Tomorrow's energy tomorrow
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[Note from pb. Whats up with these noosepaper dooffuses? Don't they trust our scientists or sumthing?? Don't they realize science is all about REASON and LOGICAL DISCUSSION??? -lol-]
Recent experiments have given impetus to fusion power research - but commercial exploitation remains a distant prospect, says Clive Cookson
Published: March 5 2002 19:34 | Last Updated: March 5 2002 22:24
Since the 1950s scientists have been holding out the promise of controlled nuclear fusion - the reaction that powers the sun and the hydrogen bomb - as the ideal energy source for the future. Unfortunately, as their critics have pointed out over the years, the dawn of commercial fusion power always seems to lie about half a century ahead.
Recent events, however, suggest that progress towards the sunlit uplands of unlimited clean energy may be accelerating. Fusion releases immense power by combining atomic nuclei such as deuterium, the heavy form of hydrogen that occurs naturally in sea water; it generates far less radioactive residue than fission, the splitting of atoms that drives today's nuclear power stations.
This week there is much excitement about the possibility of taming the fusion reaction in table-top apparatus, with the publication of controversial research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US. At the same time, advocates of the more established route to fusion - through large-scale nuclear reactors - are encouraged by signs of political progress towards a $5bn global collaboration, the International Thermonuclear Energy Reactor, or Iter.
Although the Oak Ridge experiment by Rusi Taleyarkhan and colleagues seems similar to the "cold fusion" debacle 13 years ago, one big difference is that in 1989 Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons claimed their success in a press conference at the University of Utah. This week's results, by contrast, are published in Science - the first time a leading peer-reviewed journal has accepted a paper about table-top fusion.
To a lay observer the Oak Ridge apparatus looks much like the Fleischmann-Pons experiment, whose results were discredited in the minds of most physicists after the failure of extensive attempts to replicate them.
For a start, both have flasks containing liquid with wires sticking out. But the Utah experiment aimed to fuse nuclei by passing a current through palladium electrodes loaded with deuterium, while the Oak Ridge scientists relied on a more sophisticated process called sonoluminescence, in a flask of deuterated acetone (acetone is an organic solvent best known as nail polish remover). They used sound waves to create and destroy tiny bubbles in the liquid. As the bubbles collapsed, temperatures rose to 10m°C - as hot as the sun - for extremely short periods over microscopic distances.
As evidence that fusion really occurred, the Science paper cites the emission of neutrons and tritium, by-products of a nuclear reaction. But its publication has stirred up controversy and thrown the journal on to the defensive.
Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief, says Science came under pressure to reject the paper, even though it had passed the process of peer review by independent experts. The journal compromised by releasing a critical assessment by a different group of Oak Ridge researchers, who disputed their colleagues' interpretation of the evidence.
"We see no good reason for suppressing the paper and even less for attempts to discredit it in advance," Dr Kennedy says. "The premature critics of the result, and those who believe in it, would both do well to cool it and wait for the scientific process to do its work."
According to unattributed conspiracy theories circulating yesterday, some scientists in the "hot fusion" establishment wanted to stop Science publishing the
Taleyarkhan paper because the prospect of cheap table-top fusion could deflect attention from large-scale fusion projects just as support for them is growing.
Conventional fusion researchers angrily reject this charge. They are sceptical about the Oak Ridge experiment. "We should be careful about jumping to conclusions and wait until there has been a proper scientific assessment of the work," says Jerome Pamela, associate director of Jet, the European fusion project near Oxford, England. They say that, even if some fusion is taking place in the flask of acetone, there is no clear way of building it up to a commercial energy source.
But Fred Becchetti of the University of Michigan says table-top sonoluminescence could soon find a role in fusion research: "If the results are confirmed, this new compact apparatus will be a unique tool for studying nuclear fusion reactions in the laboratory."
Governments are warming to fusion research for two reasons. One is the growing concern about climate change and the need to find new energy sources that do not emit greenhouse gases or lots of radioactive waste.
The second reason is that large-scale fusion experiments are producing increasingly impressive results. Jet has produced up to 10 megawatts of power in bursts of up to a second. Iter, the next step, would aim to produce 300 megawatts - the level of a medium-sized power station - for many minutes.
Iter, like Jet, is based on a "tokamak" or doughnut-shaped design originally developed in Russia. The deuterium-rich fuel is heated electrically to 100m°C, the temperature at which fusion is sustained, and held in place by superconducting magnets.
At present Iter is a partnership between the European Union, Russia, Canada and Japan - though there are hopes that the US, which pulled out in 1999, will rejoin soon, as the Bush administration pursues a high- technology energy policy.
A key meeting takes place on Monday when the EU Research Council considers costed proposals to build Iter at various sites. The main candidates are Cadarache in the south of France, Darlington on Lake Ontario in Canada and three Japanese nuclear centres.
Over the past year Britain has moved from scepticism to strong support for Iter, under the influence of David King, the government's chief scientist. He is pushing for a "fast track" to fusion power, including an intensive international programme to develop materials that can withstand the extreme conditions inside a reactor.
But even a fast track, with a decision early next year on where to build the reactor, is unlikely to see Iter finished before 2013. It would be followed by at least one further generation of demonstration reactors. Commercial fusion power is still half a century away, whether it arrives in a glowing doughnut or a table-top sound-blaster.
[Another note from pb. My favorite science book
amazon.com
It is all so true too...anything goes... egotism, lies, B/S, politics, religeon, ridicule, money, propaganda ... all these factors help the direction science takes -g-] |
