Page 2 of 4

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 4:36 am
by prestonbarrows
D Tibbets wrote:Another question is what are they changing from previous tests. Higher temperatures, higher B fields, better control of edge instabilities, Beta pushed a little further.... ? Do they hope to reach ignition ?
JET still holds the record for experimental Q; this required the use of D-T and was set way back in '97 I believe. Other tokamaks like JT-60 have since demonstrated 'equivalent Q's' using D-D which have passed break even. But of course, the proof is in the pudding. Even if the extrapolation from D-D to D-T is well known and accepted, no fusion reactor (short of a thermonuclear bomb) has yet demonstrated actual break even operation.

In the mean time, JET has learned from these newer reactors and has been upgraded with ITER-like parts which are hoped to improve performance. Many of these upgrades have to do with the wall materials and divertor, parts which dictate the purity of the plasma. The input power systems such as the Neutral Beam Injectors were also overhauled to higher power levels since the '97 record shot.

Basically, JET is one of the only tokamak facilities equipped to handle tritium until ITER comes online (hopefully sometime within the next century). It would be a wonderful demonstration if they could experimentally show true break even for any length of time.

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 11:21 am
by crowberry
ITER will hopefully come online sometime during the next decade.

It sure would be nice it JET or someone else could achieve break even in a few years. That would restore credibility to fusion as an energy option and hopefully create more opportunities both for traditional and non-traditional fusion research and development worldwide.

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 1:10 pm
by Giorgio
crowberry wrote:ITER will hopefully come online sometime during the next decade.
Almost impossible within next decade.
The last advance reports showed little advancement in the last 2 years period.
In May 2015 ITER Organization changed its Director-General, whose first action was to propose yet another radical change in the Organization management structure.
http://fire.pppl.gov/ITER_Action_Plan_B ... 5-2015.pdf
Seems like every time a new Director is appointed he will scrap most of the structure done by the previous Director, wasting most of its mandate to implement his views that will be scrapped by the next Director, and so on.

Considering that few years ago the reported start date for D/T operations was 2027, and in view of the accumulated delays of the last 2 years, it's not unlikely to think that the trend line is already way over 2035 before any D/T operation.

And let's also not forget that Russia plays a major role in the construction of the reactor.
In view of the EU economic sanctions to Russia, will Russia still be willing to supply those key components to ITER?
http://iterrf.ru/en/russia/role/

crowberry wrote:It sure would be nice it JET or someone else could achieve break even in a few years. That would restore credibility to fusion as an energy option and hopefully create more opportunities both for traditional and non-traditional fusion research and development worldwide.
A smart management team would have upgraded JET long ago and used it as a training and experimental tool for the personnel that would have operated ITER D/T operations.
Right now my attention and eyes are focused on the first plasma of Wendelstein7-X this summer. I have quite a lot of expectations from the experimental results of this new Stellarator machine, even if they will not implement full "actively cooled" divertors until end of 2018.

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 7:58 am
by crowberry
A new official ITER schedule is to be produced after the summer. Then we will see the new dates.

The issue with the previous JET record runs was the first wall which picked up too much tritium. This problem had to be understood and solved for ITER and now the same first wall has been used on JET, which is why it might be possible to achieve better JET performance by using more heating power and modes of operation not previously available.

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 8:34 am
by Giorgio
crowberry wrote:A new official ITER schedule is to be produced after the summer. Then we will see the new dates.
This is a news to me. I thought it will take until next year to make the new schedule. I am very interested to know more, where did you read it?

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 10:19 am
by crowberry
Giorgio wrote:
crowberry wrote:A new official ITER schedule is to be produced after the summer. Then we will see the new dates.
This is a news to me. I thought it will take until next year to make the new schedule. I am very interested to know more, where did you read it?
Actually the new schedule is planned to be ready by November 15th 2015, so this is a bit later than "after the summer".
Bigot presented the Council with an "action plan" to implement management reforms and to provide a new baseline construction schedule to the Council by November 15.
http://fpa.ucsd.edu/fpn15-09.shtml
Bigot requested and received Council approval for "full authority to take all technical decisions for the best interest of the project." He provided a new organizational structure and promised to provide the Council "the first results of a structured attempt to a new baseline definition with its associated resource loaded schedule" in time for the November 2015 Council Meeting. He promised a progress report at the June 2015 Council Meeting.
http://fpa.ucsd.edu/fpn15-16.shtml

Maybe there will be some news on this matter when there is information available from the ITER June 2015 Council Meeting?

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 10:28 am
by Giorgio
Thanks, let's wait and see.
A new timeline within 2015 will anyhow beat my expectations and mean that Bigot is moving faster than his predecessors.

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 10:33 am
by crowberry
Actually the date for the November schedule seems still to hold also according to the news posted after the 16th ITER Council in June 2015:
Work is progressing towards an updated project plan, which recognizes the serious accumulated delays, and which integrates the scope, cost and schedule for the Project going forward. This updated project plan includes a resource-loaded schedule, and will be discussed at the next Council meeting in November 2015.
http://www.iter.org/whatsnew/print/2015/06/22

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2015 2:30 am
by prestonbarrows
Giorgio wrote:
crowberry wrote:ITER will hopefully come online sometime during the next decade.
Almost impossible within next decade.
As a preface, let me say that I think the current fusion programs in the US/world are extremely worthwhile ideas.

Unfortunately, most of the news coming out of ITER the past number of years has been barely beyond 'abysmal'. This has culminated in a shake-down review of the entire project over the past year or so which did not turn up many promising results.

The project as a whole seems to be suffering from mismanagement at nearly every level. Much seems to stem from the non-centric multinational foundation of the project where politics have been guiding the division and assignment of labor between the member nations rather than demonstrated technical merit. Ballooning budgets and timelines are a common theme through all aspects of the project.

Today, construction has been underway about 7 years and the party line is that first plasma operations will begin in about 5 years. Full scale DT testing is not scheduled for more then a decade out; even going by the less-than-trustworthy official timelines at this point. One must keep in mind that ITER is not even the 'real' proof of concept reactor. It is not until the next reactor in the series, DEMO, that there will be any attempt at harvesting usable power for prolonged periods of time.

Underscoring these lifetime-long timescales is the fact that these facilities are mind boggingly expensive as well. Again, even assuming smooth sailing from now until then leaves us staring across the gap of trying to make Billion dollar reactors viable for installation across the globe.

Even in the best of today's projections, short of a radical left field breakthrough in plasma physics and/or material sciences, fusion power will not be producing reliable net-power for many decades and won't be viable for grid-scale deployment for many more years/decades after that. One can always hope that we run into a favorable conflagration of technologies like those which spawned the Silicon age. Hitting maturity in room temperature superconductors, fully deterministic individual particle plasma simulations, and molecular printers conceivably could lead to a world where fusion becomes trivial much sooner than that...

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2015 3:39 am
by Giorgio
Prestonbarrows, my opinion is the same as your on all what you said, except your last paragraph.
I believe that actual research going on in several smaller fusion companies will show us a viable road to fusion before end of this decade even with our actual technological level. Of course "viable" is not same as "profitable", but I feel optimistic also on that.

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2020 8:28 am
by crowberry
The schedule for the deuterium-tritium runs on JET has slipped many times as reflected by the title of this rather old thread. This has happened for various reasons. But the preparations are coming to an end and the tritium experiments are currently scheduled for 2021. Hopefully there will be no further schedule delays. See the following article: JET getting ready for key fusion power tests, https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/jet-getting-ready ... wer-tests/

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2020 9:37 am
by crowberry
The article Translating JET into ITER describes the interesting tritium-tritium and deuterium-tritium experiments at JET, which are planned to start in about two months time: https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3520.

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 9:29 pm
by bennmann
Looking for new news on this based on the last timeline...

Is JT-60sa the same as JET?

https://www.jt60sa.org/b/index_nav_6.ht ... 30121.html

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 12:11 am
by Skipjack
No, JT-60SA is in Japan. It can not do D+T fusion, but if it could, would likely have beaten JET's record already before the upgrade.
From what I have heard JET's record Q attempt was shelved after Cowley left UKEA for PPPL. They are now focusing more on science projects to support ITER. AFAIK, JET's heating capabilities were actually downgraded for that. IMHO, not a good decision, but who am I?

Re: JET will attempt Q-record by the end of the decade

Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2021 12:21 pm
by crowberry
Is there any news out yet on the JET DT-campaign? Does anyone know if the DT-experiments have been started during this summer or has there been more delays?