoming a religion.
Behind that I suspect the ultimate use this energy will be applied to the development of (yet more rigid) socio-economic power structures. Yes, the most senior Engineers and Scientists may at the top of the heap, but is this a good thing?
Once the fusion process under control this device can also burn, literal burn, our stockpile of fission after-products. And this with a boost of 50x the input/output energy ratio.
The ITER project will surely be one of the biggest inter-continental projects which, by great efforts should come through and probably change the power situation of entire world. Hope I can see this into a reality.