Talk:ITER

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ITER was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
December 23, 2006	Good article nominee	Not listed

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Remove false claim from the first paragraph

The claim ITER is "...aimed at creating energy by replicating, on Earth, the fusion processes of the Sun" should be removed from the first paragraph because it is false. The Sun relies on fusion of "standard" hydrogen (sometimes called protium in context) - a fuel that really is cheap and limitless. No contemplated fusion facility on Earth, and certainly not ITER, relies on this physical process. All tokamak-type reactors rely on deuterium-tritium (D-T) fusion, a significantly different physical process. This change is important because the "fusion processes of the Sun" falsehood helps propagate the more significant "cheap and limitless fuel" myth. I say "myth" because tritium is expensive and severely constrained, not cheap and limitless. As the concerned community confronts the reality of the worldwide tritium shortfall later in the 2020s and 2030s, it will become increasingly important to correctly describe the physical processes involved in order to reset understanding of the issue after decades of such falsehoods. This proposed change is a first step in that direction. For a less technical discussion of the issue, see https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-power-may-run-fuel-even-gets-started; for a more technical discussion, see https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-4326/abbf35/pdf. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.240.194.99 (talk) 03:32, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for not creating an account until now - I am "73.240.194.99", the creator of this paragraph. Pdxjjb (talk) 03:52, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I see your point, (and that Science.org source could be used for a statement in the article) but as in any summary or teaching of a subject, we start with generalities which may not be exactly accurate and then progress to the exceptions. I've changed that to a hopefully more accurate statement. Thanks for pointing this out. ---Avatar317 ^(talk) 23:41, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Summaries are, by definition, subject to limited accuracy in order to achieve brevity. I think the current opening statement as it stands ("...aimed at creating energy through a fusion process similar to that of the Sun.") is accurate enough. The word "similar" is a reasonable choice to cover the differences between the mechanisms operating in ITER and the Sun. Wcmead3 (talk) 20:09, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Article seemed to ignore the 2022 construction problems and effect on timescales

Article seemed to ignore the 2022 construction problems and effect on timescales - eg [1]. - Rod57 (talk) 23:21, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There was a brief mention in Manufacturing (using an older ref) - now also noted in Introduction and Timelines and status. - Rod57 (talk) 23:48, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Article needs updating, many sections have "as of 2023", and claims about "by the end of the year"; a time that has already passed.

I wrote the whole comment in the title InterGraphenic (talk) 19:31, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Eric Lerner in criticism section

Lerner is a well-known crackpot with a personal financial interest in dismissing ITER. I don't see a reason to give him a platform as primary source (!) in this article. Any objections to removing it? --mfb (talk) 07:32, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I support removing it, and also the following sentence, ("Other critics, such as Daniel Jassby, ...")sourced to an advocacy organization. ---Avatar317 ^(talk) 01:34, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Outdated sentence in the opening

My attempt to remove a sentence has been reverted, so I open this discussion. The sentence was obviously added before the start of JT-60SA and the end of the Joint European Torus:

ITER will be the largest of more than 100 fusion reactors built since the 1950s, with ten times the plasma volume of any other tokamak operating today.

Here are the numbers for plasma volumes in m³: ITER 840, JT-60SA 140, JET 100 (reference). I decided against changing to "six times" because of Wikipedia:No original research. Kallichore (talk) 11:40, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be ok with changing that statement to "since the 1950's, with six times the plasma volume as JT-60SA." with the new reference, just please don't remove the old reference, it is informative to the reader to state that we've build more than 100 fusion reactors to date. ---Avatar317 ^(talk) 00:30, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is also a doubling of "largest reactor" in the first paragraph, which makes it possible to remove one sentence:

ITER (initially the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, iter meaning "the way" or "the path" in Latin) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject aimed at creating energy through a fusion process similar to that of the Sun. It is being built next to the Cadarache facility in southern France. Upon completion of construction of the main reactor and first plasma, planned for 2033–2034, ITER will be the largest of more than 100 fusion reactors built since the 1950s, with six times the plasma volume of JT-60SA, the largest tokamak operating today.

Are there objections to this change? I also prefer "creating energy through nuclear fusion" instead of "creating energy through a fusion process similar to that of the Sun", but this is another point. --Kallichore (talk) 14:37, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the first paragraph. For this I had to move the wikilink for Magnetic confinement fusion.--Kallichore (talk) 13:50, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the sentence "...creating energy through a fusion process similar to that of the Sun." is OK. Serves as an orientation for the readers who know nothing about nuclear fusion. But I wouldn't object strongly to the form "creating energy through nuclear fusion." Isn't this enough argument about the first sentence? Wcmead3 (talk) 20:15, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

World map of participating members needs changing.

As per the lead both The United Kingdom and Switzerland who are currently highlited shouldn't be. I unfortunately can't make the changes myself so hopefully somebody sees this and does so. Also there should probably be some sort of highlighting done for the four partner countries. Brandon Downes (talk) 15:42, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Add A Fact: "ITER Pressure Suppression System performance"

I found a fact that might belong in this article. See the quote below

Performances of the ITER Pressure Suppression System during unstable steam condensation regimes

The fact comes from the following source:

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-4326/ad7b59

Here is a wikitext snippet to use as a reference:

 {{Citation |title=User:DErenrich-WMF/Add A Fact Experiment |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DErenrich-WMF/Add_A_Fact_Experiment |work=Wikipedia |date=2024-09-30 |access-date=2024-09-30 |language=en |quote=and if we can support making it possible to contribute productively to Wikipedia from outside of Wikipedia, and if guidance to the contributor from a large language model (LLM) could be useful in this process. The idea was developed and workshopped with Wikipedians at}}

This post was generated using the Add A Fact browser extension.

Chemipanda (talk) 12:53, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How is that a "fact"? It's a sentence fragment without context Ita140188 (talk) 08:21, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Chemipanda: was this post entirely machine-generated? It is nonsense. VQuakr (talk) 16:35, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ita140188 and VQuakr: See the "How it works" section of the https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Future_Audiences/Experiment:Add_a_Fact - Yes, it is all machine generated; I got an invitation to use this tool but I didn't think it would be good at paraphrasing text so I haven't tried it. ---Avatar317 ^(talk) 18:47, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Avatar317: seems like it needs more work in a sandbox before it gets used in article talk space. VQuakr (talk) 19:10, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

After seeing this post, I agree. ---Avatar317 ^(talk) 19:12, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Add the beta parameter to the Technical specifications section of the infobox

Please add at what beta ITER will run to the Technical specifications section of the infobox. Usually for experimental tokamaks, the beta parameter is 0.01 or 1%. 2A02:1811:B7B4:E800:55B6:D28C:9EE4:D673 (talk) 16:16, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Currently Template:Infobox fusion device does not support a beta parameter, but you can propose the inclusion on its talk page. --mfb (talk) 06:35, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Q" can be a misleading concept for gauging progress towards electricity production via fusion

"Q", defined as the thermonuclear energy out over the energy used to heat the plasma is a meaningful, but also misleading quantity for estimating progress in different fusion fields. It omits the electrical efficiency of providing the energy to drive the plasma. According to the article, "ITER's thermonuclear fusion reactor will use over 300 MW of electrical power to cause the plasma to absorb 50 MW of thermal power, ...", so the efficiency of delivering the energy to the plasma is about 16%. The energy produced by fusion is then about 1.7 times the electrical input energy. (Of course, the ITER goal will not be actually realized until several years in the future.)

The misleading comparison arises in the later statement, "As of 2022, the record for energy production using nuclear fusion is held by the National Ignition Facility reactor, which achieved a Q of 1.5 in December 2022." In this case, the electrical efficiency of the laser supplying the light energy to the target is about 0.66%. This means that Q = 1.5 corresponds to producing fusion yield only about 1% of the wall-plug input.

For reasonable comparisons of competing fusion schemes, the driver efficiency should be taken into account.

To answer the question of when commercial fusion-produced electricity can be achieved, further milestones are significant. "Engineering breakeven" is generally defined as the point when a "generator" produces as much energy as it takes to drive it. "Economic feasibility" is usually defined as generating enough output power from the generator to produce competitively priced electricity. If the conversion from generator energy output to line-ready electricity is thermal (and that is the case for currently envisioned fusion power plants), the efficiency of that process must be considered. The plant electrical output is then the net generator energy output times the conversion efficiency, and economic feasibility depends on exceeding engineering breakeven by a factor of ~10 (or more, depending on capital and operating costs, electrcity's market value, and facility lifetime). Wcmead3 (talk) 21:01, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree we should mention at least the point about electrical efficiency of the system producing the fusion. This is especially important when comparing completely different technologies such as the NIF ICF which has been already misrepresented by mainstream media as a huge breakthrough even though it most likely is a dead-end in terms of commercial fusion. Let's not add to the confusion here. Ita140188 (talk) 12:20, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the way to handle this is to remove the reference to the NIF result here (where it is really off-topic) and make sure this is handled appropriately in the article on "Fusion Power". Wcmead3 (talk) 22:32, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the paragraph we have in the lead that is currently dedicated to explaining all this in numbers covers it pretty well. There is no talk there about this being for electricity generation, nor is it even implied that this is similar to a power-plant's energy in/out balance (like a current commercial fission plant).

We are merely talking about the energy balance in the fusion. And, NIF's main purpose is weapons research (something like 70% of the test shots are not meant to learn anything related to commercialization) so that isn't really a misrepresentation; that's just what the press make it into. ---Avatar317 ^(talk) 06:50, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]