After ITER: What China and others are doing in fusion. Interview with MIT’s Dennis Whyte
By Dan Drollette Jr | November 12, 2024
Though it may look like the interior of the ship from the movie Alien, this image actually shows a researcher inside one of the alternatives to ITER’s type of plasma fusion experiment. This particular machine, named the Large Helical Device, is one of a class of designs known as a stellarator. Image courtesy of National Institute for Fusion Science, Japan.
After ITER: What China and others are doing in fusion. Interview with MIT’s Dennis Whyte
By Dan Drollette Jr | November 12, 2024
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Keywords: China, ITER, Nuclear Fusion Energy, Russia, commercial fusion, plasma, tokamak
Topics: Climate Change, Nuclear Energy
Dan Drollette Jr
Dan Drollette Jr is the executive editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He is a science writer/editor and foreign correspondent... Read More
Whyte’s claims about materials availability illustrates a peculiar facet of fusion promoters’ claims: Every statement they make asserting some advantage of fusion energy is the exact opposite of the truth, and those false claims are easily exposed. Concerning materials, Whyte states “fusion has the advantage of not needing any particularly critical elements to operate; fusion is not really sensitive to the scarcity of rare earth metals.” Notably, CFS-MIT’s much-ballyhooed SPARC magnet coils are made of REBCO, standing for “rare-earth barium coper oxide.” Rare earths include such materials as yttrium, lanthanum, neodymium and samarium, which come mainly from China. There is only one rare-earth… Read more »