New project aims for fusion ignition (alternative to oil? -- 5/10/2010 story)

[FarCenter]

MIT-led Ignitor reactor could be the world’s first to reach major milestone, perhaps paving the way for eventual power production.

David L. Chandler, MIT News Office, May 10, 2010

Russia and Italy have entered into an agreement to build a new fusion reactor outside Moscow that could become the first such reactor to achieve ignition, the point where a fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining instead of requiring a constant input of energy. The design for the reactor, called Ignitor, originated with MIT physics professor Bruno Coppi, who will be the project’s principal investigator.

The concept for the new reactor builds on decades of experience with MIT’s Alcator fusion research program, also initiated by Coppi, which in its present version (called Alcator C-Mod) has the highest magnetic field and highest plasma pressure (two of the most important measures of performance in magnetic fusion) of any fusion reactor, and is the largest university-based fusion reactor in the world.

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Coppi plans to work with the Italian ministry of research and Evgeny Velikhov, president of the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, to finalize the distribution of tasks for the machine, the core of which is to be built in Italy and then installed in Troitsk, near Moscow, on the site of that institute’s present Triniti reactor. Velikhov, as it happens, is also the chair of the ITER council. Coppi says of these two different programs, “there’s no competition, we are complementary.”

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Maybe the Russians and Italians will save us all. Wonder why there isn't funding to build this in the US?