The assembly of the ITER thermonuclear reactor officially started in France
Just the other day, an official ceremony was held to start the assembly of the experimental nuclear reactor ITER, in which the President of France and the heads of government of the ITER coalition took part.
According to the plan, the first plasma will be generated in a thermonuclear reactor no earlier than 2025, and only by 2035 full-fledged experiments with deuterium-tritium plasma are planned.
Why do you need a fusion reactor ITER
ITER is an interstate project for the construction of an experimental thermonuclear reactor that takes its beginning in the already distant 1992, and at the moment the following are actively involved in the development countries:
European Union, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Kazakhstan, United States of America and the Russian Federation.
The main task of this reactor is to show that it is quite possible to use a thermonuclear reactor in commercial purposes, as well as to work out and solve a complex of technological nuances arising in the development of this installation.
How the ITER fusion reactor works
The designed reactor is nothing more than a Tokamak-type magnetic trap. In this case, the plasma heated to a temperature of a couple of hundred million degrees will be held inside the installation due to a special configuration of the magnetic field.
Energy in the reactor will be generated by fusing the nucleus of deuterium and tritium. In this process, an energy release of 17.6 megaelectronvolts occurs.
In this case, the plasma heated in this way will be passed through the blanket, where the coolant will be heated or the production of tritium from lithium will take place.
In this case, the entire structure is placed in a cryostat, which is a support for the entire structure and acts as a so-called vacuum thermostat.
And already the cryostat itself is protected from the outside by a layer of concrete a couple of meters thick.
The reactor under construction is the most complex assembly ever created by man, and the total mass of the installation is an impressive 23 thousand tons. tons.
The active phase of construction started back in 2007, but only in May 2020 they started assembling and installing a cryostat with a total weight of 1250 tons. But only on July 28, 2020, the main persons held the ceremony of starting the assembly of the reactor.
According to estimates, the entire installation and commissioning process will last until December 2025. It is then that it is planned to obtain plasma. But only by 2035 will they begin the active phase of experiments, during which the reactor must hold an overheated plasma for 400 seconds with a thermal power of 500 megawatts.
Humanity is getting closer to creating a fully functioning thermonuclear reactor, but, and we just need to wait a little. If you liked the material, then put your thumbs up and subscribe. Thank you for your attention!