Nuclear fusion cancelled?! Is this this the end for ITER?

New science and technology videos every week! We show innovations that make our world better and point the way to our future. The videos are made in Germany, but the topics are from all over the world.
in the 1920s, scientists recognized the energy potential that lies behind nuclear fusion. One gram of fuel in a nuclear fusion reactor is said to produce as much energy as eleven tons of coal. For this reason, every effort is being made to make nuclear fusion possible in Germany in order to generate energy. And after some promising news from the field of nuclear fusion recently there are now rather dramatic headlines predicting the end of the largest nuclear fusion project. Today we'll find out what's behind it and why it might even be good news.

This video was created by my Breaking Lab team. Responsible from the editorial team: Farah Lukaschik, Jacob Beautemps, Maximilian Latz; Editing: Saskia Mittermeier, Sören Rensch, Neo Sanjuan Thiele

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New science and technology videos every week! We show innovations that make our world better and point the way to our future. The videos are made in Germany, but the topics are from all over the world.

[GermanScienceGuy]

Hey guys, first of all thanks for all the comments. I understand that the music is too loud and we will change that in the future. First of all, sorry about the technical problem. It seems that we didn't hear it through the speakers of our editing computer. But in the next episode it will be fixed 👌

Also I spent last week in New York and did some interviews. So the first exclusive video at the German Science Guy will drop soon 🔥It will be about nuclear energy and how people from outside Germany think about Germany stopping nuclear energy. What are the aspects that you would like to be included in the video?

[Neklor]

Good video, but the music is too loud in relation to the speech.

[physikistrelativ]

Hi all,

Sorry if I may sound harsh but I have to clearify some things here:

First of all for the German audience: there had been a recent video from Norio which represents the current situation more correctly which was actually done in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for plasma physics (hence fact-checked by scientists).

ITER is by no means „useless“ or „not worth following“ anymore.

Disclaimer: I will not be talking about the whole start-up thing here (besides CFS who is following with SPARC/ARC the tokamak line).

Whether the stellerator or tokamak concept will be the first power plant concept does not matter for ITER: Goal of ITER is - besides proving that it does work and enabling research & sharing knowledge - is to test the breeding blankets necessary for all D+T designs (tokamak, stellerator, laser/inertial-fusion).
Without a design for these blankets there will be no power plant - fullstop. And there is no chance any running power plant is faster than ITER at the point of testing these :D So the goal still is valid and important!

Please do not get me wrong here Jakob - I usually like your videos :D (I don‘t want to be misunderstood at this point as simply being rude or anything) but it would increase the level of factfulness if you‘d actually speak to the well established institution (like the MPI as press releases sadly are not representing everything correctly … sadly :/)
They are very responsive in fact if you refer to their „Öffentlichkeitsarbeit“ :D

[smh-stuttgart]

The background music is really disturbing. What‘s the point of it anyway?

[Saturnous]

Stop any investment, just lock it up as is and let time decide, declare any documentation or planning to open source - maybe some people have smart ideas how to redesign and built it later.

[konstantinsulo]

The music should be mor silent, it somehow hurts in the ear, especially if you need a loud noise to understand everything.
If you are not a nativ English speaker.
But still very good Video.

[doctorhabilthcjesus]

Wenn ich als Deutscher Deinen deutschen Akzent extrem ulkig finde, dann ... ist es anscheinend genau richtig.

[chichomancho]

Russia is key player in ITER project, but you do not mention about it! Project ITER is further development of russian TOKAMAK.

[tiemenvanderbijl]

please don't call Europe a country. most americans already have trouble enough with their world view to get this poured ontop of it

[NegatorUK]

I don't speak German, but I am quite able to read subtitles if that helps you out - great video.

[Dampfmaschiene]

Bitte mach die Musik leiser, die Geschwindigkeit etwas langsamer und vor allem: den Akzent weniger stark.

[parsec]

Geh biiittteee.. hörts auf mit solchen Effekthascherischen Titeln herum zu wixen. Solche Aussagen wie "Is Fusion canceled" machen mich echt Sauer.

[lukasseelig]

I'm just here for support, great video!

[XLA-zgnn]

I read in a New Scientist recently that they want to incorporate a stellarator into ITER

[Mark-qijw]

Nice video.
ITER is a doomed project, the so-called flagship of nuclear fusion research is sinking before launching!

- the start of ITER experimental campaign is a couple of decades late (and counting....further delays are rather likely)
- the actual D-T experiments will start even later, probably not before 2040/2045
- ITER is massively over budget... it should have cost less than 10 billion dollars, it will cost... well, nobody really knows, but 50-100 billions could be an educated guess
- a serious technical issue may arise, not unlikely due to the extreme complexity and first of a kind nature of many of the ITER components (for instance a fault in one of the coils may jeopardize the whole project)
- even if everything works, it is now clear that ITER will not provide all the results and technical inputs for the next machine that it was supposed to give...

In fact, ITER is a very badly conceived project, badly designed and even worse managed.
A very large fraction of the budget dedicated to the development of fusion worldwide is going to the construction and operation of a single machine which should have been the only step needed before DEMO. In Europe, contributing 45% of the ITER construction budget, little resources are left for other projects. The other six ITER Parties contribute only with 9% each, so they may reap all the ITER benefts (if there will be any, that is) with little investments.
With ITERm, decades and tens of billion dollars will be simply wasted (putting all your eggs in one basket).
Now, additional billions are necessary to fix some technical issues.
For the good of fusion, it would be better to revise deeply the whole nuclear fusion development strategy (especially in Europe) and ditch ITER (I know, billions have already been spent, but that is not a good reason to waste many more billions.). Smaller machines, more manageable, dedicated to the development of the many technological and scientific aspects which are necessary for the development of Fusion, that will not be tackled by ITER and that are still far from being solved.

[DragonKingGaav]

ITER is the world's biggest science fair project!

[patrickdegenaar]

ITER needs to be re-evaluated. Its primary purpose of exploring how to make an industrial fusion plant has clearly failed and is dead. So what science can ITER do that cannot be done by cheaply and quickly upgrading other facilities?

[Killerqualle]

Hi Jakob, da Englisch die Sprache der Wissenschaft ist, finde ich diesen Schritt zur Erweiterung deines Kanals sehr logisch. Ich freue mich auch hier auf viele tolle Videos von euch❤ ich fände es spannend Videos von hier einfach mal per Ki für 😮den deutschen Kanal übersetzen zu lassen, als kleine Experiment Idee. Alles Gute für den Start hier 😊

[JayJay-nimc]

Joined for Support :)
Little tip: americans dont use Celsius.
I think it would be a good idea to use Both F and c, Pound and kg and so on….not much Change but possibly big impact

[fbkintanar]

I find it interesting that there are plans to work on the tritium fuel cycle. How would this be applicable to inertial confinement fusion approaches?