this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023

21 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

37712 readers

206 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org

gyrfalcon@beehaw.org

rs5th@beehaw.org

SemioticStandard@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social

Los@beehaw.org

coldredlight@beehaw.org

remington@beehaw.org

World's Largest Fusion Project Is in Big Trouble, New Documents Reveal (www.scientificamerican.com)

submitted 1 year ago by withersailor@aussie.zone to c/technology@beehaw.org

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 13 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] schnapsidee@feddit.de 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Honestly, going wildly over budget is pretty much par for the course in any sort of large scale infrastructure project in Europe. With the way tender procedure's work in the EU, it's entirely expected that things are going to end up being more expensive and take twice as long. It's stupid and wasteful, but it's “public money” and not going to change any time soon.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

ITER isn't a EU but international project and was never meant to be cheap: If you want something to be cheap you don't ask ten different companies in ten different countries to produce one coil each.

Doing it that way was a political decision, it's about technology transfer, building knowledge in different countries, not building a cost-efficient reactor.

You can build more complex stuff much cheaper, e.g. the Wendelstein 7x project costs 1.3bn, and that's including all wages for the general Max Plank outpost in Greifswald for 18 years. The reactor itself did cost 370m. It's way smaller than ITER, yes, but have a look at the Lovecraftian geometry and you see why it's just a tad harder to build.

[–] schnapsidee@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

It's not an EU project, but there are EU countries involved in the funding, which means EU tender regulations apply.

Wendelstein is cheaper, but according to wikipedia it also went over budget. "[...] while the total cost for the IPP site in Greifswald including investment plus operating costs (personnel and material resources) amounted to €1.06 billion for that 18-year period. This exceeded the original budget estimate, mainly because the initial development phase was longer than expected, doubling the personnel costs." (The original source is a dead link, but you could probably find something corroborating fairly easily.)

I'm not saying ITER is a bad project, I don't even think the cost is a problem, I just think that the regulations surrounding the financing of these kinds of projects often do more harm than good.

[–] Hedup@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

This effect is present not only in infrastructure projects, but all other type of projects, including personal ones. Any project that involves doing something completely new (to you or in general) will most likely take more time than, initially estimated.

[–] Xeelee@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

With a project like that it's simply impossible to estimate how long it's going to take and what is going to cost because you don't really have a clear idea of what you're going to do in the first place.

[–] spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you look at this chart from the article the delays actually look pretty reasonable and you can see them closing in on completion. Looks like been a series of set backs in the recent past with particular components but I think a budget comparable to the Manhattan Project (as the article states) is probably pretty reasonable for a project like this. In fact I was pretty surprised it was that small.

[–] ShadowPouncer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah, this really doesn't look even remotely surprising to me.

Absolutely everyone involved should already understand that they are not building something that they know how to build.

Sure, they have plans, and they can build to exactly those plans... But even then, there is no guarantee at all that they will then achieve net positive fusion energy. Because nobody has done that in a controlled reaction.

But it's also not like the rest of the world is sitting still. Other projects exist, and sometimes those projects are going to learn things that will impact the design of ITER.

For that matter, even if they have the plans, some of the pieces are things that nobody has ever built on that scale before, which means that nobody really knows how to build them until they try.

This is a really good example of a project that you can not accurately estimate.

[–] tyo_ukko@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Seems like the way to make energy out of fusion would be to burn the budgeted cash instead in a conventional furnace.

[–] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

Well, science is expensive. Even more so if you want to combine it with a metric buttload of technology transfer.

[–] saint@group.lt 4 points 1 year ago

Most likelye this budget was "calculated" for politics and for all parties involved it is known, except for the tax payers, who might block the project (read - be unhappy) if the real cost would have been known beforehand.

[–] Hedup@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People say that fusion will use very cheap and harmless fuel to generate energy. But practically the real fuel will be all the replacement parts that will be constantly degraded and used up to maintain it's operation.

[–] Kushan@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

That's true if of any power plant though. It'll still be cheaper and safer (if it ever works).

[–] infinitevalence@discuss.online 3 points 1 year ago

https://youtu.be/dOe_6vuaR_s

Practical engineering did a great video on why this happens.

load more comments