RE: [cdn-nucl-l] Iter fusion reactor bid needs more funds?

Hi Jerry, Rod, Ed,

If Canada is to host ITER, $300 million has been dedicated from Ontario's Innovation program. OPG will contribute the land next to Darlington valued at $650 million in return for sale of ~15 kg of tritium and sale of electricity over the 20 year operating lifetime. Canada's former CFFTP/TdeV fusion program lasted for 20 years with a total investment of $90 million including decommissioning of the TdeV (see http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/201/301/hansard-e/35-2/066_96-06-20/066AP1E.html) and was cancelled in 1997, leaving no fusion program in Canada since, and making us the only G8 nation not supporting fusion R&D federally.

In 2001-2002, Canadian government expenditures on R&D totaled $7.4 billion including over $370 million a year toward environmental technologies for climate change, energy efficiency, and renewables, $40 million a year for the TRIUMF particle physics laboratory, and $5 million a year toward CERN's LHC program.

In 2001-2002, AECL spent 13% of its research budget, $21.1 million on R&D for the ACR as part of $161.9 million spent on research (representing 32.7% of total revenue, including $136.3 million in federal funding for research activities) for reactors as part of the nuclear renaissance expected to create demand for many new plants over the next 30 years (see http://www.aecl.ca/images/up-2001-02_AR_Eng.pdf, page 44).

My own estimate would be that Iter Canada will request something on the order of $20 - $40 million per year of federal funding to contribute to siting of ITER in Canada. This would be a fraction of every other nation involved in fusion R&D (including Europe and Japan each at about $300 million per year, the US at $275 million per year, South Korea - $75 million per year and building a $1 billion superconducting tokamak facility KSTAR, even China at $20 million per year and also building a superconducting tokamak HT-7U, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Australia, even Iran - all have programs in fusion R&D). Is it a wonder that ITER participants would question Canada's commitment to fusion and ITER when we contribute essentially zero right here at home?

The real question is when the rest of the industrialized world sees the advantages and merits of investing in fusion research, why don't we?

Also, why assume that fission and fusion programs have to compete at all? If anything, given the great deal of overlap between research areas (materials response to nuclear particles and high temperatures, thermalhydraulics, nuclear heating and decay, radiation, health, etc.), fission and fusion should compliment each other. In fact, all you have to do is take a look through an issue of the Journal of Nuclear Materials to see just how great this overlap is. As for fission/fusion funding throughout the world, see an excellent summary by the World Energy Council at http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/publications/reports/et21/findings/nuclear.asp.

Adam

-----Original Message-----
From: cdn-nucl-l-admin@informer2.cis.McMaster.CA [mailto:cdn-nucl-l-admin@informer2.cis.McMaster.CA] On Behalf Of Jerry Cuttler
Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2002 9:18 PM
To: cdn-nucl-l (E-mail)
Subject: [cdn-nucl-l] Iter fusion reactor bid needs more funds?

This is a new development. We always assumed that we could just offer the site and not pick up a huge tab for the construction.

The attractiveness of the site was suppose to be our stake. Now, it seems, that is not enough.

Would additional government funding for Iter would compete with funding for developing the ACR?

Building the $12 billion project in Canada would yield economic payback, but the same argument is made for the competing sites.

Darlington was suppose to be the most attractive site. If it is, then we shouldn't have to contribute very much.

What do you think?

Jerry

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Dec. 28, 2002. 01:00 AM

Fusion reactor bid needs funds, official says
Cash sought from Ottawa and Ontario Darlington plan suffers setback

PETER CALAMAI
SCIENCE REPORTER

OTTAWA—Canada's bid to build a $12 billion nuclear fusion reactor east of Toronto is doomed unless the federal government puts up several hundred million dollars in support, says the head of the bid team.
Murray Stewart said the federal government would have to commit substantial support before April for Canada's bid to have a chance against competing reactor sites from Europe and Japan.
The public-private bid team is also asking Ontario to increase its promised $300 million stake in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), Stewart said an interview yesterday.
But exact amounts were still being negotiated, he said.
These developments mark a major setback from earlier reports that a proposed reactor site next door to the Darlington nuclear power station had a lead in the international competition.
Darlington produces 20 per cent of Ontario's electricity.
Stewart, head of ITER Canada Host Inc., said the Darlington proposal lost ground as countries like France, Spain and Japan came forward with substantial financial backing from their national governments.
As well, the scrapping of all fusion research in Canada in 1999 hurt the country's chances.
"In the minds of the others it's not logical to put the ITER project in one of the few countries in the world that doesn't support fusion research," said Stewart.
The federal backing being requested would be at least as large as the current Ontario support, Stewart acknowledged. Ottawa would also need to pledge renewed funding for fusion research by Canadian scientists.
The 13-storey reactor would try to produce the same nuclear fusion that occurs naturally in the sun and other stars.
The fusing together of isotopes of hydrogen, such as tritium, is the opposite of nuclear fission, the atom-splitting technique that's behind conventional nuclear power stations like Darlington.
As an experiment, the reactor would generate only a trickle of electricity by using the super-conducting magnets that squeeze ionized gases to reach temperatures of 100 million degrees C.
But a full-scale fusion reactor has long been touted by scientists as a cheap and environmentally friendly source of electricity.
This view got a boost earlier this month when an independent panel of experts at the National Academies in Washington urged the U.S. to rejoin the international negotiations to select an ITER site.
The United States pulled out in 1998 over congressional concerns about the costs of the experiment, then substantially higher.
But now the United States needs to play an active role in ITER as part of an expanded fusion program, said the American experts.
Construction of the complex facility is projected to take at least 10 years at a cost of $6 billion-$7 billion divided among the ITER partners — currently Canada, Japan, the European Community and Russia.
Operating costs are estimated at $400 million annually over a lifespan of 20 years.
Canada's share of between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion would come from constructing buildings at Darlington, supplying vast amounts of electricity needed by the magnets, and tritium worth between $500 million and $700 million, Stewart said.
He said federal funds wouldn't need to flow before 2005 because of the time required to work out and ratify the international cost-sharing after a site is selected, supposedly by mid-2003.