On Tuesday, those in charge of the ITER experimental fusion reactor Announced A combination of delays and shifting priorities has resulted in first-of-its-kind hardware being unable to achieve plasma until 2036, with full-energy deuterium-tritium fusion being pushed back to 2039, the latter a four-year delay compared to the previous roadmap, though the former is also a delay, partly due to shifting priorities.
COVID and construction delays
ITER is an attempt to build a fusion reactor that can sustain a plasma that can operate well beyond the breakeven point, where the energy released by fusion reactions significantly exceeds the energy needed to create the conditions that make those reactions possible. It aims to achieve this milestone by scaling up a well-known design called a tokamak.
But the project has been plagued by delays and cost overruns almost from the start. Early on, many of these were attributed to design changes necessitated by improved modeling capabilities and a better understanding of plasma behavior in smaller reactions, leading to a better understanding of the plasmas sustained at extreme pressures and temperatures.
The latest delays are due to more mundane reasons, including the international nature of the collaboration, with individual components manufactured by various partner organizations before being assembled at the French reactor facility. Of course, the pandemic caused severe disruptions to production for many of these components, and the structure of the project did not allow for alternative suppliers (assuming there were any alternative suppliers of the unique hardware in the first place).
The second issue concerns where the reactor is located in France. The country’s nuclear safety regulator has said it is “deeply concerned” with the assembly and construction of some of the components. Construction was halted About nuclear reactors.
Full of energy right from the start
During the schedule reevaluation necessitated by these delays, the organizations that manage ITER reevaluated some of their priorities. The previous schedule prioritized getting the plasma into the machine, with a relatively low-energy hydrogen plasma being built into the machine before all of the final hardware was completed. This would require lengthy shutdowns after the initial experiments until the reactor could be used at progressively higher energies, with more powerful deuterium and deuterium/tritium plasmas.
Previous plans had called for testing of low-energy hydrogen-only plasma to begin in 2025, but delays have made that target date completely unrealistic. Instead, tests will begin in 2034. But instead of a series of short demonstrations, these experiments will continue for more than two years and reach much higher energies. So while there will be a delay of about 10 years before the machine gets plasma, the system’s magnets will reach power just three years later than previously planned.
Full power operation using a deuterium/tritium fuel mix would be delayed by four years, but even if the new schedule is met, it still wouldn’t be until 2039.
So, even without further delays, we expect it to take 15 years. However, the possibility of a delay may have increased with the announcement that ITER plans to use a different material (tungsten instead of beryllium) for the construction of the inner wall that faces the plasma. This becomes more significant as many other projects, including commercial fusion startups, plan to use tungsten. But it still could add another set of technology and manufacturing delays.
But the risk for ITER is that these delays could cause some of the countries backing the project to pull out, or that some of the commercial fusion start-ups already in the works could follow through, creating the risk that fusion is already a thing by the time ITER is ready to operate.
