By RIA Novosti
Moscow : The Russian government has adopted a draft strategy for developing a fusion power industry by 2015 and has instructed the Federal Agency for Nuclear Power to prepare a revised version of the document by Oct 1.
The strategy stipulates the allocation of 515 billion roubles (about $20 billion) for the development of a fusion power industry, including construction of commercial thermonuclear reactors, until 2050.
Scientists have dreamt of creating electric power by nuclear fusion for more than half a century, but have been held back by the enormous engineering complications involved, in particular, the enormous temperatures needed to sustain a fusion reaction, at millions of degrees Celsius. Thermonuclear reactions, in which hydrogen atoms fuse to form helium atoms, release vast quantities of energy, power the sun and other stars.
“If we fail to adopt this (fusion research) programme now, we will soon lose the existing scientific potential and professional cadre (to implement the strategy),” academician Yevgeny Velikhov told journalists on the eve of the government meeting Thursday.
The country must adopt a federal targeted programme on the research and potential use of fusion power as an alternative energy source by the end of 2007, he said.
Velikhov said the 2009-2015 programme would become the first stage of the fusion power strategy and include the modernisation of technological potential created during Soviet times, as well as training of scientific personnel.
The cost of the programme is estimated at 30 billion roubles ($1.17 billion), but it could rise along with the implementation of specific projects, the scientist said.
The second stage of the proposed strategy, in 2016-2031, envisions the development and testing of materials to be used in future fusion power reactors.
During the third stage, which will start after 2031, Russia hopes to design and start building commercial fusion power plants, Velikhov said.
The abundance of hydrogen and the absence of greenhouse gases from the nuclear fusion process have prompted countries to increase investment in fusion research in recent years.
Under an agreement signed in Paris on Nov 21, 2006, Russia, South Korea, China, Japan, India, the European Union, and the United States pledged to fund the construction an experimental thermonuclear reactor in France, which is expected to conduct its first plasma operation in 2016.
The $10 billion project to build the reactor in Cadarache near Marseilles is designed to demonstrate the scientific and technological potential of nuclear fusion, amid concerns over growing energy demand and the impact on the global climate of burning conventional fossil fuels. The European Union will cover 40 percent of the costs and the other participants will contribute 10 percent each.
Velikhov said that after jointly building the fusion power reactor, each participant in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project “will assume its own approach toward the commercial use of fusion power”.
The Russian scientist reiterated that Russia must move fast in the development of fusion power, as global demand for energy may triple by 2030, and the country has set itself an ambitious goal of becoming a leader on the future fusion power market.
Velikhov said he believed that despite the development of alternative energy sources, fossil fuels would still be in wide use for power generation at the end of this century.