New Review Slams Fusion Project's Management 109
sciencehabit writes "ITER, the international fusion reactor project in France, is reeling from an assessment that found serious problems with the project's leadership, management, and governance. The report is so damning that after a 13 February special session that reviewed and accepted the report's conclusions and recommendations, the ITER Council — the project's governing body — restricted its readership to a small number of senior managers and council members. 'We feared that if [the assessment] leaked to people who don't know about the ITER agreement, the project could be interpreted as a major failure, which is not what the management assessor intended,' says nuclear engineer Bob Iotti of the consulting firm CH2M HILL, who chairs that council."
They have 20 years (Score:2)
...to fix it.
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Did you really need an article to figure that out?
I read about ITER as the future of fusion a decade ago in popsci.
The same article today would be identical.
And so would it be in 2024 when the mess is finally finished.
Meanwhile several different small scale projects that have emerged from obscurity during the last decade have put commercial viability goals within the coming decade.
A coal power plant that requires an olympic torch to ignite the fuel would be more viable than ITER.
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Meanwhile several different small scale projects that have emerged from obscurity during the last decade have put commercial viability goals within the coming decade.
As someone who has worked on more than one of the smaller scale projects, I don't think anything is commercially viable within a decade. While many alternative designs offer a chance or at least hope of ending up cheaper than a tokamak, they will still require large scale projects at the level needed to produce electricity, likely with similar orders of magnitudes in costs in the $100M-$1B+ ranges. Except there is also more risks, as some of the things that had been figured out on tokamaks decades ago are
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That still doesn't change the fact that I'm willing to bet my manhood on non-ITER derivates achiving commercial viability before ITER-derivates.
Why I can do that bet in good faith is that the ITER roadmap doesn't reach commercial viability until the end of my life, and with delays that always are inevitable on a project of this scope you'll at best recover my rusted balls of steel from my grave if the bet goes against me.
webster (Score:1)
You know the joke: Economical fusion power is just 10 years away, and always will be.
Not a complete failure (Score:1)
It's providing jobs for tens of thousands of scientists, engineers and middle managers all across Europe for years to come.
So, no. Not a complete failure.
haha CH2M HILL (Score:2)
I've worked with CH2M HILL before, and frankly I wold trust anything they say without a serious double check..
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See CH2M Hill - Fraud_prosecutions [wikipedia.org]
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I worked for a lab that occasionally did work for them. I have no impression of them at all other than they were a client with a weird name. They sent samples, we analyzed said samples, sent them results, they paid, rinse, repeat. If they wanted interpretation, that'd be handled by the forensics division but I doubt they ever did.
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I've worked with CH2M HILL before, and frankly I wold trust anything they say without a serious double check..
Agreed. They hire tons of people who can not spell!
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HA, good one. The older I get the worse my hands get and the harder it is for me to find spelling errors.
Double whammy, my apologies.
Interestingly wold does not trigger a spelling error indicator. so, triple Whammy.
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Interestingly wold does not trigger a spelling error indicator.
Because its not a spelling error. 'wold' is a word.
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> Because its not a spelling error. 'wold' is a word.
Which demonstrates that *smaller* spelling dictionaries are normally better. Yet every word pro bragged about how many words were in it.
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Fusion is always 20 years from now (Score:3, Insightful)
And whenever you think it will get closer, they come up with another reason why it will take another 20 years to be commercially viable.
Been that way since Expo 63.
Will be that way in 2099.
Re:Fusion is always 20 years from now (Score:5, Insightful)
And if the Apollo program had been budgeted in the same way as fusion in this country, we would be looking forward to the first man to land on the moon a few decades from now.
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Why are only Americans capable of doing fusion research?
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Europe, Korea, Japan, and China are ramping up research efforts.
Great. So we should have fusion reactors on the grid any day now, right?
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But you just said that the only thing holding back fusion from being completed in a decade was funding.
Re:Fusion is always 20 years from now (Score:4, Informative)
That MIT survey concluded we're about 80 billion USD away from practical fusion, since if you follow the progress of funding cuts it's more less or less kept being cut every few years, ensuring that the project is always about 20 years away.
It's research who's budget has gone down continuously since the 70s.
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We've been spending limited R&D budgets pursuing other types of energy production that show more promise in the near to medium term- and don't require spending 80 billion freakin dollars before they can maybe accomplish anything useful.
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It's not like the science you fund with that 80 billion is useless. Reality isn't like civilization - you don't fillup the bar for "fusion" with beakers till you get the breakthrough.
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> More promise in the near to medium term" still has us running out of fuel
Ummm, solar panels?
> Fusion is very necessary for our long term survival
No its not.
> for what little "green" power
You mean "all the power would could possibly ever want"? You are aware there's 1000W/m^2 on a sunny day, right? Here, do the math yourself:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/revenge-of-the-electric-oil-sands/
You'd listen to MIT on fusion? (Score:1)
Remember the total hatchet job that the MIT fusion lab did on Fleischman and Pons? The lead author later said that they published before they finished the experiments that the report was supposedly based on, using expected results as data. Regardless of what you think of cold fusion, the MIT hot fusion lab showed their colors in 1989. They aren't doing science, they are doing religion or something.
I wouldn't give MIT a bent penny for fusion research. They are known bad actors who care far more about ide
Not if you call them that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Europe, Korea, Japan, and China are ramping up research efforts.
Great. So we should have fusion reactors on the grid any day now, right?
Not if you call them that!
Only if we're careful to call them "Fusion power plants", and not use words like "nuclear" and "reactor".
You know, the same way people are happy to get an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) instead of an NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), and they're happy to get a CAT scan, but would never go in for Computed Axial X-Ray Tomography... because X-Rays are radiation, but kitties are cute.
You really don't want the "bad adjective choice" protestors coming after your technology trying to shut it down.
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You really don't want the "bad adjective choice" protestors coming after your technology trying to shut it down.
Oh do fuck off. It's the "banana equivalent dose" morons you really need to watch out for. Unlike the "bad adjective choice protesters" they actually exist, and even post regularly on Slashdot.
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Why are only Americans capable of doing fusion research?
Because only Americans live and work in France.
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> And if the Apollo program had been budgeted in the same way as fusion in this country
This is *not* a budget problem, don't let the people justifying their existent fool you into believing that.
Let me illustrate the actual problem with the best example I can think of. In 1972 John Nuckolls published this paper:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v239/n5368/pdf/239139a0.pdf
Unfortunately, you can't read it without paying, but here's a paper that reviews it:
http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/101263
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They have made significant progress.
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They have made significant progress.
Yeah, I heard that at Expo 86 too.
Re:Fusion is always 20 years from now (Score:5, Informative)
If you are criticizing fusion predictions, and aren't aware of that graph, then you are basically criticizing things you don't understand. Stop it. Understand first, then criticize.
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It's easy to make a graph every 10 years and pretend prior promises don't exist.,
Look at the date on the bottom of the graph. Seriously, read before you post, you'll look smarter.
Spreading the wealth... (Score:2)
From TFA:
Remin
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I suppose that another way of dealing with the politics of a complex project is the way Putin financed the Olympics. He spread the wealth too.
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The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is way over budget and behind schedule.
And here is the big joke.
The projected cost of the F35 is US$857 billion (it will cost more).
ITER is estitmatated to cost a bloated EUR 16 billion.
So, which should we worry about?
Not the way to economical fusion power generation. (Score:1)
ITER is a all the proof anyone should need that the Tokamak is not the way to economical fusion power generation. Of course neither is inertial confinement fusion, while we're on the topic. It would be one thing if these projects were sold as basic science, but instead they are sold as being practical approaches to fusion power generation. It's a lie.
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ITER is a all the proof anyone should need that the Tokamak is not the way to economical fusion power generation. Of course neither is inertial confinement fusion, while we're on the topic. It would be one thing if these projects were sold as basic science, but instead they are sold as being practical approaches to fusion power generation. It's a lie.
All the report has shown is that humans are greedy and the bureaucracy expands to fill the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
Nothing in the report implies the engineering and science is impractical and uneconomical. This is a research reactor, not the final commercial product.
Unfortunately, your post is very light on "why" it is a "lie" or why it is uneconomical, so one must assume you are either lazy, or are trolling.
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"All the report has shown is that humans are greedy and the bureaucracy expands to fill the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."
that has been shown to be false over and over again, as a rule.
It happens, but nothing here, or anywhere, is proof its a universal rule, or even a natural by product of a bureaucracy.
Remember , humans invented bureaucracy so we can do complex things well.
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Well the saying is more a rule of thumb for how one should be aggressive in avoiding creating too many subdivisions in an organization, or trying to implement management and oversight where you should be trusting your existing delegates and granting them some organizational flexibility to achieve their goals.
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DEMO, another experiment, is the next step
Re:Not the way to economical fusion power generati (Score:4, Informative)
I remember the original ITER propaganda. Originally it did not have DEMO on it as a successor. It was supposed to be the direct precursor to an actual power plant. They added that afterwards. It has been nearly two decades since that and they still haven't built it. While some things did happen to improve tokamaks, like the superconducting magnets used in JT-60 and Tore Supra, or the improved plasma control and stability they demonstrated in D-III, the same problems still exist. You can only generate net energy with D-T fusion and the reactor walls can't survive the neutron flux of D-T fusion long enough for a viable reactor to exist. Until THAT gets solved you are not going to see any commercial fusion reactor. Even if they solved that it is going to be huge and expensive. A lot more expensive than a fission nuclear reactor. Unless they manage to make the plasma more dense or something.
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I loved that propaganda. However having followed fusion progress across my entire lifetime I think it utterly dubious that it will ever be an economically competitive power source -- on earth.
We should become an electric civilization. The answer is wind wave solar and nuke (yes to Th -- why not).
However what I wish we could do is stop the pretense of affordability and build towards bold understanding of principles. This machine is vastly expensive and we should do it anyway not only for the sheer thrill of
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You can only generate net energy with D-T fusion and the reactor walls can't survive the neutron flux of D-T fusion long enough for a viable reactor to exist. Until THAT gets solved you are not going to see any commercial fusion reactor. Even if they solved that it is going to be huge and expensive. A lot more expensive than a fission nuclear reactor. Unless they manage to make the plasma more dense or something.
From the ITER FAQ:
"How often will the ITER first wall need to be replaced during operation?
The current operation schedule does not include the replacement of the ITER first wall. However, provisions have been made for the possibility of changing it once during the lifetime of ITER, if necessary. The component which receives most of the power load from the plasma (the "divertor") will need to be replaced more than once during the lifetime of the machine. It has been designed specifically to allow this operat
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http://www.generalfusion.com/ [generalfusion.com]
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I know I like to base my decisions of fundamental science on how flashy a website looks.
The issue with all the alternatives to ITER is that they are even less well understood, and less proven, then Tokamak reactors. Tokamak's have achieved Q > 1 - the plasma has generated more energy then was needed to heat it, and drive the machine. This is reality today in a reactor like JET, its just not practically sustainable on their sort of scale.
Things like the Polywell on the other hand? 13 neutrons in some iter
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No surprise (Score:3)
I honestly can't imagine why people try to "manage" something like this especially when you have all of these international partners each with their own agendas running the show. It's a subcontractors dream really, get a nice fat contract and have a big charge for changes/delays... I'm sure the subs are getting very, very rich right now off of ITER.
You can't build something this complex under the model that's being used and unfortunately ITER is an epic fail. Even back in 2009, people were warning of the problems with it [bbc.co.uk] and still those haven't been corrected apparently. Given that we're 8 years in, I think it's time to throw in the towel considering it was supposed to be a 10 year build.
For comparison, the closest model I can think of, the LHC and the international cooperation that built it, despite it's few successes has had numerous hiccups and failures despite taking decades to plan and build. If the International community really wants Fusion power they just need to pony up to one prime contractor to build it based on the input from a team of scientists and get rid of the carved up mentality of the construction.
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Yes, lets thrown in the towel because something that has never been done, something using well into bleeding edge technology is behind budget. All based on a report from a contractor who makes more money if the report finds problems. This is why it's complaining mostly about intangibles.
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You mean the LHC which was doing cutting edge science for the past year, and discovered the Higgs boson? That LHC?
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot has become so anti-science these days. I don't disagree that ITER has some problems, but calling the Higgs Boson one of the LHC's "few successes" is such a fucking understatement, I don't know what else could be.
That was half of the point of the damn thing, to verify the standard model. Finding the Higgs was no small accomplishment.
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So who exactly are you saying is anti-science? I'm just anti-international cooperation especially where it really isn't in any nation's best interest. ITER has laudable goals but look at the players and ask yourselves if it will seriously be successful. Nope, it'll be a run into the ground project that won't produce anything.
Higgs Boson was a race and if the Feds had funded Fermilab's tevatron accelerator [discovery.com] a bit more [fnal.gov] you may have seen it discover Higgs Boson before the LHC.
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It's also worth point out that both of these are experimental devices, so you expect problems. The point of doing them is to work the problems out.
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Really, explosions, delays and long shutdown periods due to problems constitutes great uptime? I didn't say that the LHC wasn't doing good work but since 2009 it's had its share of severe problems.
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It's an experimental particle accelerator, not the server you keep under your desk. It's shutdown at the moment because it's the only opportunity CERN get to actually upgrade the accelerator and it's components - you can't very well go in and expect it when it's running, because it's cryo-contained, somewhat radioactive and highly magnetized.
The shutdown is multi-purpose - there's components at CERN which haven't been replaced since the 1970s partly because they were state-of-the-art then and no one had any
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explosions, delays and long shutdown periods
Sounds like the server I keep under my desk!
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Good points but when you say "no one knows how they'll perform" I'd have to take a step back and say that with all the intellect involved in building it, it sure seems there's been more downtime than uptime. Sure, it's cutting edge in terms of science/technology but I wouldn't want to rely on it if my career depended upon it. The Tevatron at Fermilab was something that although not as powerful as the LHC, was able to conduct science on a routine basis and we've now lost that in the US and have to wait alo
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We've been building tunnel diodes since the late 1950s. That's for electrons though... I don't see how tunneling can help protons.
Some enzymes use it; bioscience is frighteningly subtle at times. Not for fusion though.
Fusion is no longer relevant (Score:1)
I worked on fusion for years but no longer consider it relevant for near to intermediate term energy needs. The reasons are
1) natural gas -- enough for several lifetimes
2) renewables -- already becoming useful/relevant and if energy storage problems can be solved, a long term solution,
3) conventional nuclear -- in a crisis in which society's real needs exceeded its largely irrational fears, much safer new generation fission reactors could be brought on line in a couple of years.
A useless bureaucrat's dream (Score:2)
But maybe my r
Forget that fusion crap. (Score:2)
Thorium LFTR is was fusion pretended to be.
Cheap, safe, efficient, clean.
Without costing a trillion dollars to develop.
Like not even 10 billion, perhaps 5 billion to having a LFTR production line fully operational.
When are we going to start to be outraged that we don't have the money to spend on money pits. Stop all fusion research now.
The problem with fission isn't fission in general, no corporations are interested in doing major, risky investment, quite the opposite, corporations are risk adverse, so we g
they're doing the wrong thing anyway (Score:2)
Re:What could go wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
ITAR is a (...) project led by the French
Not exactly French. From the ITER site [iter.org]:
Three departments report directly to the Director-General Osamu Motojima: Administration; ITER Project; and Safety, Quality & Security. Click on the Organizational Chart below to find out more about the management structure of the ITER Organization.
and (picture)
Management greets staff on the first ITER Day in September 2011: Rem Haange, Department for ITER Project; Carlos Alejaldre, Safety, Quality and Security; Director-General Osamu Motojima; and former head of the Department of Administration, Rich Hawryluk
So, top management is made of
Director General: Osamu Motojima (Japan)
Deputy Director-General and Head of the ITER Project Department: Remmelt Haange (Netherlands)
Safety, Quality and Security: Carlos Alejaldre (Spain)
Or, look at the Organization Structure [iter.org]. No French in the top management
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When they were deciding where to build the ITR, the choices were France and Japan.
In the spirit of compromise, the ITR was built in France, but headed by someone from Japan.
This was no doubt the first of an endless series of political compromises necessary to get the project moving.
Re:What could go wrong (Score:5, Informative)
multi-billion dollar international project led by the French. What could go wrong?
French managed many big industrial projects on their own. To name a few: Ariane, Concorde, nuclear reactors and nukes...
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> To name a few: Ariane, Concorde, nuclear reactors and nukes
Well Concorde was pretty much entirely Bristol Aerospace, in the UK.
They designed it as the Type 223 and submitted it to the Air Ministry, who promptly (and secretly) gave the document to the French, who passed it to Sud. A few months later the Ministry arranged a meeting between Bristol and Sud, suggesting they share development costs, and the Bristol team were presented with a design that appeared all too familiar.
It was years later when the
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