Dr Joe Milnes of the UKAEA (UK Atomic Energy Authority) gave a fantastic talk about how to, as he put it, make a “sun in a bottle”. A great overview was provided on the engineering challenges & how other disciplines such as materials science, computer simulation, & obviously physics, are required to solve many of these challenges alongside engineers.
Given the UK government’s commitment to reduce CO2 emission by 45% by 2030 & to zero by 2050, Dr Milnes presented the advantages of fusion as an energy supply given that the fuel source is plentiful and obviously carbon free. This was balanced with a joke about it being “always 30 years away”, though optimistically he did say that he was confident that this time it really would be available within 20-30 years from now due to the research conducted so far & the influx of private investment.
From an introduction to the basic physics behind current fusion reactors and facts, such as that temperatures of 150 million ºC (10 times hotter than the core of the sun) are required and that the deuterium in a bathtub of water and 2 laptop batteries worth of lithium would provide sufficient energy for the average human’s lifetime, Dr Milnes led into a review of the JET fusion reactor in Culham, Oxfordshire, and its successor ITER in Provence, France. JET, the Joint European Tokomak, currently the largest in the world, is enabling the development of ITER. From a description of a specially designed force feedback robot arm, developed for internal maintenance, that enables the operators to sense irregularities on the order of the thickness of a sheet of paper, through to the development of novel manufacturing methods for the beryllium tiles used internally, JET has provided cutting edge research both to ITER and to UK PLC along with investment in the training of many skilled people for high tech UK industry.
While there was some consternation about ITER being a sufficient net energy producer to realistically operate as a commercial reactor. The point was made that current investment in ITER is €14 billion, while that required to put a man on Mars is estimated at €60 billion, but that the Qatar world cup will be estimated to have cost over €200 billion.
The interest both with the topic of the talk and with the presenter was shown by the length of the Q&A session and the discussion at the reception after.
Download the presentation slides here.
Blog written by Mathew Davies, IET Central London Volunteer.
From an introduction to the basic physics behind current fusion reactors and facts, such as that temperatures of 150 million ºC (10 times hotter than the core of the sun) are required and that the deuterium in a bathtub of water and 2 laptop batteries worth of lithium would provide sufficient energy for the average human’s lifetime, Dr Milnes led into a review of the JET fusion reactor in Culham, Oxfordshire, and its successor ITER in Provence, France. JET, the Joint European Tokomak, currently the largest in the world, is enabling the development of ITER. From a description of a specially designed force feedback robot arm, developed for internal maintenance, that enables the operators to sense irregularities on the order of the thickness of a sheet of paper, through to the development of novel manufacturing methods for the beryllium tiles used internally, JET has provided cutting edge research both to ITER and to UK PLC along with investment in the training of many skilled people for high tech UK industry.
While there was some consternation about ITER being a sufficient net energy producer to realistically operate as a commercial reactor. The point was made that current investment in ITER is €14 billion, while that required to put a man on Mars is estimated at €60 billion, but that the Qatar world cup will be estimated to have cost over €200 billion.
The interest both with the topic of the talk and with the presenter was shown by the length of the Q&A session and the discussion at the reception after.
Download the presentation slides here.
Blog written by Mathew Davies, IET Central London Volunteer.