nuclear-news

ITER nuclear fusion – a spectacular waste of time, money, and political clout

 Is a $22bn giant magnet the ‘holy grail’ of clean energy? Dozens of
nations have staked huge sums – and decades of work – on a nuclear
fusion project they hope can play a key role in ending the climate crisis.
But is the ITER programme more than a pipe dream?

If ITER works, it will be the first fusion device in history to produce a net energy gain, producing
10 times more power than it needs to function, all without the dangerous
waste of its cousin nuclear fission, which powers contemporary nuclear
plants.

To its critics, ITER is a spectacular waste of time, money, and
political clout, at a moment when the planetary clock has nearly run down.
For Jan Haverkamp, an energy expert at Greenpeace, nuclear has a record of
overpromising, underdelivering, and costing astronomical sums of money –
precisely the wrong combination when the world needs a rapid, reliable
transition to green energy.

According to modelling from Greenpeace and
others, the world could reach a fully renewable energy system without
nuclear by 2050. Even before the pandemic, the project was running at least
10 years behind schedule and billions over budget. A 2013 review of ITER
management called its structure “ill-defined and poorly implemented”,
leading to a large-scale reorganisation.

In 2015, ITER’s director-general, Bernard Bigot, wrote that previous generations of ITER
leadership had “proved incapable of solving issues and responding to the
project’s needs, so accumulating technical difficulties have led to
stalemates, misunderstandings and tension between staff around the
world”.

 Independent 18th Jan 2022

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/magnet-iter-nuclear-fusion-energy-b1995437.html

January 20, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, technology