No “Mr. Fusion” in the near future. Perhaps not even a giant tokamak. Here’s a tale of ongoing Big Science travail, Big Science going bust. A schedule that just keeps slipping into the future.
• Scientific American > “World’s Largest Fusion Project Is in Big Trouble, New Documents Reveal” by Charles Seife (June 15, 2023) – The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) [conceived in the mid-1980s, formalized in 2006] is already billions of dollars over budget and decades behind schedule.
It could be a new world record, although no one involved wants to talk about it. In the south of France, a collaboration among 35 countries has been birthing one of the largest and most ambitious scientific experiments ever conceived: the giant fusion power machine known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). But the only record ITER seems certain to set doesn’t involve “burning” plasma at temperatures 10 times higher than that of the sun’s core, keeping this “artificial star” ablaze and generating net energy for seconds at a time or any of fusion energy’s other spectacular and myriad prerequisites. Instead ITER is on the verge of a record-setting disaster as accumulated schedule slips and budget overruns threaten to make it the most delayed—and most cost-inflated—science project in history.
And unlike JWST, which began full operation mere months after launch, ITER won’t be fit for purpose for years after its construction ends.