iter fusion reactor. Iter: how the first international experimental thermonuclear reactor is created International thermonuclear reactor

ITER - International Thermonuclear Reactor (ITER)

Human energy consumption is growing every year, which pushes the energy sector towards active development. Thus, with the emergence of nuclear power plants, the amount of energy generated around the world increased significantly, which made it possible to safely use energy for all the needs of mankind. For example, 72.3% of the electricity generated in France comes from nuclear power plants, in Ukraine - 52.3%, in Sweden - 40.0%, in the UK - 20.4%, in Russia - 17.1%. However, technology does not stand still, and in order to meet the further energy needs of future countries, scientists are working on a number of innovative projects, one of which is ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor).

Although the profitability of this installation is still in question, according to the work of many researchers, the creation and subsequent development of controlled thermonuclear fusion technology can result in a powerful and safe source of energy. Let's look at some of the positive aspects of such an installation:

• The main fuel of a thermonuclear reactor is hydrogen, which means practically inexhaustible reserves of nuclear fuel.
• Hydrogen can be produced by processing seawater, which is available to most countries. It follows from this that a monopoly of fuel resources cannot arise.
• The probability of an emergency explosion during the operation of a thermonuclear reactor is much less than during the operation of a nuclear reactor. According to researchers, even in the event of an accident, radiation emissions will not pose a danger to the population, which means there is no need for evacuation.
• Unlike nuclear reactors, fusion reactors produce radioactive waste that has a short half-life, meaning it decays faster. Also, there are no combustion products in thermonuclear reactors.
• A fusion reactor does not require materials that are also used for nuclear weapons. This eliminates the possibility of covering up the production of nuclear weapons by processing materials for the needs of a nuclear reactor.

Thermonuclear reactor - inside view

However, there are also a number of technical shortcomings that researchers constantly encounter.

For example, the current version of the fuel, presented in the form of a mixture of deuterium and tritium, requires the development of new technologies. For example, at the end of the first series of tests at the JET thermonuclear reactor, the largest to date, the reactor became so radioactive that the development of a special robotic maintenance system was further required to complete the experiment. Another disappointing factor in the operation of a thermonuclear reactor is its efficiency - 20%, while the efficiency of a nuclear power plant is 33-34%, and a thermal power plant is 40%.

Creation of the ITER project and launch of the reactor

The ITER project dates back to 1985, when the Soviet Union proposed the joint creation of a tokamak - a toroidal chamber with magnetic coils that can hold plasma using magnets, thereby creating the conditions required for a thermonuclear fusion reaction to occur. In 1992, a quadripartite agreement on the development of ITER was signed, the parties to which were the EU, the USA, Russia and Japan. In 1994, the Republic of Kazakhstan joined the project, in 2001 - Canada, in 2003 - South Korea and China, in 2005 - India. In 2005, the location for the construction of the reactor was determined - the Cadarache Nuclear Energy Research Center, France.

Construction of the reactor began with the preparation of a pit for the foundation. So the parameters of the pit were 130 x 90 x 17 meters. The entire tokamak complex will weigh 360,000 tons, of which 23,000 tons are the tokamak itself.

Various elements of the ITER complex will be developed and delivered to the construction site from all over the world. So in 2016, part of the conductors for poloidal coils was developed in Russia, which were then sent to China, which will produce the coils themselves.

Obviously, such a large-scale work is not at all easy to organize; a number of countries have repeatedly failed to keep up with the project schedule, as a result of which the launch of the reactor was constantly postponed. So, according to last year’s (2016) June message: “receipt of the first plasma is planned for December 2025.”

The operating mechanism of the ITER tokamak

The term "tokamak" comes from a Russian acronym that means "toroidal chamber with magnetic coils."

The heart of a tokamak is its torus-shaped vacuum chamber. Inside, under extreme temperature and pressure, the hydrogen fuel gas becomes plasma—a hot, electrically charged gas. As is known, stellar matter is represented by plasma, and thermonuclear reactions in the solar core occur precisely under conditions of elevated temperature and pressure. Similar conditions for the formation, retention, compression and heating of plasma are created by means of massive magnetic coils that are located around a vacuum vessel. The influence of magnets will limit the hot plasma from the walls of the vessel.

Before the process begins, air and impurities are removed from the vacuum chamber. Magnetic systems that will help control the plasma are then charged and gaseous fuel is introduced. When a powerful electric current is passed through the vessel, the gas is electrically split and becomes ionized (that is, electrons leave the atoms) and forms a plasma.

As the plasma particles are activated and collide, they also begin to heat up. Assisted heating techniques help bring the plasma to temperatures between 150 and 300 million °C. Particles "excited" to this degree can overcome their natural electromagnetic repulsion upon collision, such collisions releasing enormous amounts of energy.

The tokamak design consists of the following elements:

Vacuum vessel

(“donut”) is a toroidal chamber made of stainless steel. Its large diameter is 19 m, the small one is 6 m, and its height is 11 m. The volume of the chamber is 1,400 m 3, and its weight is more than 5,000 tons. The walls of the vacuum vessel are double; a coolant will circulate between the walls, which will be distilled water. water. To avoid water contamination, the inner wall of the chamber is protected from radioactive radiation using a blanket.

Blanket

(“blanket”) – consists of 440 fragments covering the inner surface of the chamber. The total banquet area is 700m2. Each fragment is a kind of cassette, the body of which is made of copper, and the front wall is removable and made of beryllium. The parameters of the cassettes are 1x1.5 m, and the mass is no more than 4.6 tons. Such beryllium cassettes will slow down high-energy neutrons formed during the reaction. During neutron moderation, heat will be released and removed by the cooling system. It should be noted that beryllium dust formed as a result of reactor operation can cause a serious disease called beryllium and also has a carcinogenic effect. For this reason, strict security measures are being developed at the complex.

Tokamak in section. Yellow - solenoid, orange - toroidal field (TF) and poloidal field (PF) magnets, blue - blanket, light blue - VV - vacuum vessel, purple - divertor

(“ashtray”) of the poloidal type is a device whose main task is to “cleanse” the plasma of dirt resulting from the heating and interaction of the blanket-covered chamber walls with it. When such contaminants enter the plasma, they begin to radiate intensely, resulting in additional radiation losses. It is located at the bottom of the tokomak and uses magnets to direct the upper layers of plasma (which are the most contaminated) into the cooling chamber. Here the plasma cools and turns into gas, after which it is pumped back out of the chamber. Beryllium dust, after entering the chamber, is practically unable to return back to the plasma. Thus, plasma contamination remains only on the surface and does not penetrate deeper.

Cryostat

- the largest component of the tokomak, which is a stainless steel shell with a volume of 16,000 m 2 (29.3 x 28.6 m) and a mass of 3,850 tons. Other elements of the system will be located inside the cryostat, and it itself serves as a barrier between the tokamak and the outside environment. On its inner walls there will be thermal screens cooled by circulating nitrogen at a temperature of 80 K (-193.15 °C).

Magnetic system

– a set of elements that serve to contain and control plasma inside a vacuum vessel. It is a set of 48 elements:

• Toroidal field coils are located outside the vacuum chamber and inside the cryostat. They are presented in 18 pieces, each measuring 15 x 9 m and weighing approximately 300 tons. Together, these coils generate a magnetic field of 11.8 Tesla around the plasma torus and store energy of 41 GJ.
• Poloidal field coils – located on top of the toroidal field coils and inside the cryostat. These coils are responsible for generating a magnetic field that separates the plasma mass from the chamber walls and compresses the plasma for adiabatic heating. The number of such coils is 6. Two of the coils have a diameter of 24 m and a mass of 400 tons. The remaining four are somewhat smaller.
• The central solenoid is located in the inner part of the toroidal chamber, or rather in the “donut hole”. The principle of its operation is similar to a transformer, and the main task is to excite an inductive current in the plasma.
• Correction coils are located inside the vacuum vessel, between the blanket and the chamber wall. Their task is to maintain the shape of the plasma, capable of locally “bulging” and even touching the walls of the vessel. Allows you to reduce the level of interaction of the chamber walls with the plasma, and therefore the level of its contamination, and also reduces the wear of the chamber itself.

Structure of the ITER complex

The tokamak design described above “in a nutshell” is a highly complex innovative mechanism assembled through the efforts of several countries. However, for its full operation, a whole complex of buildings located near the tokamak is required. Among them:

• Control, Data Access and Communication System – CODAC. Located in a number of buildings of the ITER complex.
• Fuel storage and fuel system - serves to deliver fuel to the tokamak.
• Vacuum system - consists of more than four hundred vacuum pumps, the task of which is to pump out thermonuclear reaction products, as well as various contaminants from the vacuum chamber.
• Cryogenic system – represented by a nitrogen and helium circuit. The helium circuit will normalize the temperature in the tokamak, the work (and therefore the temperature) of which does not occur continuously, but in pulses. The nitrogen circuit will cool the cryostat's heat shields and the helium circuit itself. There will also be a water cooling system, which is aimed at lowering the temperature of the blanket walls.
• Power supply. The tokamak will require approximately 110 MW of energy to operate continuously. To achieve this, kilometer-long power lines will be installed and connected to the French industrial network. It is worth recalling that the ITER experimental facility does not provide for energy generation, but operates only in scientific interests.

ITER funding

The international thermonuclear reactor ITER is a fairly expensive undertaking, which was initially estimated at $12 billion, with Russia, the USA, Korea, China and India accounting for 1/11 of the amount, Japan for 2/11, and the EU for 4/11 . This amount later increased to $15 billion. It is noteworthy that financing occurs through the supply of equipment required for the complex, which is developed in each country. Thus, Russia supplies blankets, plasma heating devices and superconducting magnets.

Project perspective

At the moment, the construction of the ITER complex and the production of all the required components for the tokamak are underway. After the planned launch of the tokamak in 2025, a series of experiments will begin, based on the results of which aspects that require improvement will be noted. After the successful commissioning of ITER, it is planned to build a power plant based on thermonuclear fusion called DEMO (DEMOnstration Power Plant). DEMo's goal is to demonstrate the so-called "commercial appeal" of fusion power. If ITER is capable of generating only 500 MW of energy, then DEMO will be able to continuously generate energy of 2 GW.

However, it should be borne in mind that the ITER experimental facility will not produce energy, and its purpose is to obtain purely scientific benefits. And as you know, this or that physical experiment can not only meet expectations, but also bring new knowledge and experience to humanity.

How did it all start? The “energy challenge” arose as a result of a combination of the following three factors:

1. Humanity now consumes a huge amount of energy.

Currently, the world's energy consumption is about 15.7 terawatts (TW). Dividing this value by the world population, we get approximately 2400 watts per person, which can be easily estimated and visualized. The energy consumed by every inhabitant of the Earth (including children) corresponds to the round-the-clock operation of 24 hundred-watt electric lamps. However, the consumption of this energy across the planet is very uneven, as it is very large in several countries and negligible in others. Consumption (in terms of one person) is equal to 10.3 kW in the USA (one of the record values), 6.3 kW in the Russian Federation, 5.1 kW in the UK, etc., but, on the other hand, it is equal only 0.21 kW in Bangladesh (only 2% of US energy consumption!).

2. World energy consumption is increasing dramatically.

According to the forecast of the International Energy Agency (2006), global energy consumption should increase by 50% by 2030. Developed countries could, of course, do just fine without additional energy, but this growth is necessary to lift people out of poverty in developing countries, where 1.5 billion people suffer from severe power shortages.

3. Currently, 80% of the world's energy comes from burning fossil fuels(oil, coal and gas), the use of which:

a) potentially poses a risk of catastrophic environmental changes;

b) inevitably must end someday.

From what has been said, it is clear that now we must prepare for the end of the era of using fossil fuels

Currently, nuclear power plants produce energy released during fission reactions of atomic nuclei on a large scale. The creation and development of such stations should be encouraged in every possible way, but it must be taken into account that the reserves of one of the most important materials for their operation (cheap uranium) can also be completely used up within the next 50 years. The possibilities of nuclear fission-based energy can (and should) be significantly expanded through the use of more efficient energy cycles, allowing the amount of energy produced to almost double. To develop energy in this direction, it is necessary to create thorium reactors (the so-called thorium breeder reactors or breeder reactors), in which the reaction produces more thorium than the original uranium, as a result of which the total amount of energy produced for a given amount of substance increases by 40 times . It also seems promising to create plutonium breeders using fast neutrons, which are much more efficient than uranium reactors and can produce 60 times more energy. It may be that to develop these areas it will be necessary to develop new, non-standard methods for obtaining uranium (for example, from sea water, which seems to be the most accessible).

Fusion power plants

The figure shows a schematic diagram (not to scale) of the device and operating principle of a thermonuclear power plant. In the central part there is a toroidal (donut-shaped) chamber with a volume of ~2000 m3, filled with tritium-deuterium (T–D) plasma heated to a temperature above 100 M°C. The neutrons produced during the fusion reaction (1) leave the “magnetic bottle” and enter the shell shown in the figure with a thickness of about 1 m.

Inside the shell, neutrons collide with lithium atoms, resulting in a reaction that produces tritium:

neutron + lithium → helium + tritium

In addition, competing reactions occur in the system (without the formation of tritium), as well as many reactions with the release of additional neutrons, which then also lead to the formation of tritium (in this case, the release of additional neutrons can be significantly enhanced, for example, by introducing beryllium atoms into the shell and lead). The general conclusion is that this facility could (at least theoretically) undergo a nuclear fusion reaction that would produce tritium. In this case, the amount of tritium produced should not only meet the needs of the installation itself, but also be even somewhat larger, which will make it possible to supply new installations with tritium. It is this operating concept that must be tested and implemented in the ITER reactor described below.

In addition, neutrons must heat the shell in so-called pilot plants (in which relatively “ordinary” construction materials will be used) to approximately 400°C. In the future, it is planned to create improved installations with a shell heating temperature above 1000°C, which can be achieved through the use of the latest high-strength materials (such as silicon carbide composites). The heat generated in the shell, as in conventional stations, is taken by the primary cooling circuit with a coolant (containing, for example, water or helium) and transferred to the secondary circuit, where water steam is produced and supplied to the turbines.

1985 - The Soviet Union proposed the next generation Tokamak plant, using the experience of four leading countries in creating fusion reactors. The United States of America, together with Japan and the European Community, put forward a proposal for the implementation of the project.

Currently, in France, construction is underway on the international experimental thermonuclear reactor ITER (International Tokamak Experimental Reactor), described below, which will be the first tokamak capable of “igniting” plasma.

The most advanced existing tokamak installations have long reached temperatures of about 150 M°C, close to the values ​​​​required for the operation of a fusion station, but the ITER reactor should be the first large-scale power plant designed for long-term operation. In the future, it will be necessary to significantly improve its operating parameters, which will require, first of all, increasing the pressure in the plasma, since the rate of nuclear fusion at a given temperature is proportional to the square of the pressure. The main scientific problem in this case is related to the fact that when the pressure in the plasma increases, very complex and dangerous instabilities arise, that is, unstable operating modes.

Why do we need this?

The main advantage of nuclear fusion is that it requires only very small amounts of substances that are very common in nature as fuel. The nuclear fusion reaction in the described installations can lead to the release of enormous amounts of energy, ten million times higher than the standard heat released during conventional chemical reactions (such as the combustion of fossil fuels). For comparison, we point out that the amount of coal required to power a thermal power plant with a capacity of 1 gigawatt (GW) is 10,000 tons per day (ten railway cars), and a fusion plant of the same power will consume only about 1 kilogram of the D+T mixture per day .

Deuterium is a stable isotope of hydrogen; In about one out of every 3,350 molecules of ordinary water, one of the hydrogen atoms is replaced by deuterium (a legacy from the Big Bang). This fact makes it easy to organize fairly cheap production of the required amount of deuterium from water. It is more difficult to obtain tritium, which is unstable (half-life is about 12 years, as a result of which its content in nature is negligible), however, as shown above, tritium will appear directly inside the thermonuclear installation during operation, due to the reaction of neutrons with lithium.

Thus, the initial fuel for a fusion reactor is lithium and water. Lithium is a common metal widely used in household appliances (cell phone batteries, etc.). The installation described above, even taking into account non-ideal efficiency, will be able to produce 200,000 kWh of electrical energy, which is equivalent to the energy contained in 70 tons of coal. The amount of lithium required for this is contained in one computer battery, and the amount of deuterium is in 45 liters of water. The above value corresponds to the current electricity consumption (calculated per person) in the EU countries over 30 years. The very fact that such an insignificant amount of lithium can ensure the generation of such an amount of electricity (without CO2 emissions and without the slightest air pollution) is a fairly serious argument for the fastest and most vigorous development of thermonuclear energy (despite all the difficulties and problems) and even without one hundred percent confidence in the success of such research.

Deuterium should last for millions of years, and reserves of easily mined lithium are sufficient to supply needs for hundreds of years. Even if lithium in rocks runs out, we can extract it from water, where it is found in concentrations high enough (100 times the concentration of uranium) to make its extraction economically feasible.

An experimental thermonuclear reactor (International thermonuclear experimental reactor) is being built near the city of Cadarache in France. The main goal of the ITER project is to implement a controlled thermonuclear fusion reaction on an industrial scale.

Per unit weight of thermonuclear fuel, about 10 million times more energy is obtained than when burning the same amount of organic fuel, and about a hundred times more than when splitting uranium nuclei in the reactors of currently operating nuclear power plants. If the calculations of scientists and designers come true, this will give humanity an inexhaustible source of energy.

Therefore, a number of countries (Russia, India, China, Korea, Kazakhstan, USA, Canada, Japan, European Union countries) joined forces in creating the International Thermonuclear Research Reactor - a prototype of new power plants.

ITER is a facility that creates conditions for the synthesis of hydrogen and tritium atoms (an isotope of hydrogen), resulting in the formation of a new atom - a helium atom. This process is accompanied by a huge burst of energy: the temperature of the plasma in which the thermonuclear reaction occurs is about 150 million degrees Celsius (for comparison, the temperature of the Sun’s core is 40 million degrees). In this case, the isotopes burn out, leaving virtually no radioactive waste.

The scheme of participation in the international project provides for the supply of reactor components and financing of its construction. In exchange for this, each of the participating countries receives full access to all technologies for creating a thermonuclear reactor and to the results of all experimental work on this reactor, which will serve as the basis for the design of serial power thermonuclear reactors.

The reactor, based on the principle of thermonuclear fusion, has no radioactive radiation and is completely safe for the environment. It can be located almost anywhere in the world, and the fuel for it is ordinary water. Construction of ITER is expected to last about ten years, after which the reactor is expected to be in use for 20 years.

Russia's interests in the Council of the International Organization for the Construction of the ITER Thermonuclear Reactor in the coming years will be represented by Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Mikhail Kovalchuk - Director of the Kurchatov Institute, Institute of Crystallography of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Scientific Secretary of the Presidential Council on Science, Technology and Education. Kovalchuk will temporarily replace academician Evgeniy Velikhov in this post, who was elected chairman of the ITER International Council for the next two years and does not have the right to combine this position with the duties of an official representative of a participating country.

The total cost of construction is estimated at 5 billion euros, and the same amount will be required for trial operation of the reactor. The shares of India, China, Korea, Russia, the USA and Japan each account for approximately 10 percent of the total value, 45 percent comes from the countries of the European Union. However, the European states have not yet agreed on how exactly the costs will be distributed between them. Because of this, the start of construction was postponed to April 2010. Despite the latest delay, scientists and officials involved in ITER say they will be able to complete the project by 2018.

The estimated thermonuclear power of ITER is 500 megawatts. Individual magnet parts reach a weight of 200 to 450 tons. To cool ITER, 33 thousand cubic meters of water per day will be required.

In 1998, the United States stopped funding its participation in the project. After the Republicans came to power and rolling blackouts began in California, the Bush administration announced increased investment in energy. The United States did not intend to participate in the international project and was engaged in its own thermonuclear project. In early 2002, President Bush's technology adviser John Marburger III said that the United States had changed its mind and intended to return to the project.

In terms of the number of participants, the project is comparable to another major international scientific project - the International Space Station. The cost of ITER, which previously reached 8 billion dollars, then amounted to less than 4 billion. As a result of the withdrawal of the United States from participation, it was decided to reduce the reactor power from 1.5 GW to 500 MW. Accordingly, the price of the project has also decreased.

In June 2002, the symposium “ITER Days in Moscow” was held in the Russian capital. It discussed the theoretical, practical and organizational problems of reviving the project, the success of which can change the fate of humanity and give it a new type of energy, comparable in efficiency and economy only to the energy of the Sun.

In July 2010, representatives of the countries participating in the ITER international thermonuclear reactor project approved its budget and construction schedule at an extraordinary meeting held in Cadarache, France. The meeting report is available here.

At the last extraordinary meeting, project participants approved the start date for the first experiments with plasma - 2019. Full experiments are planned for March 2027, although the project management asked technical specialists to try to optimize the process and begin experiments in 2026. The meeting participants also decided on the costs of constructing the reactor, but the amounts planned to be spent on creating the installation were not disclosed. According to information received by the editor of the ScienceNOW portal from an unnamed source, by the time experiments begin, the cost of the ITER project could reach 16 billion euros.

The meeting in Cadarache also marked the first official working day for the new project director, Japanese physicist Osamu Motojima. Before him, the project had been led since 2005 by the Japanese Kaname Ikeda, who wished to leave his post immediately after the budget and construction deadlines were approved.

The ITER fusion reactor is a joint project of the European Union, Switzerland, Japan, USA, Russia, South Korea, China and India. The idea of ​​creating ITER has been under consideration since the 80s of the last century, however, due to financial and technical difficulties, the cost of the project is constantly growing, and the construction start date is constantly being postponed. In 2009, experts expected that work on creating the reactor would begin in 2010. Later, this date was moved, and first 2018 and then 2019 were named as the launch time of the reactor.

Thermonuclear fusion reactions are reactions of fusion of nuclei of light isotopes to form a heavier nucleus, which are accompanied by a huge release of energy. In theory, fusion reactors can produce a lot of energy at low cost, but at the moment scientists spend much more energy and money to start and maintain the fusion reaction.

Thermonuclear fusion is a cheap and environmentally friendly way to produce energy. Uncontrolled thermonuclear fusion has been occurring on the Sun for billions of years - helium is formed from the heavy hydrogen isotope deuterium. This releases a colossal amount of energy. However, people on Earth have not yet learned to control such reactions.

The ITER reactor will use hydrogen isotopes as fuel. During a thermonuclear reaction, energy is released when light atoms combine into heavier ones. To achieve this, the gas must be heated to a temperature of over 100 million degrees - much higher than the temperature at the center of the Sun. Gas at this temperature turns into plasma. At the same time, atoms of hydrogen isotopes merge, turning into helium atoms with the release of a large number of neutrons. A power plant operating on this principle will use the energy of neutrons slowed down by a layer of dense material (lithium).

Why did the creation of thermonuclear installations take so long?

Why have such important and valuable installations, the benefits of which have been discussed for almost half a century, not yet been created? There are three main reasons (discussed below), the first of which can be called external or social, and the other two - internal, that is, determined by the laws and conditions of the development of thermonuclear energy itself.

1. For a long time, it was believed that the problem of the practical use of thermonuclear fusion energy did not require urgent decisions and actions, since back in the 80s of the last century, fossil fuel sources seemed inexhaustible, and environmental problems and climate change did not concern the public. In 1976, the U.S. Department of Energy's Fusion Energy Advisory Committee attempted to estimate the time frame for R&D and a demonstration fusion power plant under various research funding options. At the same time, it was discovered that the volume of annual funding for research in this direction is completely insufficient, and if the existing level of appropriations is maintained, the creation of thermonuclear installations will never be successful, since the allocated funds do not correspond even to the minimum, critical level.

2. A more serious obstacle to the development of research in this area is that a thermonuclear installation of the type under discussion cannot be created and demonstrated on a small scale. From the explanations presented below, it will become clear that thermonuclear fusion requires not only magnetic confinement of the plasma, but also sufficient heating of it. The ratio of expended and received energy increases at least in proportion to the square of the linear dimensions of the installation, as a result of which the scientific and technical capabilities and advantages of thermonuclear installations can be tested and demonstrated only at fairly large stations, such as the mentioned ITER reactor. Society was simply not ready to finance such large projects until there was sufficient confidence in success.

3. The development of thermonuclear energy has been very complex, however (despite insufficient funding and difficulties in selecting centers for the creation of JET and ITER installations), clear progress has been observed in recent years, although an operating station has not yet been created.

The modern world is facing a very serious energy challenge, which can more accurately be called an “uncertain energy crisis.” The problem is related to the fact that reserves of fossil fuels may run out in the second half of this century. Moreover, burning fossil fuels may result in the need to somehow sequester and “store” the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere (the CCS program mentioned above) to prevent major changes in the planet’s climate.

Currently, almost all the energy consumed by humanity is created by burning fossil fuels, and the solution to the problem may be associated with the use of solar energy or nuclear energy (the creation of fast neutron breeder reactors, etc.). The global problem caused by the growing population of developing countries and their need to improve living standards and increase the amount of energy produced cannot be solved on the basis of these approaches alone, although, of course, any attempts to develop alternative methods of energy production should be encouraged.

Strictly speaking, we have a small choice of behavioral strategies and the development of thermonuclear energy is extremely important, even despite the lack of a guarantee of success. The Financial Times newspaper (dated January 25, 2004) wrote about this:

“Even if the costs of the ITER project significantly exceed the original estimate, they are unlikely to reach the level of $1 billion per year. This level of expenditure should be considered a very modest price to pay for a very reasonable opportunity to create a new source of energy for all of humanity, especially given the fact that already in this century we will inevitably have to give up the habit of wasteful and reckless burning of fossil fuels.”

Let's hope that there will be no major and unexpected surprises on the path to the development of thermonuclear energy. In this case, in about 30 years we will be able to supply electric current from it to energy networks for the first time, and in just over 10 years the first commercial thermonuclear power plant will begin to operate. It is possible that in the second half of this century, nuclear fusion energy will begin to replace fossil fuels and gradually begin to play an increasingly important role in providing energy to humanity on a global scale.

There is no absolute guarantee that the task of creating thermonuclear energy (as an effective and large-scale source of energy for all humanity) will be completed successfully, but the likelihood of success in this direction is quite high. Considering the enormous potential of thermonuclear stations, all costs for projects for their rapid (and even accelerated) development can be considered justified, especially since these investments look very modest against the backdrop of the monstrous global energy market ($4 trillion per year8). Meeting humanity's energy needs is a very serious problem. As fossil fuels become less available (and their use becomes undesirable), the situation is changing, and we simply cannot afford not to develop fusion energy.

To the question “When will thermonuclear energy appear?” Lev Artsimovich (a recognized pioneer and leader of research in this field) once responded that “it will be created when it becomes truly necessary for humanity”

ITER will be the first fusion reactor to produce more energy than it consumes. Scientists measure this characteristic using a simple coefficient they call "Q." If ITER achieves all its scientific goals, it will produce 10 times more energy than it consumes. The last device built, the Joint European Torus in England, is a smaller prototype fusion reactor that, in its final stages of scientific research, achieved a Q value of almost 1. This means that it produced exactly the same amount of energy as it consumed. ITER will go beyond this by demonstrating energy creation from fusion and achieving a Q value of 10. The idea is to generate 500 MW from an energy consumption of approximately 50 MW. Thus, one of the scientific goals of ITER is to prove that a Q value of 10 can be achieved.

Another scientific goal is that ITER will have a very long "burn" time - a pulse of extended duration up to one hour. ITER is a research experimental reactor that cannot produce energy continuously. When ITER starts operating, it will be on for one hour, after which it will need to be turned off. This is important because until now the standard devices we have created have been capable of having a burning time of several seconds or even tenths of a second - this is the maximum. The "Joint European Torus" reached its Q value of 1 with a burn time of approximately two seconds with a pulse length of 20 seconds. But a process that lasts a few seconds is not truly permanent. By analogy with starting a car engine: briefly turning on the engine and then turning it off is not yet real operation of the car. Only when you drive your car for half an hour will it reach a constant operating mode and demonstrate that such a car can really be driven.

That is, from a technical and scientific point of view, ITER will provide a Q value of 10 and an increased burn time.

The thermonuclear fusion program is truly international and broad in nature. People are already counting on the success of ITER and are thinking about the next step - creating a prototype of an industrial thermonuclear reactor called DEMO. To build it, ITER needs to work. We must achieve our scientific goals because this will mean that the ideas we put forward are entirely feasible. However, I agree that you should always think about what comes next. In addition, as ITER operates for 25-30 years, our knowledge will gradually deepen and expand, and we will be able to more accurately outline our next step.

Indeed, there is no debate about whether ITER should be a tokamak. Some scientists pose the question quite differently: should ITER exist? Experts in different countries, developing their own, not so large-scale thermonuclear projects, argue that such a large reactor is not needed at all.

However, their opinion should hardly be considered authoritative. Physicists who have been working with toroidal traps for several decades were involved in the creation of ITER. The design of the experimental thermonuclear reactor in Karadash was based on all the knowledge gained during experiments on dozens of predecessor tokamaks. And these results indicate that the reactor must be a tokamak, and a large one at that.

JET At the moment, the most successful tokamak can be considered JET, built by the EU in the British town of Abingdon. This is the largest tokamak-type reactor created to date, the large radius of the plasma torus is 2.96 meters. The power of the thermonuclear reaction has already reached more than 20 megawatts with a retention time of up to 10 seconds. The reactor returns about 40% of the energy put into the plasma.

It is the physics of plasma that determines the energy balance,” Igor Semenov told Infox.ru. MIPT associate professor described what energy balance is with a simple example: “We have all seen a fire burn. In fact, it is not wood that burns there, but gas. The energy chain there is like this: the gas burns, the wood heats, the wood evaporates, the gas burns again. Therefore, if we throw water on a fire, we will abruptly take energy from the system for the phase transition of liquid water into a vapor state. The balance will become negative and the fire will go out. There is another way - we can simply take the firebrands and spread them in space. The fire will also go out. It’s the same in the thermonuclear reactor we are building. The dimensions are chosen to create an appropriate positive energy balance for this reactor. Sufficient to build a real nuclear power plant in the future, solving at this experimental stage all the problems that currently remain unresolved.”

The dimensions of the reactor were changed once. This happened at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries, when the United States withdrew from the project, and the remaining members realized that the ITER budget (by that time it was estimated at 10 billion US dollars) was too large. Physicists and engineers were required to reduce the cost of installation. And this could only be done due to size. The “redesign” of ITER was led by the French physicist Robert Aymar, who previously worked on the French Tore Supra tokamak in Karadash. The outer radius of the plasma torus has been reduced from 8.2 to 6.3 meters. However, the risks associated with the reduction in size were partly compensated for by several additional superconducting magnets, which made it possible to implement the plasma confinement mode, which was open and studied at that time.

ITER (ITER, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, "International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor") is a large-scale scientific and technical project aimed at building the first international experimental thermonuclear reactor.

Implemented by seven main partners (European Union, India, China, Republic of Korea, Russia, USA, Japan) in Cadarache (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, France). ITER is based on a tokamak installation (named after its first letters: a toroidal chamber with magnetic coils), which is considered the most promising device for implementing controlled thermonuclear fusion. The first tokamak was built in the Soviet Union in 1954.

The goal of the project is to demonstrate that fusion energy can be used on an industrial scale. ITER should generate energy through a fusion reaction with heavy hydrogen isotopes at temperatures above 100 million degrees.

It is assumed that 1 g of fuel (a mixture of deuterium and tritium) that will be used in the installation will provide the same amount of energy as 8 tons of oil. The estimated thermonuclear power of ITER is 500 MW.

Experts say that a reactor of this type is much safer than current nuclear power plants (NPPs), and seawater can provide fuel for it in almost unlimited quantities. Thus, the successful implementation of ITER will provide an inexhaustible source of environmentally friendly energy.

Project history

The reactor concept was developed at the Institute of Atomic Energy named after. I.V.Kurchatova. In 1978, the USSR put forward the idea of ​​​​implementing the project at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). An agreement to implement the project was reached in 1985 in Geneva during negotiations between the USSR and the USA.

The program was later approved by the IAEA. In 1987, the project received its current name, and in 1988, a governing body was created - the ITER Council. In 1988-1990 Soviet, American, Japanese and European scientists and engineers carried out a conceptual study of the project.

On July 21, 1992, in Washington, the EU, Russia, the USA and Japan signed an agreement on the development of the ITER technical project, which was completed in 2001. In 2002-2005. South Korea, China and India joined the project. The agreement to build the first international experimental fusion reactor was signed in Paris on November 21, 2006.

A year later, on November 7, 2007, an agreement was signed on the construction site of ITER, according to which the reactor will be located in France, at the Cadarache nuclear center near Marseille. The control and data processing center will be located in Naka (Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan).

Preparation of the construction site in Cadarache began in January 2007, and full-scale construction began in 2013. The complex will be located on an area of ​​180 hectares. The reactor, 60 m high and weighing 23 thousand tons, will be located on a site 1 km long and 400 m wide. Work on its construction is coordinated by the International Organization ITER, created in October 2007.

The cost of the project is estimated at 15 billion euros, of which the EU (through Euratom) accounts for 45.4%, and six other participants (including the Russian Federation) contribute 9.1% each. Since 1994, Kazakhstan has also been participating in the project under Russia’s quota.

The reactor elements will be delivered by ship to the Mediterranean coast of France and from there transported by special caravans to the Cadarache region. To this end, in 2013, sections of existing roads were significantly re-equipped, bridges were strengthened, new crossings and tracks with especially strong surfaces were built. In the period from 2014 to 2019, at least three dozen super-heavy road trains should pass along the fortified road.

Plasma diagnostic systems for ITER will be developed in Novosibirsk. An agreement on this was signed on January 27, 2014 by the director of the International Organization ITER Osamu Motojima and the head of the national agency ITER in the Russian Federation Anatoly Krasilnikov.

The development of a diagnostic complex within the framework of the new agreement is being carried out on the basis of the Physico-Technical Institute named after. A.F. Ioffe Russian Academy of Sciences.

It is expected that the reactor will go into operation in 2020, the first nuclear fusion reactions will be carried out on it no earlier than 2027. In 2037 it is planned to complete the experimental part of the project and by 2040 to switch to electricity production. According to preliminary forecasts of experts, the industrial version of the reactor will be ready no earlier than 2060, and a series of reactors of this type can only be created by the end of the 21st century.

Is thermonuclear energy necessary?

At this stage of development of civilization, we can safely say that humanity faces an “energy challenge.” It is due to several fundamental factors:

— Humanity now consumes a huge amount of energy.

Currently, the world's energy consumption is about 15.7 terawatts (TW). Dividing this value by the population of the planet, we get approximately 2400 watts per person, which can be easily estimated and imagined. The energy consumed by every inhabitant of the Earth (including children) corresponds to the round-the-clock operation of 24 100-watt electric lamps.

— World energy consumption is increasing rapidly.

According to the International Energy Agency (2006), global energy consumption is expected to increase by 50% by 2030.

— Currently, 80% of the energy consumed by the world is created by burning fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas), the use of which potentially poses the risk of catastrophic environmental changes.

The following joke is popular among Saudi Arabians: “My father rode a camel. I got a car, and my son is already flying a plane. But now his son will ride a camel again.”

This appears to be the case, as all serious forecasts are that the world's oil reserves will largely run out in about 50 years.

Even based on estimates from the US Geological Survey (this forecast is much more optimistic than others), the growth of world oil production will continue for no more than the next 20 years (other experts predict that peak production will be reached in 5-10 years), after which the volume of oil produced will begin decreasing at a rate of about 3% per year. Prospects for natural gas production don't look much better. It is usually said that we will have enough coal for another 200 years, but this forecast is based on maintaining the existing level of production and consumption. Meanwhile, coal consumption is now increasing by 4.5% per year, which immediately reduces the mentioned period of 200 years to just 50 years.

Thus, we should now prepare for the end of the era of using fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, currently existing alternative energy sources are not able to cover the growing needs of humanity. According to the most optimistic estimates, the maximum amount of energy (in specified thermal equivalent) generated by the listed sources is only 3 TW (wind), 1 TW (hydro), 1 TW (biological sources) and 100 GW (geothermal and marine plants). The total amount of additional energy (even in this most optimal forecast) is only about 6 TW. It is worth noting that the development of new energy sources is a very complex technical task, so the cost of the energy they produce will in any case be higher than with the usual combustion of coal, etc. It seems quite obvious that

humanity must look for some other sources of energy, for which currently only the Sun and thermonuclear fusion reactions can really be considered.

The sun is potentially an almost inexhaustible source of energy. The amount of energy hitting just 0.1% of the planet's surface is equivalent to 3.8 TW (even if converted with only 15% efficiency). The problem lies in our inability to capture and convert this energy, which is associated both with the high cost of solar panels and with the problems of accumulation, storage and further transmission of the resulting energy to the required regions.

Currently, nuclear power plants produce energy released during fission reactions of atomic nuclei on a large scale. I believe that the creation and development of such stations should be encouraged in every possible way, but it must be taken into account that the reserves of one of the most important materials for their operation (cheap uranium) can also be completely used up within the next 50 years.

Another important direction of development is the use of nuclear fusion (nuclear fusion), which now acts as the main hope for salvation, although the time of creation of the first thermonuclear power plants remains uncertain. This lecture is dedicated to this topic.

What is nuclear fusion?

Nuclear fusion, which is the basis for the existence of the Sun and stars, potentially represents an inexhaustible source of energy for the development of the Universe in general. Experiments carried out in Russia (Russia is the birthplace of the Tokamak thermonuclear plant), the USA, Japan, Germany, as well as in the UK as part of the Joint European Torus (JET) program, which is one of the leading research programs in the world, show that nuclear fusion can provide not only the current energy needs of humanity (16 TW), but also a much larger amount of energy.

Nuclear fusion energy is very real, and the main question is whether we can create sufficiently reliable and cost-effective fusion plants.

Nuclear fusion processes are reactions involving the fusion of light atomic nuclei into heavier ones, releasing a certain amount of energy.

First of all, among them it should be noted the reaction between two isotopes (deuterium and tritium) of hydrogen, which is very common on Earth, as a result of which helium is formed and a neutron is released. The reaction can be written as follows:

D + T = 4 He + n + energy (17.6 MeV).

The released energy, resulting from the fact that helium-4 has very strong nuclear bonds, is converted into ordinary kinetic energy, distributed between the neutron and the helium-4 nucleus in the proportion 14.1 MeV/3.5 MeV.

To initiate (ignite) the fusion reaction, it is necessary to completely ionize and heat the gas from a mixture of deuterium and tritium to a temperature above 100 million degrees Celsius (we will denote it by M degrees), which is about five times higher than the temperature at the center of the Sun. Already at temperatures of several thousand degrees, interatomic collisions lead to electrons being knocked out of atoms, resulting in the formation of a mixture of separated nuclei and electrons known as plasma, in which positively charged and highly energetic deuterons and tritons (that is, deuterium and tritium nuclei) experience strong mutual repulsion. However, the high temperature of the plasma (and the associated high ion energy) allows these deuterium and tritium ions to overcome Coulomb repulsion and collide with each other. At temperatures above 100 M degrees, the most “energetic” deuterons and tritons come together in collisions at such close distances that powerful nuclear forces begin to act between them, forcing them to merge with each other into a single whole.

Carrying out this process in the laboratory poses three very difficult problems. First of all, the gas mixture of nuclei D and T must be heated to temperatures above 100 M degrees, somehow preventing it from cooling and becoming contaminated (due to reactions with the walls of the vessel).

To solve this problem, “magnetic traps” were invented, called Tokamak, which prevent the interaction of plasma with the walls of the reactor.

In the described method, the plasma is heated by an electric current flowing inside the torus to approximately 3 M degrees, which, however, is still insufficient to initiate the reaction. To additionally heat the plasma, energy is either “pumped” into it with radio frequency radiation (as in a microwave oven), or beams of high-energy neutral particles are injected, which transfer their energy to the plasma during collisions. In addition, the release of heat occurs due to thermonuclear reactions themselves (as will be discussed below), as a result of which the “ignition” of the plasma should occur in a sufficiently large installation.

Currently, in France, construction is beginning on the international experimental thermonuclear reactor ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), described below, which will be the first Tokamak capable of “igniting” plasma.

In the most advanced existing Tokamak-type installations, temperatures of about 150 M degrees have long been achieved, close to the values ​​​​required for the operation of a thermonuclear station, but the ITER reactor should become the first large-scale power plant designed for long-term operation. In the future, it will be necessary to significantly improve the parameters of its operation, which will require, first of all, an increase in the pressure in the plasma, since the rate of nuclear fusion at a given temperature is proportional to the square of the pressure.

The main scientific problem in this case is related to the fact that when the pressure in the plasma increases, very complex and dangerous instabilities arise, that is, unstable operating modes.

The electrically charged helium nuclei arising during the fusion reaction are held inside a “magnetic trap”, where they are gradually slowed down due to collisions with other particles, and the energy released during collisions helps maintain the high temperature of the plasma cord. Neutral (having no electrical charge) neutrons leave the system and transfer their energy to the walls of the reactor, and the heat taken from the walls is the source of energy for the operation of turbines that generate electricity. The problems and difficulties of operating such a facility are associated, first of all, with the fact that a powerful flow of high-energy neutrons and the released energy (in the form of electromagnetic radiation and plasma particles) seriously affect the reactor and can destroy the materials from which it is made.

Because of this, the design of thermonuclear installations is very complex. Physicists and engineers are faced with the task of ensuring high reliability of their work. The design and construction of thermonuclear stations require them to solve a number of diverse and very complex technological problems.

Thermonuclear power plant design

The figure shows a schematic diagram (not to scale) of the device and operating principle of a thermonuclear power plant. In the central part there is a toroidal (donut-shaped) chamber with a volume of ~ 2000 m 3, filled with tritium-deuterium (T-D) plasma heated to a temperature above 100 M degrees. The neutrons produced during the fusion reaction leave the “magnetic trap” and enter the shell shown in the figure with a thickness of about 1 m. 1

Inside the shell, neutrons collide with lithium atoms, resulting in a reaction that produces tritium:

neutron + lithium = helium + tritium.

In addition, competing reactions occur in the system (without the formation of tritium), as well as many reactions with the release of additional neutrons, which then also lead to the formation of tritium (in this case, the release of additional neutrons can be significantly enhanced, for example, by introducing atoms into the shell beryllium and lead). The general conclusion is that this facility could (at least theoretically) undergo a nuclear fusion reaction that would produce tritium. In this case, the amount of tritium produced should not only meet the needs of the installation itself, but also be even somewhat larger, which will make it possible to supply new installations with tritium.

It is this operating concept that must be tested and implemented in the ITER reactor described below.

Neutrons should heat the shell in so-called pilot plants (in which relatively “ordinary” construction materials will be used) to a temperature of approximately 400 degrees. In the future, it is planned to create improved installations with a shell heating temperature above 1000 degrees, which can be achieved through the use of the latest high-strength materials (such as silicon carbide composites). The heat generated in the shell, as in conventional stations, is taken by the primary cooling circuit with a coolant (containing, for example, water or helium) and transferred to the secondary circuit, where water steam is produced and supplied to the turbines.

The main advantage of nuclear fusion is that it requires only very small amounts of substances that are very common in nature as fuel.

The nuclear fusion reaction in the described installations can lead to the release of enormous amounts of energy, ten million times higher than the standard heat released during conventional chemical reactions (such as the combustion of fossil fuels). For comparison, we point out that the amount of coal required to power a thermal power plant with a capacity of 1 gigawatt (GW) is 10,000 tons per day (ten railway cars), and a fusion plant of the same power will consume only about 1 kg of D+ mixture per day T.

Deuterium is a stable isotope of hydrogen; In about one out of every 3,350 molecules of ordinary water, one of the hydrogen atoms is replaced by deuterium (a legacy from the Big Bang of the Universe). This fact makes it easy to organize fairly cheap production of the required amount of deuterium from water. It is more difficult to obtain tritium, which is unstable (half-life is about 12 years, as a result of which its content in nature is negligible), however, as shown above, tritium will be produced directly inside the thermonuclear installation during operation due to the reaction of neutrons with lithium.

Thus, the initial fuel for a fusion reactor is lithium and water.

Lithium is a common metal widely used in household appliances (cell phone batteries, for example). The installation described above, even taking into account non-ideal efficiency, will be able to produce 200,000 kWh of electrical energy, which is equivalent to the energy contained in 70 tons of coal. The amount of lithium required for this is contained in one computer battery, and the amount of deuterium is in 45 liters of water. The above value corresponds to the current electricity consumption (calculated per person) in the EU countries over 30 years. The very fact that such an insignificant amount of lithium can provide the generation of such an amount of electricity (without CO 2 emissions and without the slightest air pollution) is a fairly serious argument for the rapid and vigorous development of research on the development of thermonuclear energy (despite all the difficulties and problems) even with long-term prospect of creating a cost-effective thermonuclear reactor.

Deuterium should last for millions of years, and reserves of easily mined lithium are quite sufficient to supply needs for hundreds of years.

Even if lithium in rocks runs out, we can extract it from water, where it is found in concentrations high enough (100 times the concentration of uranium) to make its extraction economically feasible.

Fusion energy not only promises humanity, in principle, the possibility of producing huge amounts of energy in the future (without CO 2 emissions and without air pollution), but also has a number of other advantages.

1 ) High internal security.

The plasma used in thermonuclear installations has a very low density (about a million times lower than the density of the atmosphere), as a result of which the operating environment of the installations will never contain enough energy to cause serious incidents or accidents.

In addition, loading with “fuel” must be carried out continuously, which makes it easy to stop its operation, not to mention the fact that in the event of an accident and a sharp change in environmental conditions, the thermonuclear “flame” should simply go out.

What are the dangers associated with thermonuclear energy? First, it is worth noting that although the fusion products (helium and neutrons) are not radioactive, the reactor shell can become radioactive under prolonged neutron irradiation.

Secondly, tritium is radioactive and has a relatively short half-life (12 years). But although the volume of plasma used is significant, due to its low density it contains only a very small amount of tritium (a total weight of about ten postage stamps). That's why

even in the most severe situations and accidents (complete destruction of the shell and the release of all tritium contained in it, for example, during an earthquake and an airplane crash on the station), only a small amount of fuel will be released into the environment, which will not require the evacuation of the population from nearby populated areas.

2 ) Energy cost.

It is expected that the so-called “internal” price of electricity received (the cost of production itself) will become acceptable if it is 75% of the price already existing on the market. “Affordable” in this case means that the price will be lower than the price of energy produced using old hydrocarbon fuels. The “external” cost (side effects, impacts on public health, climate, ecology, etc.) will be essentially zero.

International experimental thermonuclear reactor ITER

The main next step is to build the ITER reactor, designed to demonstrate the very possibility of igniting a plasma and, on this basis, obtaining at least a tenfold gain in energy (relative to the energy spent on heating the plasma). The ITER reactor will be an experimental device that will not even be equipped with turbines for generating electricity and devices for using it. The purpose of its creation is to study the conditions that must be met during the operation of such power plants, as well as the creation on this basis of real, economically viable power plants, which, apparently, should exceed ITER in size. Creating real prototypes of fusion power plants (that is, plants fully equipped with turbines, etc.) requires solving the following two problems. First, it is necessary to continue to develop new materials (capable of withstanding the very harsh operating conditions described) and test them in accordance with the special rules for the IFMIF (International Fusion Irradiation Facility) equipment described below. Secondly, many purely technical problems need to be solved and new technologies need to be developed related to remote control, heating, cladding design, fuel cycles, etc. 2

The figure shows the ITER reactor, which is superior to today's largest JET installation not only in all linear dimensions (about twice), but also in the magnitude of the magnetic fields used in it and the currents flowing through the plasma.

The purpose of creating this reactor is to demonstrate the capabilities of the combined efforts of physicists and engineers in constructing a large-scale fusion power plant.

The installation capacity planned by the designers is 500 MW (with energy consumption at the system input of only about 50 MW). 3

The ITER installation is being created by a consortium that includes the EU, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the USA. The total population of these countries is about half of the total population of the Earth, so the project can be called a global response to a global challenge. The main components and components of the ITER reactor have already been created and tested, and construction has already begun in Cadarache (France). The launch of the reactor is planned for 2020, and the production of deuterium-tritium plasma is planned for 2027, since commissioning of the reactor requires long and serious tests for plasma from deuterium and tritium.

The ITER reactor's magnetic coils are based on superconducting materials (which, in principle, allow continuous operation as long as current is maintained in the plasma), so the designers hope to provide a guaranteed duty cycle of at least 10 minutes. It is clear that the presence of superconducting magnetic coils is fundamentally important for the continuous operation of a real thermonuclear power plant. Superconducting coils have already been used in Tokamak-type devices, but they have not previously been used in such large-scale installations designed for tritium plasma. In addition, the ITER facility will be the first to use and test different shell modules designed to operate in real stations where tritium nuclei can be generated or “recovered.”

The main goal of constructing the installation is to demonstrate successful control of plasma combustion and the possibility of actually obtaining energy in thermonuclear devices at the existing level of technology development.

Further development in this direction, of course, will require a lot of effort to improve the efficiency of the devices, especially from the point of view of their economic feasibility, which is associated with serious and lengthy research, both at the ITER reactor and on other devices. Among the assigned tasks, the following three should be particularly highlighted:

1) It is necessary to show that the existing level of science and technology already makes it possible to obtain a 10-fold gain in energy (compared to that expended to maintain the process) in a controlled nuclear fusion process. The reaction must proceed without the occurrence of dangerous unstable conditions, without overheating and damage to structural materials, and without contamination of the plasma with impurities. With fusion energy powers of the order of 50% of the plasma heating power, these goals have already been achieved in experiments in small facilities, but the creation of the ITER reactor will test the reliability of control methods in a much larger facility that produces much more energy over a long time. The ITER reactor is designed to test and agree on the requirements for a future fusion reactor, and its construction is a very complex and interesting task.

2) It is necessary to study methods for increasing the pressure in the plasma (recall that the reaction rate at a given temperature is proportional to the square of the pressure) to prevent the occurrence of dangerous unstable modes of plasma behavior. The success of research in this direction will either ensure the operation of the reactor at a higher plasma density, or lower the requirements for the strength of the generated magnetic fields, which will significantly reduce the cost of the electricity produced by the reactor.

3) Tests must confirm that continuous operation of the reactor in a stable mode can be realistically ensured (from an economic and technical point of view, this requirement seems very important, if not the main one), and the installation can be started without huge expenditures of energy. Researchers and designers really hope that the “continuous” flow of electromagnetic current through the plasma can be ensured by its generation in the plasma (due to high-frequency radiation and the injection of fast atoms).

The modern world is facing a very serious energy challenge, which can more accurately be called an “uncertain energy crisis.”

Currently, almost all the energy consumed by humanity is created by burning fossil fuels, and the solution to the problem may be associated with the use of solar energy or nuclear energy (the creation of fast neutron reactors, etc.). The global problem caused by the growing population of developing countries and their need to improve living standards and increase the amount of energy produced cannot be solved on the basis of these approaches alone, although, of course, any attempts to develop alternative methods of energy production should be encouraged.

If there are no major and unexpected surprises on the path to the development of thermonuclear energy, then subject to the developed reasonable and orderly program of action, which (of course, subject to good organization of work and sufficient funding) should lead to the creation of a prototype thermonuclear power plant. In this case, in about 30 years we will be able to supply electric current from it to energy networks for the first time, and in just over 10 years the first commercial thermonuclear power plant will begin to operate. It is possible that in the second half of this century, nuclear fusion energy will begin to replace fossil fuels and gradually begin to play an increasingly important role in providing energy to humanity on a global scale.