Discover the world's first reactor that can produce endless energy

This is the world's first reactor that will power the Earth using nuclear reactions like the Sun.

According to Euronews.com, in the heart of Provence, France, some of the world's leading scientists are setting the stage for the largest and most ambitious scientific experiment in the world.

The scientists' idea is to create the world's largest nuclear fusion device by harnessing energy from the same reaction that powers the Sun.

An image showing the concept of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) to demonstrate the industrial feasibility of nuclear fusion energy. (Photo: iter.org).

'We are building the most complex device ever designed,' said Laban Coblentz, Communications Director of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

The immediate task is to demonstrate the feasibility of industrially exploiting nuclear fusion – the same reaction that powers the Sun and the stars.

To do this, the world's largest magnetic field chamber, known as a tokamak, is being built in southern France to generate stored energy.

The ITER project agreement was officially signed by the US, EU, Russia, China, India and South Korea in 2006 at the Elysée Palace in Paris.

More than 30 countries are currently collaborating on the effort to build the test device, which is expected to weigh 23,000 tons and withstand temperatures of up to 150 million degrees Celsius when completed.

In some ways, it's like a national laboratory, a large research facility, but it's actually a convergence of national laboratories from 35 countries, Mr. Coblentz said.

How does nuclear fusion take place?

Nuclear fusion is a process in which two light atomic nuclei fuse to form a heavier nucleus, releasing enormous amounts of energy.

In the case of the Sun, hydrogen atoms in the core are fused together by the enormous force of gravity.

Meanwhile, on Earth, two main methods are being explored to create fusion.

'The first method is to fire a laser at a very small amount - about the size of a peppercorn - of two forms of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium. This converts a small amount of matter into energy according to the formula E = mc² (E is energy, m is mass, c is the speed of light in a vacuum)', explains Mr Coblentz.

The ITER project focuses on the second possible method: Magnetic Confinement Fusion.

'In this case, we have a very large cavity, 800m³, and we put a very small amount of fuel – 2 to 3 grams of fuel, deuterium and tritium – and we increase the temperature up to 150 million degrees Celsius through different heating systems ,' said Coblentz.

"That's the temperature at which the velocity of these particles is so high that instead of repelling each other with their positive charge, they combine and fuse. And when they fuse, they release energy," Coblentz explained .

In a tokamak, charged particles are held in place by a magnetic field, except for high-energy neutrons that are released and hit the cavity walls, transferring heat and thus heating the water surrounding the tokamak. Theoretically, the energy would be harnessed by the steam generated to turn a turbine.

'This is the successor to a long line of research instruments,' explains Richard Pitts, ITER's chief scientist.

'The field of tokamak physics research has been around for about 70 years, since the first experiments were designed and built in Russia in the 1940s and 1950s ,' said Mr Pitts.

Early tokamaks were small devices, Pitts said. They then got bigger and bigger to generate fusion power.

Panorama of the ITER area. (Photo: iter.org).

Advantages of fusion

Nuclear power plants have been around since the 1950s, exploiting the fission reaction, in which atoms are split in a reactor, releasing huge amounts of energy in the process.

Fission has the obvious advantage that the method is tried and tested, with over 400 nuclear fission reactors operating worldwide today.

However, although nuclear disasters have been rare in history, the catastrophic accident of reactor number 4 at Chernobyl in April 1986 was a stark reminder that they are never completely risk-free.

Furthermore, fission reactors also face the problem of safely managing large amounts of radioactive waste, which is often buried deep underground in geological repositories.

In contrast, ITER notes that a similarly sized fusion plant would produce energy from a much smaller amount of chemical input, just a few grams of hydrogen.

'The safety performance is not even comparable,' Mr Coblentz noted . 'We only need 2 to 3 grams of material. Furthermore, the material in the fusion plant, deuterium and tritium, and the material that escapes, non-radioactive helium and neutrons, have all been mined. So there is nothing left and the amount of residual radioactive material is extremely small.'

The obstacles of the ITER project

However, Mr. Coblentz emphasized, the challenge of fusion reactions is that these nuclear reactors are still extremely difficult to build.

'We're looking to get something up to 150 million degrees Celsius. That's really hard to do ,' he said.

The ITER project has certainly struggled with the complexity of this massive undertaking. The original ITER timeline pegged the launch of the first plasma (ionized gas) at 2025, with full operation slated for 2035.

However, component setbacks and Covid-19-related delays have led to changes to the system's operational schedule and a ballooning budget. The initial cost estimate for the project was €5 billion but has ballooned to more than €20 billion.

In terms of international cooperation, ITER is also under pressure from the 'headwinds' of geopolitical tensions between many of the countries involved in the project.

"It's clear that the countries involved are not always ideologically aligned," Coblentz noted . "Despite 40 years of commitment to work together, nothing is certain. There is never a certainty that there won't be some conflict."

In short, given the scale of the challenge posed by climate change, it is no surprise that scientists are racing to find carbon-free energy sources to power our world.

But abundant fusion energy is still a long way off, and even ITER admits that its project represents the long-term answer to energy concerns.

In response to the view that fusion energy will come too late to help meaningfully combat the climate crisis, Mr. Coblentz asserts that fusion energy could have a role far into the future.

'If sea levels rise to the point where we start needing to consume energy to move cities, then that's really the obvious answer,' he said .