156.5 billion yuan! The most expensive research project in history, what is it about?

Controlled nuclear fusion simulates the nuclear reaction in the sun and is regarded as an ideal clean energy source. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the largest research and development project currently under construction in this field, is also highly anticipated. It will help scientists extend the duration of controlled nuclear fusion reactions, test related technologies, and ultimately achieve stable energy supply.

ITER construction site on June 2, 2023. Image source: iter.org

On the other hand, the construction of ITER is also a huge challenge to engineering technology. Since the project was launched, its start-up time has been postponed many times and the budget has continued to increase. Recently, Charles Seife, a reporter for Scientific American, reported that ITER is unlikely to start up as scheduled in 2025, and no one even knows the clear time plan and the resulting increased budget expenditure [1].

ITER did not respond to Seifer’s request for an interview, but recently announced that it would release a new timetable in 2024.[2]

01

Controlled nuclear fusion

Decade after decade

The ITER experimental facility is located in southern France. The project was launched in 2006 and was originally planned to start operation in 2016 with a budget of 5 billion euros (about 50 billion yuan). This is also one of the largest scientific research cooperation projects in human history, with a total of 35 countries participating and jointly implemented by China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States. China has undertaken about 9% of the work of ITER, including the research and development and production of some key components.

However, the complexity of this project has repeatedly exceeded initial expectations. The last time ITER announced its timetable was in 2016, when it was expected to start experiments in 2025 and begin deuterium-tritium fusion reactions in 2035 [3]. Scientific American reported that many of ITER's core components were delivered one or two years later than expected, and some were even later. ITER's core equipment, the tokamak fusion reactor, was originally scheduled to begin assembly in 2018, but the actual assembly time was July 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has had an impact on scientific research, production and shipping in countries around the world, which in turn has affected the progress of ITER[4]. Some parts have problems after they are in place and need to be repaired or replaced. In January 2022, the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) stopped the overall assembly of the ITER tokamak, believing that it did not meet safety standards in terms of support structure and radiation protection[5]. ITER said it would address the problem and ensure that the corresponding parts meet the design requirements. As of now, there is still no public information on when assembly will resume.

Schematic diagram of the ITER Tokamak device. Image source: iter.org

In January this year, ITER Director Pietro Barabaschi told AFP that ITER might not be able to start up as scheduled in 2025[6]. Scientific American reporter Sefe criticized ITER for not disclosing the project progress in a timely manner. According to internal documents he obtained through legal channels, ITER's completion date is currently uncertain and it may not be able to achieve the goal of ignition in 2025.

Equipment replacement and project delays have also led to increasingly high costs for ITER, with the latest public budget reaching 20 billion euros (about 156.5 billion yuan). The ITER project website currently shows that "the latest schedule and budget plan are still under review."

02

The Dilemma of Big Science Projects

ITER is also known as the largest "artificial sun". The reaction principle of controlled nuclear fusion is similar to that of the sun: under the blazing temperature, deuterium and tritium react to produce helium and neutrons, while releasing a large amount of energy. Compared with the existing nuclear power technology based on nuclear fission, controlled nuclear fusion is not only more efficient, but also has a greatly reduced risk of radiation pollution. It does not produce difficult-to-handle radioactive nuclear waste, and due to the harsh reaction conditions, the reaction will stop spontaneously when the equipment fails.

However, since the temperature of the plasma undergoing fusion reaction is extremely high and its properties are unstable, the process has extremely demanding requirements on reaction conditions. There are three main ways to achieve controlled nuclear fusion: gravitational confinement, inertial confinement, and magnetic confinement. The magnetic confinement controlled nuclear fusion device is also called Tokamak (magnetic coil ring vacuum chamber, Tokamak). Its structure is like a giant donut, which uses a strong magnetic field to confine the plasma undergoing nuclear fusion reaction inside without direct contact with the container.

When completed, ITER will become the world's largest tokamak device, weighing 23,000 tons[7]. The temperature of the plasma in the annular cavity will reach 150 million degrees Celsius, 10 times the temperature of the sun's core. The superconducting magnets outside the cavity will need to operate at an extremely low temperature close to -270 degrees Celsius (liquid helium temperature). "Ice and fire" are not enough to describe such a temperature difference.

China is processing feeders for superconducting magnets for ITER. These components need to work in the transition range from ultra-low temperatures to room temperature [8]. Photo taken on April 8, 2021. Image source: iter.org

In order to meet such demanding experimental conditions, ITER has very high requirements for engineering technology and construction costs. Therefore, large scientific projects like ITER are often carried out in the form of multinational cooperation, sharing R&D tasks and financial investment, and ultimately sharing research results. However, such a cooperation model also poses challenges to management, and overspending and repeated "ditching" are not uncommon. A famous "ditch king" is the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It was jointly developed by the United States, Europe and Canada. It was originally planned to be completed in ten years, but it took twenty years in the end, and the budget also rose from US$1 billion to more than US$10 billion.

JWST was finally launched at the end of 2021 and has helped astronomers make many new discoveries. But the Scientific American report still can't help but remind everyone: JWST can provide observation data immediately after it is in place, while ITER will take ten years of repeated experiments after it is launched to carry out the key deuterium-tritium fusion reaction.

On May 23, NASA released the latest image of the M74 galaxy, which was synthesized from observation data of the Webb telescope and other telescopes. Image source: NASA

A typical example of a large scientific facility failure is probably the half-finished American Superconducting Super Collider (SSC). A total of 15 countries and regions, including China, participated in the project, which was later stopped due to rising budgets. At this time, the project construction had already cost $2 billion[9]. This decision once made the physics community deeply uneasy. The well-known Chinese-American physicist Tsung-Dao Lee said that the day the SSC was stopped was a black day in the history of American science[9].

At that time, the SSC’s design volume and reaction energy were four times that of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe. SSC Director Roy Schwitters believed that if the project could continue, physicists might be able to discover the Higgs boson ten years earlier.[10]

03

The Scientist Who Made the Sun

Despite the repeated setbacks of the ITER project, the field of controlled nuclear fusion has still made many significant advances in recent years. The first is to achieve "net energy gain", that is, the output energy is greater than the input energy. Controlled nuclear fusion reaction conditions are harsh, and a lot of energy is required to start and maintain the reaction, so in the past sixty years, the energy consumed by the reaction has always been more than the output. It was not until December 2022 that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) team in the United States turned the situation around.

Based on inertial confinement technology, LLNL input 2.05 MJ of energy into the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and produced 3.15 MJ of energy, with a net gain of more than 1[11]. Although this energy is only enough to boil water and is far from meeting application needs, it is still a milestone achievement and is hailed as the "holy grail of controlled nuclear fusion." In the future, ITER aims to increase the ratio of output energy to input energy to more than 10 times.
In order to realize the prospect of a stable energy supply, ITER based on magnetic confinement technology needs to meet two conditions: first, the reaction power must be large enough; second, it must be able to operate for a long time. In these aspects, Chinese scientists are also constantly breaking records. In October 2022, China's Tokamak-2M device (HL-2M) set a new record for plasma current intensity, reaching 1 million amperes (1 megaampere) [12]. Theoretically, the plasma current capacity of HL-2M can reach more than 2.5 megaamperes, and future controlled nuclear fusion energy needs to operate stably at megaampere currents.

In terms of operating time, in April this year, China's "Eastern Super Ring" all-superconducting tokamak nuclear fusion experimental device (EAST) set a new record for steady-state operating time, reaching 403 seconds, far higher than the 101 seconds it set in 2017 [13]. As an important member of the ITER Chinese Working Group, the achievements of the EAST team can also contribute to the future of ITER.

In recent years, the industry has also shown great interest in controlled nuclear fusion. According to Reuters, on June 1, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a grant of $46 million to eight related companies. Currently, more than 30 companies around the world have invested in nuclear fusion research and development. For example, Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, who became famous for developing ChatGPT, has also invested in a nuclear fusion company[14]. The report believes that with the strong support of the government and capital, the controlled nuclear fusion industry is expected to gradually mature between 2035 and 2050.

Will the application of controlled nuclear fusion really be realized this time? No matter where ITER ends up, it still indirectly promotes scientific research innovation in many fields such as superconducting magnets and materials science, and all parties involved can also accumulate important experience in international cooperation and project management. However, if the project goes smoothly, such a large-scale experimental equipment will definitely bring us more surprises.

References:

[1] Seife C 2023, World's Largest Fusion Project Is in Big Trouble, New Documents Reveal, Scientific American, accessed June 29, 2023. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-largest-fusion-project-is-in-big-trouble-new-documents-reveal/

[2] ITER 2023, 32nd ITER Council: A Focus on Updating the Baseline, accessed June 29, 2023. https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3895

[3] ITER ORGANIZATION 2016 ANNUAL REPORT. https://www.iter.org/doc/www/content/com/Lists/list_items/Attachments/737/2016_ITER_ANNUAL_REPORT.pdf

[4] ITER 2021, 28th ITER Council: Steady progress despite challenges including COVID-19, accessed June 29, 2023. https://www.iter.org/doc/www/content/com/Lists/list_items/Attachments/938/2021_06_IC-28.pdf

[5] Perrier G 2022, The Next Step in ITER Licensing, ITER, accessed June 29, 2023. https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3727

[6] AFP 2023, International nuclear fusion project may be delayed by years, its head admits, the Guardian, accessed June 29, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jan/06/french-nuclear-fusion-project-may-be-delayed-by-years-its-head-admits

[7] The ITER Tokamak, ITER, accessed June 29, 2023. https://www.iter.org/mach

[8] Magnet Feeder System, China International Fusion Energy Program Executive Center, accessed June 29, 2023. https://www.iterchina.cn/ctkx/info/2018/12024.html

[9] Intellectuals 2017, The whole story of participating in the international cooperation on the Superconducting Super Collider, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, accessed June 29, 2023. https://ihep.cas.cn/kxcb/kjqy/201705/t20170504_4783471.html

[10] Joy W 2021, The Superconducting Super Collider: How Texas got the world's most ambitious scientific project and why it failed, WFAA, accessed June 29, 2023. https://www.wfaa.com/article/features/originals/forgotten-texas-history-superconducting-super-collider-waxahachie-texas/287-8757cc57-44ff-4982-a382-65d5d7893c3f

[11] Bishop B 2022, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieves fusion ignition, LLNL, accessed June 29, 2023. https://www.llnl.gov/news/lawrence-livermore-national-laboratory-achieves-fusion-ignition

[12] 2022, Breaking through 1 megaampere discharge, my country's new generation of "artificial sun" research has made new progress, People's Daily Online, accessed June 29, 2023. http://finance.people.com.cn/n1/2022/1021/c1004-32549176.html

[13] Xu Qimin 2023, 403 seconds new record, how China's "artificial sun" was achieved, Wenhui Daily, accessed June 29, 2023. https://www.cas.cn/cm/202304/t20230414_4884009.shtml

[14] Gardner T 2023, US announces $46 million in funds to nuclear eight fusion companies, Reuters, accessed June 29, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-announces-46-million-funds-eight-nuclear-fusion-companies-2023-05-31/

Author: Maya Blue Popular Science Creator

Reviewer: Luo Huiqian, Associate Researcher, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences