We say that we will put the sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is we don't know how to make the box.

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
French Nobel laureate

All electronic devices and machines need energy and humanity consumes a lot of it. But fossil fuels are running out, and alternative energy is not yet effective enough.
There is a method of obtaining energy that ideally suits all requirements - Thermonuclear fusion. Thermo reaction nuclear fusion(the conversion of hydrogen into helium and the release of energy) constantly occurs in the sun and this process gives the planet energy in the form sun rays. You just need to imitate it on Earth, on a smaller scale. It is enough to provide high pressure and very high temperature (10 times higher than on the Sun) and the fusion reaction will be launched. To create such conditions, you need to build a thermonuclear reactor. It will use more abundant resources on earth, will be safer and more powerful than conventional nuclear power plants. For more than 40 years, attempts have been made to build it and experiments have been conducted. IN last years on one of the prototypes it was even possible to obtain more energy than was expended. The most ambitious projects in this area are presented below:

Government projects

The greatest public attention has recently been given to another thermonuclear reactor design - the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator (the stellarator is more complex in its internal structure than ITER, which is a tokamak). Having spent just over $1 billion, German scientists built a scaled-down demonstration model of the reactor in 9 years by 2015. If it shows good results, a larger version will be built.

France's MegaJoule Laser will be the world's most powerful laser and will attempt to advance a laser-based method of building a fusion reactor. The French installation is expected to be commissioned in 2018.

NIF (National Ignition Facility) was built in the USA over 12 years and 4 billion dollars by 2012. They expected to test the technology and then immediately build a reactor, but it turned out that, as Wikipedia reports, significant work is required if the system is ever to reach ignition. As a result, grandiose plans were canceled and scientists began to gradually improve the laser. The final challenge is to raise energy transfer efficiency from 7% to 15%. Otherwise, congressional funding for this method of achieving synthesis may cease.

At the end of 2015, construction began on a building for the world’s most powerful laser installation in Sarov. It will be more powerful than the current American and future French ones and will make it possible to conduct experiments necessary for the construction of a “laser” version of the reactor. Completion of construction in 2020.

Located in the USA, the MagLIF fusion laser is recognized as a dark horse among methods for achieving thermonuclear fusion. Recently, this method has shown better results than expected, but the power still needs to be increased by 1000 times. The laser is currently undergoing an upgrade, and by 2018 scientists hope to receive the same amount of energy as they spent. If successful, a larger version will be built.

The Russian Nuclear Physics Institute persistently experimented with the “open trap” method, which the United States abandoned in the 90s. As a result, indicators were obtained that were considered impossible for this method. BINP scientists believe that their installation is now at the level of the German Wendelstein 7-X (Q=0.1), but cheaper. Now they are building a new installation for 3 billion rubles

The head of the Kurchatov Institute constantly reminds of plans to build a small thermonuclear reactor in Russia - Ignitor. According to the plan, it should be as effective as ITER, albeit smaller. Its construction should have started 3 years ago, but this situation is typical for large scientific projects.

At the beginning of 2016, the Chinese tokamak EAST managed to reach a temperature of 50 million degrees and maintain it for 102 seconds. Before the construction of huge reactors and lasers began, all the news about thermonuclear fusion was like this. One might think that this is just a competition among scientists to see who can hold the increasingly higher temperature longer. The higher the plasma temperature and the longer it can be maintained, the closer we are to the beginning of the fusion reaction. There are dozens of such installations in the world, several more () () are being built, so the EAST record will soon be broken. In essence, these small reactors are just testing equipment before being sent to ITER.

Lockheed Martin announced a fusion energy breakthrough in 2015 that would allow them to build a small and mobile fusion reactor within 10 years. Given that even very large and not at all mobile commercial reactors were not expected until 2040, the corporation's announcement was met with skepticism. But the company has a lot of resources, so who knows. A prototype is expected in 2020.

Popular Silicon Valley startup Helion Energy has its own unique plan to achieve thermonuclear fusion. The company has raised more than $10 million and expects to create a prototype by 2019.

Low-profile startup Tri Alpha Energy has recently achieved impressive results in promoting its fusion method (theorists have developed >100 theoretical ways to achieve fusion, the tokamak is simply the simplest and most popular). The company also raised more than $100 million in investor funds.

The reactor project from the Canadian startup General Fusion is even more different from the others, but the developers are confident in it and have raised more than $100 million in 10 years to build the reactor by 2020.

UK startup First light has the most accessible website, formed in 2014, and announced plans to use the latest scientific data to achieve nuclear fusion at a lower cost.

Scientists from MIT wrote a paper describing a compact fusion reactor. They rely on new technologies that appeared after the construction of giant tokamaks began and promise to complete the project in 10 years. It is not yet known whether they will be given the green light to begin construction. Even if approved, an article in a magazine is an even earlier stage than a startup

Nuclear fusion is perhaps the least suitable industry for crowdfunding. But it is with his help and also with NASA funding that the Lawrenceville Plasma Physics company is going to build a prototype of its reactor. Of all the ongoing projects, this one looks the most like a scam, but who knows, maybe they will bring something useful to this grandiose work.

ITER will only be a prototype for the construction of a full-fledged DEMO installation - the first commercial fusion reactor. Its launch is now scheduled for 2044 and this is still an optimistic forecast.

But there are plans for the next stage. A hybrid thermonuclear reactor will receive energy from both atomic decay (like a conventional nuclear power plant) and fusion. In this configuration, the energy can be 10 times more, but the safety is lower. China hopes to build a prototype by 2030, but experts say that would be like trying to build hybrid cars before the invention of the internal combustion engine.

Bottom line

There is no shortage of people wanting to bring a new source of energy into the world. Best Chances The ITER project has it, given its scale and funding, but other methods, as well as private projects, should not be discounted. Scientists have worked for decades to get the fusion reaction going without much success. But now there are more projects to achieve thermonuclear reaction than ever before. Even if each of them fails, new attempts will be made. It's unlikely that we will rest until we light up a miniature version of the Sun, here on Earth.

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Today, many countries are taking part in thermonuclear research. The leaders are the European Union, the United States, Russia and Japan, while programs in China, Brazil, Canada and Korea are rapidly expanding. Initially, thermonuclear reactors in the USA and USSR were associated with the development nuclear weapons and remained secret until the Atoms for Peace conference, which took place in Geneva in 1958. After the creation of the Soviet tokamak, nuclear fusion research became “big science” in the 1970s. But the cost and complexity of the devices increased to the point where international cooperation became the only way forward.

Thermonuclear reactors in the world

Since the 1970s, the commercial use of fusion energy has been continually delayed by 40 years. However, a lot has happened in recent years that may allow this period to be shortened.

Several tokamaks have been built, including the European JET, the British MAST and the TFTR experimental fusion reactor at Princeton, USA. The international ITER project is currently under construction in Cadarache, France. It will be the largest tokamak when it starts operating in 2020. In 2030, China will build CFETR, which will surpass ITER. Meanwhile, China is conducting research on the experimental superconducting tokamak EAST.

Another type of fusion reactor, stellators, is also popular among researchers. One of the largest, LHD, began work at the Japanese National Institute in 1998. It is used to find the best magnetic configuration for plasma confinement. The German Max Planck Institute conducted research at the Wendelstein 7-AS reactor in Garching between 1988 and 2002, and currently at the Wendelstein 7-X reactor, whose construction took more than 19 years. Another TJII stellarator is in operation in Madrid, Spain. In the US, Princeton Laboratory (PPPL), which built the first fusion reactor of this type in 1951, stopped construction of NCSX in 2008 due to cost overruns and lack of funding.

In addition, significant advances have been made in inertial fusion research. Construction of the $7 billion National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration, was completed in March 2009. The French Laser Mégajoule (LMJ) began operations in October 2014. Fusion reactors use lasers delivering about 2 million joules of light energy within a few billionths of a second to a target a few millimeters in size to trigger a nuclear fusion reaction. The primary mission of NIF and LMJ is research in support of national military nuclear programs.

ITER

In 1985 Soviet Union proposed to build the next generation tokamak jointly with Europe, Japan and the USA. The work was carried out under the auspices of the IAEA. Between 1988 and 1990, the first designs for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ITER, which also means "path" or "journey" in Latin, were created to prove that fusion could produce more energy than it absorbed. Canada and Kazakhstan also took part, mediated by Euratom and Russia respectively.

Six years later, the ITER board approved the first comprehensive reactor design based on established physics and technology, costing $6 billion. Then the United States withdrew from the consortium, which forced them to halve costs and change the project. The result is ITER-FEAT, which costs $3 billion but achieves self-sustaining response and positive power balance.

In 2003, the United States rejoined the consortium, and China announced its desire to participate. As a result, in mid-2005 the partners agreed to build ITER in Cadarache in the south of France. The EU and France contributed half of the €12.8 billion, while Japan, China, South Korea, USA and Russia - 10% each. Japan provided high-tech components, maintained a €1 billion IFMIF facility designed to test materials, and had the right to build the next test reactor. The total cost of ITER includes half the costs for 10 years of construction and half for 20 years of operation. India became the seventh member of ITER at the end of 2005.

Experiments are due to begin in 2018 using hydrogen to avoid activating the magnets. Using D-T plasma is not expected before 2026.

ITER's goal is to generate 500 MW (at least for 400 s) using less than 50 MW of input power without generating electricity.

Demo's two-gigawatt demonstration power plant will produce large-scale on an ongoing basis. The Demo's conceptual design will be completed by 2017, with construction beginning in 2024. The launch will take place in 2033.

JET

In 1978 the EU (Euratom, Sweden and Switzerland) started the joint European project JET in the UK. JET is today the largest operating tokamak in the world. A similar JT-60 reactor operates at Japan's National Fusion Institute, but only JET can use deuterium-tritium fuel.

The reactor was launched in 1983, and became the first experiment, which resulted in controlled thermonuclear fusion with a power of up to 16 MW for one second and 5 MW of stable power on deuterium-tritium plasma in November 1991. Many experiments have been carried out to study various heating schemes and other techniques.

Further improvements to the JET involve increasing its power. The MAST compact reactor is being developed together with JET and is part of the ITER project.

K-STAR

K-STAR is a Korean superconducting tokamak from the National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) in Daejeon, which produced its first plasma in mid-2008. ITER, which is the result of international cooperation. The 1.8 m radius Tokamak is the first reactor to use Nb3Sn superconducting magnets, the same ones planned for ITER. During the first phase, completed by 2012, K-STAR had to prove the viability of the underlying technologies and achieve plasma pulses lasting up to 20 seconds. At the second stage (2013-2017), it is being modernized to study long pulses up to 300 s in H mode and transition to a high-performance AT mode. The goal of the third phase (2018-2023) is to achieve high productivity and efficiency in the long-pulse mode. At stage 4 (2023-2025), DEMO technologies will be tested. The device is not capable of handling tritium and D-T fuel does not use.

K-DEMO

Developed in collaboration with the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and South Korea's NFRI, K-DEMO is intended to be the next step in commercial reactor development beyond ITER, and will be the first power plant capable of generating power into the electrical grid, namely 1 million kW within a few weeks. It will have a diameter of 6.65 m and will have a reproduction zone module created as part of the DEMO project. The Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology plans to invest about a trillion Korean won ($941 million) in it.

EAST

China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) at the Institute of Physics of China in Hefei created hydrogen plasma at a temperature of 50 million °C and maintained it for 102 s.

TFTR

At the American laboratory PPPL, the experimental fusion reactor TFTR operated from 1982 to 1997. In December 1993, TFTR became the first magnetic tokamak to conduct extensive deuterium-tritium plasma experiments. IN next year the reactor produced a then-record 10.7 MW of controllable power, and in 1995 a temperature record of 510 million °C was achieved. However, the facility did not achieve the break-even goal of fusion energy, but successfully met the hardware design goals, making a significant contribution to the development of ITER.

LHD

The LHD at Japan's National Fusion Institute in Toki, Gifu Prefecture, was the largest stellarator in the world. The fusion reactor was launched in 1998 and demonstrated plasma confinement properties comparable to other large facilities. An ion temperature of 13.5 keV (about 160 million °C) and an energy of 1.44 MJ were achieved.

Wendelstein 7-X

After a year of testing, which began in late 2015, helium temperatures briefly reached 1 million °C. In 2016, a hydrogen plasma fusion reactor using 2 MW of power reached a temperature of 80 million °C within a quarter of a second. W7-X is the largest stellarator in the world and is planned to operate continuously for 30 minutes. The cost of the reactor was 1 billion €.

NIF

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) was completed in March 2009. Using its 192 laser beams, NIF is able to concentrate 60 times more energy than any previous laser system.

Cold fusion

In March 1989, two researchers, American Stanley Pons and British Martin Fleischman, announced that they had launched a simple tabletop cold fusion reactor operating at room temperature. The process involved the electrolysis of heavy water using palladium electrodes on which deuterium nuclei were concentrated to a high density. The researchers say it produced heat that could only be explained in terms of nuclear processes, and there were fusion byproducts including helium, tritium and neutrons. However, other experimenters were unable to repeat this experiment. Most of the scientific community does not believe that cold fusion reactors are real.

Low energy nuclear reactions

Initiated by claims of "cold fusion", research has continued in the low-energy field with some empirical support, but no generally accepted scientific explanation. Apparently, weak nuclear interactions are used to create and capture neutrons (and not a powerful force, as in their fusion). Experiments involve hydrogen or deuterium passing through a catalytic layer and reacting with a metal. Researchers report an observed release of energy. The main practical example is the interaction of hydrogen with nickel powder, releasing heat in an amount greater than any chemical reaction can produce.

Recently, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology hosted a Russian presentation of the ITER project, within which it is planned to create a thermonuclear reactor operating on the tokamak principle. A group of scientists from Russia spoke about the international project and the participation of Russian physicists in the creation of this object. Lenta.ru attended the ITER presentation and spoke with one of the project participants.

ITER (ITER, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is a thermonuclear reactor project that allows the demonstration and research of thermonuclear technologies for their further use for peaceful and commercial purposes. The creators of the project believe that controlled thermonuclear fusion can become the energy of the future and serve as an alternative to modern gas, oil and coal. Researchers note the safety, environmental friendliness and accessibility of ITER technology compared to conventional energy. The complexity of the project is comparable to the Large Hadron Collider; The reactor installation includes more than ten million structural elements.

About ITER

Tokamak toroidal magnets require 80 thousand kilometers of superconducting filaments; their total weight reaches 400 tons. The reactor itself will weigh about 23 thousand tons. For comparison, the weight of the Eiffel Tower in Paris is only 7.3 thousand tons. The volume of plasma in the tokamak will reach 840 cubic meters, while, for example, in the largest reactor of this type operating in the UK - JET - the volume is equal to one hundred cubic meters.

The height of the tokamak will be 73 meters, of which 60 meters will be above the ground and 13 meters below it. For comparison, the height of the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin is 71 meters. The main reactor platform will cover an area of ​​42 hectares, which is comparable to the area of ​​60 football fields. The temperature in the tokamak plasma will reach 150 million degrees Celsius, which is ten times higher than the temperature at the center of the Sun.

In the construction of ITER in the second half of 2010, it is planned to involve up to five thousand people simultaneously - this will include both workers and engineers, as well as administrative personnel. Many of ITER's components will be transported from the port near the Mediterranean Sea along a specially constructed road approximately 104 kilometers long. In particular, the heaviest fragment of the installation will be transported along it, the mass of which will be more than 900 tons, and the length will be about ten meters. More than 2.5 million cubic meters of earth will be removed from the construction site of the ITER facility.

The total cost of design and construction works is estimated at 13 billion euros. These funds are allocated by seven main project participants representing the interests of 35 countries. For comparison, the total costs of building and maintaining the Large Hadron Collider are almost half as much, and building and maintaining the International Space Station costs almost one and a half times more.

Tokamak

Today in the world there are two promising projects of thermonuclear reactors: tokamak ( That roidal ka measure with ma rotten To atushki) and stellarator. In both installations the plasma is contained magnetic field, however, in a tokamak it takes the form of a toroidal cord through which an electric current is passed, while in a stellarator the magnetic field is induced by external coils. In thermonuclear reactors, reactions of synthesis of heavy elements from light ones (helium from hydrogen isotopes - deuterium and tritium) occur, in contrast to conventional reactors, where the processes of decay of heavy nuclei into lighter ones are initiated.

Photo: National Research Center “Kurchatov Institute” / nrcki.ru

The electric current in the tokamak is also used to initially heat the plasma to a temperature of about 30 million degrees Celsius; further heating is carried out by special devices.

The theoretical design of a tokamak was proposed in 1951 by Soviet physicists Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm, and the first installation was built in the USSR in 1954. However, scientists were unable to maintain the plasma in a steady state for a long time, and by the mid-1960s the world was convinced that controlled thermonuclear fusion based on a tokamak was impossible.

But just three years later, at the T-3 installation at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, under the leadership of Lev Artsimovich, it was possible to heat the plasma to a temperature of more than five million degrees Celsius and hold it for a short time; Scientists from Great Britain who were present at the experiment recorded a temperature of about ten million degrees on their equipment. After this, a real tokamak boom began in the world, so that about 300 installations were built in the world, the largest of which are located in Europe, Japan, the USA and Russia.

Image: Rfassbind/ wikipedia.org

ITER Management

What is the basis for confidence that ITER will be operational in 5-10 years? On what practical and theoretical developments?

On the Russian side, we are fulfilling the stated work schedule and are not going to violate it. Unfortunately, we see some delays in the work being carried out by others, mainly in Europe; There is a partial delay in America and there is a tendency that the project will be somewhat delayed. Detained but not stopped. There is confidence that it will work. The concept of the project itself is completely theoretical and practically calculated and reliable, so I think it will work. Whether it will fully give the declared results... we'll wait and see.

Is the project more of a research project?

Certainly. The stated result is not the obtained result. If it is received in full, I will be extremely happy.

What new technologies have appeared, are appearing or will appear in the ITER project?

The ITER project is not just a super-complex, but also a super-stressful project. Stressful in terms of energy load, operating conditions of certain elements, including our systems. Therefore, new technologies simply must be born in this project.

Is there an example?

Space. For example, our diamond detectors. We discussed the possibility of using our diamond detectors on space trucks, which are nuclear vehicles that transport certain objects such as satellites or stations from orbit to orbit. There is such a project for a space truck. Since this is a device with a nuclear reactor on board, complex operating conditions require analysis and control, so our detectors could easily do this. At the moment, the topic of creating such diagnostics is not yet funded. If it is created, it can be applied, and then there will be no need to invest money in it at the development stage, but only at the development and implementation stage.

What is the share of modern Russian developments of the 2000s and 1990s in comparison with Soviet and Western developments?

The share of Russian scientific contribution to ITER compared to the global one is very large. I don't know it exactly, but it is very significant. It is clearly no less than the Russian percentage of financial participation in the project, because many other teams have a large number of Russians who went abroad to work in other institutes. In Japan and America, everywhere, we communicate and work with them very well, some of them represent Europe, some represent America. In addition, there are also scientific schools there. Therefore, about whether we are developing more or more what we did before... One of the greats said that “we stand on the shoulders of titans,” therefore the base that was developed in Soviet times is undeniably great and without it we are nothing we couldn't. But even at the moment we are not standing still, we are moving.

What exactly does your group do at ITER?

I have a sector in the department. The department is developing several diagnostics; our sector is specifically developing a vertical neutron chamber, ITER neutron diagnostics and solves a wide range of problems from design to manufacturing, as well as carrying out related research work related to the development, in particular, of diamond detectors. The diamond detector is a unique device, originally created in our laboratory. Previously used in many thermonuclear installations, it is now used quite widely by many laboratories from America to Japan; they, let's say, followed us, but we continue to remain on top. We are now making diamond detectors and are going to reach the level of industrial production (small-scale production).

What industries can these detectors be used in?

In this case, these are thermonuclear research; in the future, we assume that they will be in demand in nuclear energy.

What exactly do detectors do, what do they measure?

Neutrons. There is no more valuable product than the neutron. You and I also consist of neutrons.

What characteristics of neutrons do they measure?

Spectral. Firstly, the immediate task that is solved at ITER is the measurement of neutron energy spectra. In addition, they monitor the number and energy of neutrons. The second, additional task concerns nuclear energy: we have parallel developments that can also measure thermal neutrons, which are the basis of nuclear reactors. This is a secondary task for us, but it is also being developed, that is, we can work here and at the same time make developments that can be quite successfully applied in nuclear energy.

What methods do you use in your research: theoretical, practical, computer modeling?

Everyone: from complex mathematics (methods of mathematical physics) and mathematical modeling to experiments. All the different types of calculations that we carry out are confirmed and verified by experiments, because we directly have an experimental laboratory with several operating neutron generators, on which we test the systems that we ourselves develop.

Do you have a working reactor in your laboratory?

Not a reactor, but a neutron generator. A neutron generator is, in fact, a mini-model of the thermonuclear reactions in question. Everything is the same there, only the process there is slightly different. It works on the principle of an accelerator - it is a beam of certain ions that hits a target. That is, in the case of plasma, we have a hot object in which each atom has high energy, and in our case, a specially accelerated ion hits a target saturated with similar ions. Accordingly, a reaction occurs. Let's just say this is one of the ways you can do the same thing thermonuclear reaction; the only thing that has been proven is that this method does not have high efficiency, that is, you will not get a positive energy output, but you get the reaction itself - we directly observe this reaction and the particles and everything that goes into it.

The ITER international experimental thermonuclear reactor project started in 2007. It is located in Cadarache, in the south of France. The main task of ITER, according to those who conceived and implements the project, is to demonstrate the possibilities of commercial use of thermonuclear fusion.

ITER is a strategic international scientific initiative; more than 30 countries participate in its implementation.

“We are in the very heart of a future fusion reactor. It weighs as much as three Eiffel Towers and has a total area of ​​60 football fields,” reports euronews journalist Claudio Rocco.

A fusion reactor or toroidal installation for magnetic plasma confinement, otherwise called a tokomak, is created in order to achieve the conditions necessary for controlled thermonuclear fusion to occur. The plasma in a tokamak is held not by the walls of the chamber, but by a specially created combined magnetic field - a toroidal external and poloidal field of the current flowing through the plasma cord. Compared to other installations that use a magnetic field to confine plasma, the use of electric current is the main feature of the tokamak

When carrying out controlled thermonuclear fusion, deuterium and tritium will be used in the tokamak.
Details are in the interview with ITER General Director Bernard Bigot.

What is the advantage of energy produced through controlled nuclear fusion?

“First of all, in the use of hydrogen isotopes, which, in turn, is considered an almost inexhaustible source: hydrogen is found everywhere, including in the World Ocean. So as long as there is water on Earth, sea and fresh, we will be provided with fuel for the tokamak - we are talking about millions of years. The second advantage is that radioactive waste has a fairly short half-life: several hundred years, compared to that of nuclear fusion waste products.”

Thermonuclear fusion is controlled and, according to Bernard Bigot, relatively easy to interrupt if an accident occurs. A different situation in a similar case arises with nuclear fusion.

By heating a substance, a nuclear reaction can be achieved. It is this relationship between heating a substance and a nuclear reaction that is reflected by the term “thermonuclear reaction.”

The design of the tokamak components is carried out through the efforts of the ITER participating countries, and the parts and technological components of the tokamak are produced in Japan, South Korea, Russia, China, the USA and other countries. When building a tokamak, the probability is taken into account different types accidents

Bernard Bigot: “Nevertheless, a leak of radioactive elements is possible. Some compartment will not be sealed enough. But their number will be minimal, and for those living near the reactor there will be no great danger to health or life.”

But the possibility of an accident and leakage is provided for in the project, in particular, the rooms in which thermonuclear fusion takes place and the adjacent rooms will be equipped with special ventilation shafts into which radioactive elements will be sucked in in order to prevent their release to the outside.

“I don’t think that the estimate of about 16 billion euros looks so gigantic, especially when you consider the cost of the energy that will be produced here. Moreover, it takes a long time to produce, a very long time, so all the costs will be justified even in the medium term,” concludes Bernard Bigot.

The Russian NIIEFA recently reported the successful testing of a full-scale prototype of a quenching resistor system for protecting superconducting coils, which were designed specifically for ITER.

And the commissioning of the entire ITER complex in Cadarache, France, is planned for 2020.

Humanity is gradually approaching the border of irreversible depletion of the Earth's hydrocarbon resources. We have been extracting oil, gas and coal from the bowels of the planet for almost two centuries, and it is already clear that their reserves are being depleted at tremendous speed. The leading countries of the world have long been thinking about creating a new source of energy, environmentally friendly, safe from the point of view of operation, with enormous fuel reserves.

Fusion reactor

Today there is a lot of talk about the use of so-called alternative types of energy - renewable sources in the form of photovoltaics, wind energy and hydropower. It is obvious that, due to their properties, these directions can only act as auxiliary sources of energy supply.

As a long-term prospect for humanity, only energy based on nuclear reactions can be considered.

On the one hand, more and more states are showing interest in building nuclear reactors on their territory. But still, a pressing problem for nuclear energy is the processing and disposal of radioactive waste, and this affects economic and environmental indicators. Back in the middle of the 20th century, the world's leading physicists, in search of new types of energy, turned to the source of life on Earth - the Sun, in the depths of which, at a temperature of about 20 million degrees, reactions of synthesis (fusion) of light elements take place with the release of colossal energy.

Domestic specialists handled the task of developing a facility for implementing nuclear fusion reactions under terrestrial conditions best of all. The knowledge and experience in the field of controlled thermonuclear fusion (CTF), obtained in Russia, formed the basis of the project, which is, without exaggeration, the energy hope of humanity - the International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor (ITER), which is being built in Cadarache (France).

History of thermonuclear fusion

The first thermonuclear research began in countries working on their atomic defense programs. This is not surprising, because at the dawn of the atomic era, the main purpose of the appearance of deuterium plasma reactors was the study of physical processes in hot plasma, knowledge of which was necessary, among other things, for the creation of thermonuclear weapons. According to declassified data, the USSR and the USA began almost simultaneously in the 1950s. work on UTS. But at the same time, there is historical evidence, that back in 1932, the old revolutionary and close friend of the leader of the world proletariat Nikolai Bukharin, who at that time held the post of chairman of the Supreme Economic Council committee and followed the development Soviet science, proposed to launch a project in the country to study controlled thermonuclear reactions.

The history of the Soviet thermonuclear project is not without a fun fact. of the future famous academician and the creator of the hydrogen bomb, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, was inspired by the idea of ​​​​magnetic thermal insulation of high-temperature plasma from a soldier’s letter Soviet army. In 1950, Sergeant Oleg Lavrentyev, who served on Sakhalin, sent a letter to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party in which he proposed using hydrogen bomb lithium-6 deuteride instead of liquefied deuterium and tritium, and also create a system with electrostatic confinement of hot plasma for controlled thermonuclear fusion. The letter was reviewed by the then young scientist Andrei Sakharov, who wrote in his review that he “considers it necessary to have a detailed discussion of Comrade Lavrentiev’s project.”

Already by October 1950, Andrei Sakharov and his colleague Igor Tamm made the first estimates of a magnetic thermonuclear reactor (MTR). The first toroidal installation with a strong longitudinal magnetic field, based on the ideas of I. Tamm and A. Sakharov, was built in 1955 in LIPAN. It was called TMP - a torus with a magnetic field. Subsequent installations were already called TOKAMAK, after the combination of the initial syllables in the phrase “TORIDAL CHAMBER MAGNETIC COIL”. In its classic version, a tokamak is a donut-shaped toroidal chamber placed in a toroidal magnetic field. From 1955 to 1966 At the Kurchatov Institute, 8 such installations were built, on which a lot of different studies were carried out. If before 1969, a tokamak was built outside the USSR only in Australia, then in subsequent years they were built in 29 countries, including the USA, Japan, European countries, India, China, Canada, Libya, Egypt. In total, about 300 tokamaks have been built in the world to date, including 31 in the USSR and Russia, 30 in the USA, 32 in Europe and 27 in Japan. In fact, three countries - the USSR, Great Britain and the USA - were engaged in an unspoken competition to see who would be the first to harness plasma and actually begin producing energy “from water.”

The most important advantage of a thermonuclear reactor is the reduction in radiation biological hazard by approximately a thousand times in comparison with all modern nuclear power reactors.

A thermonuclear reactor does not emit CO2 and does not produce “heavy” radioactive waste. This reactor can be placed anywhere, anywhere.

A step of half a century

In 1985, academician Evgeny Velikhov, on behalf of the USSR, proposed that scientists from Europe, the USA and Japan work together to create a thermonuclear reactor, and already in 1986 in Geneva an agreement was reached on the design of a facility that later received the name ITER. In 1992, the partners signed a quadripartite agreement to develop an engineering design for the reactor. The first stage of construction is scheduled to be completed by 2020, when it is planned to receive the first plasma. In 2011, real construction began at the ITER site.

The ITER design follows the classic Russian tokamak, developed back in the 1960s. It is planned that at the first stage the reactor will operate in a pulsed mode with a power of thermonuclear reactions of 400–500 MW, at the second stage the continuous operation of the reactor, as well as the tritium reproduction system, will be tested.

It is not for nothing that the ITER reactor is called the energy future of humanity. Firstly, it is the world's largest science project, because on the territory of France it is being built by almost the whole world: the EU + Switzerland, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the USA are participating. The agreement on the construction of the installation was signed in 2006. European countries contribute about 50% of the project's financing, Russia accounts for approximately 10% of the total amount, which will be invested in the form of high-tech equipment. But Russia’s most important contribution is the tokamak technology itself, which formed the basis of the ITER reactor.

Secondly, this will be the first large-scale attempt to use the thermonuclear reaction that occurs in the Sun to generate electricity. Thirdly, this scientific work should bring very practical results, and by the end of the century the world expects the appearance of the first prototype of a commercial thermonuclear power plant.

Scientists assume that the first plasma at the international experimental thermonuclear reactor will be produced in December 2025.

Why did literally the entire world scientific community begin to build such a reactor? The fact is that many technologies that are planned to be used in the construction of ITER do not belong to all countries at once. One state, even the most highly developed in scientific and technical terms, cannot immediately have a hundred technologies of the highest world level in all fields of technology used in such a high-tech and breakthrough project as a thermonuclear reactor. But ITER consists of hundreds of similar technologies.

Russia surpasses the global level in many thermonuclear fusion technologies. But, for example, Japanese nuclear scientists also have unique competencies in this area, which are quite applicable in ITER.

Therefore, at the very beginning of the project, the partner countries came to agreements about who and what would be supplied to the site, and that this should not just be cooperation in engineering, but an opportunity for each of the partners to receive new technologies from other participants, so that in the future develop them yourself.

Andrey Retinger, international journalist