New director floated for international fusion reactor-Second management change in recent months...

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100506/full/news.2010.227.html

Published online 6 May 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.227

News

New director floated for international fusion reactor

Second management change in recent months for ITER.

Geoff Brumfiel

The multibillion-dollar fusion experiment ITER may be getting a new director-general. Osamu Motojima, a distinguished Japanese physicist, is being floated as the project's new chief, Nature has learned. ITER, based in the south of France, has suffered from repeated delays and cost overruns.

Motojima would replace Kaname Ikeda, a former Japanese diplomat and nuclear engineer who has led the programme since its inception in 2007. Ikeda was originally appointed for a five-year term, and his departure would be the second high-level management change for the fusion reactor in recent months. In February, Europe's project head, Didier Gambier, was replaced by British physicist Frank Briscoe (see http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100205/full/463721a.html">'Delays prompt reshuffle at ITER fusion project').

Neil Calder, ITER's spokesperson, confirmed that the organization would be considering management changes at the next council meeting in June. "ITER is evolving very quickly and is now moving into a construction phase," he says. "There is a logical need to adapt the management structure to this need." However, Calder would not confirm whether Motojima is a candidate for the directorship.

ITER is a massive device that researchers hope will prove the viability of nuclear fusion as a power source. The experiment will heat and squeeze hydrogen isotopes inside a doughnut-shaped reactor vessel until they fuse together to form helium. The energy released by the machine should be roughly ten times the power it consumes.

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[NNadir]

1. The ITER has a small technical problem.

That problem is that fusion doesn't work.

That said, the exercise in fusion energy has not been a waste of time because of the advances in materials science, heat transfer, and neutronics that have been derived from trying to make it work.

[Nederland]

2. Fusion doesn't work?

Can you explain that in a little more detail (because I'm certain that you don't mean it literally...)?

[NNadir]

3. Let me rephrase that, in case any one claims that I am disregarding the sun and other stars,

oh, and that business with http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/15/708477/-Every-Cloud-Has-A-Silver-Lining,-Even-Mushroom-Clouds:-Cs-137-and-Watching-the-Soil-Die.">Tsar Bomba, Big Mike et al fusion reactors don't work as energy sources.

I have, as a matter of fact, seen the Tokamak at PPL, and I'm quite sure that fusion reactions took place in it, but fusion is consistent mostly for being useless as an energy source.