A BBC link. After such a long time of useless quarreling between France (EU) and Japan over the location, it's good they were finally able to come to an agreement.

Actually, it might have happened sooner, if there hadn't been certain disagreement between France and USA over one sand filled country out there... Personally, I think France was the best place - but of course I live in EU, so that's kind of obvious.

But nevertheless, this is a great news for all dreamers and scifi fans, no matter where they live.

I read about this at work today, and just yesterday I was reading a book entitled "The Third Millenium: History of 2000 to 3000 AD" written in 1985. I was reading about 'the Energy Ice Age" of the 2100s, and about how they finally perfected fusion. It was tried back in 2010, but the energy input/output wasn't effective enough to warrant employment of that type of generation until technology had improved.

Interestingly enough, the book talked about how Green groups would reject the idea and say that the money could be spent in lots of other more worthwhile places, just as (either this or another) article said.

I <3 Nuclear Fusion.

Although, I think we should perfect Cold Fusion. 8bit, anyone?

Thank God they finally agreed. Nuclear fusion is teh bomb.

Actually, fission is teh bomb. :em321:

I think this will be sweet. Star Trek here we come.

PS:
we really need a smilie for this: <3
anyone up for the challange?

KABLOOIE

I've actually visited the experiment that is the testbed for most of the technology that will be used in ITER, JET, its about 30-45min drive from where I live, the other side of Oxford...

JET has actually managed an efficiency of 1, meaning that it gives off as much energy as is needed to get the reaction started, going on just scalling the technology in JET up, to the size of ITER, they predict you could easily get an output of x10 if not more, the BBC is a bit behind the times on JET's progress...

and as for cold fusion...it won't work, if your talking about the pyro-electric crystal stuff, it shouldn't be called cold fusion, its just that a huge potential is generated to overcome the coulomb barrier instead of creating a plasma..

Hopefully should have working fusion power plants by around 2030ish...

I assume if they screw up in a fusion power plant, it would be quite bad?

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2:Mon dieu!

Actually, fusion is quite safe, from what I've heard. The absolute worst you could get is a bunch of neutrons that might sterilize everyone in a 2-mile radius, but no lasting radiation. Much safer than fission, which is itself extremely safe (despite the over-hyping of the accidents at three mile island and chernobyl - both caused by human error).

Umm...yay?

you probably wouldn't even get that, the plasma needs to stay at seriously high temperatures to enable fusion to occur, if there is any problem with the magnetic field and the plasma started to escape it would hit the inner walls of the tokamak (the ring in which fusion is created) upon hitting the inner wall it would cool and therefore the fusion would stop.

Each of these reactors are housed in buildings which are surrounded by 6 foot thick walls, if not more..these stop 98% of all the neutrons that do escape out of the reactor.

see attached picture below of JET for an idea, can't see much because they wouldn't let us get too much closer,

Fusion is remarkably safe. As James Bond said, it can only occur in a special, meticulously maintained environment, therefore, if there was a reactor breach, not much would happen. No lasting effects, no massive cleanup efforts, and is just about (with the exception of natural - wind, solar, etc. - methods) the cleanest way to produce mass amounts of energy.

Oh, and it also wouldn't create a huge magnetic field which would rip apart buildings and cause the scientist's robot tentacles to take control of his brain.

A joke from 8-Bit Theatre. (Comic strip)

I once saw a TV documentary on Iter, and one of the biggest problems in fusion seems to be materials. It's quite expensive to build the tokamak, yet the radiation from the plasma eats away the inner surface of the reactor all the time. This limits the usability time of the reactor core, and even more so if the reaction was running pretty much all the time like it would need to be in a commercial plant.

So, they would need to develop new materials that would last a long time under those less than friendly conditions, yet those materials can't be ridiculously hard or expensive to manufacture.

Of course the other problem is to stabilize the plasma in the magnetic field. But this is exactly what Iter is supposed to solve. Only this would allow long, continuous, self-supporting reactions that would shoot the efficiency up.

Nice to see that the development of nuclear energy has gone forward and hopefully the technology is safer than some of the stuff that is being used now. However we'll have to wait for it as the thing has not been built. Hopefully its a good thing.

God forbid if its not the case.

~Backburner~

I read a thing about how they got a cold fusion reaction working in something really small in France. Can't remember where or anything. It was only a few days ago though, so if it's true it'll be all over the news. :\

ah....

some folks at Caltech or UC, one of them, has a working example of this "pyro-electric crystal type fusion" and some people (mostly stupid journalists) are calling it cold fusion and making people believe cold fusion is possible....

the actual device is pretty cool, a lot smaller and produces a lot less energy but could be very useful as a mobile power source, another 10-20 years development and we could have fusion powered satellites...

http://www.nuklearpower.com/comics/050219.png

There's the comic that explains it.