FUSIA3D 3D Stereoscopic Show on Fusion

Hello! My name is Fusia Hello my name is Fissia we are the Euratom twin sisters ! and we want to take you on a formidable journey! It all starts here, at my family home, Euratom! This is the place where people, like those ones, are thinking about energy for the future! And indeed! what a challenge: billions of people to feed with energy! The electricity consumption of the average European is around 7000 KWh energy per year, to give an idea you PC consumes Ö about 3 KWh in one year! Considering the world wide growth of population and energy consumption, do you have an idea of how much more energy will be needed by 2050? 25 % more 50 % more or 100% more The correct number is 100%: we will double our consumption by 2050! Beyond the numbers, Brussels is my launch pad to explore the challenge of finding sources of all this energy. And do you know which source is the most inspiring and the most powerful ?Ö Look up: the sun! I want to show you something: I want to show you how it works! Why it is so powerfulÖ Fasten your seat belts, we are about to enter turbulence! Look, we are at the core, the centre of the sunÖ pressure and temperature are so high, that it is Ö Like a pressure cooker Ö hmm OK, I oversimplify ! Do you want to see whatís happening inside? Do you want me to open the lid ? Shout as much as you can to encourage me! Fusia Fusia Fusia! Ö yes itís me! SHOUT, OK, or click on the red button of your joystick, Ö but that is less efficient. Here it is! Here we are Ö in the sun the heart of energy, we can say that the sun is really the essence of life on our planet: it gave us the right conditions, temperature and light, to have life blossoming on Earth. Ouch, aaah, ouchÖ it is not that it burns, but Ö it strikes ! Put your atomic glasses on to see whatís happening! Under such high pressure and temperature, atoms of Hydrogen and their cousins Deuterium and Tritium are colliding and fusing. Ok, letís try some Extra Vehicular Activity: Iím digital, I can do it! Iíll be the first Sun Walker!... Hey look : they collide with each other too! Lots of different collisions are happening all the time, but letís pick this one: Deuterium and Tritium collide and fuse into a heavier atom, Helium. Do you see, this also releases a neutron loaded with energy! This is how fusion works : the combination of 2 lighter elements into a heavier one releases a huge amount of energy much more energy is released than that used to force the two atoms to fuse! See ! Fusion reactions in the sun are so fascinating that scientists decided to bring the pressure cooker home I mean Ö they are trying to replicate this here on Earth! Do some of you still believe in the pressure cooker thing? not really, Ö ok! Then let us use a Tokomak! A What -A-Mak? Well, this is a clever machine that creates the conditions for nuclear fusion to happen, thanks to magnetic fields. The Tokamak we are visiting now is JET: the Joint European Torus,Ö the largest Nuclear Fusion reactor in the world! It has been built to study fusion in conditions similar to those of a future fusion power plant. JET has reached the world highest level of fusion energy production to date! Look, we are now in its control room. Taming the energy of the stars stars makes it as complicated as a space travel control room. To build and run a system as complex as JET requires such a high level of expertise that scientists from all over Europe have come to work there! This is even more obvious when we consider the next step in Fusion research ITER! Building ITER is a very big job! ITER is the largest international energy research project in the world, bringing together Japan, United States, Korea, India, Russia, China, and Europe! Europe, through Euratom, is a 50% partner in this exciting project It requires the most advanced partners across European countries institutions and industrial companies that will push the limits of knowledge and engineering in many disciplines: Magnets, diagnostics, heating systems, Remote handling, material, Computer Aided Design, plasma physics. Plasma? The fourth state of matter: you know that if you heat solid ice, it turns into liquid water, if you carry on heating, it becomes gas, steam, Ö and if you carry on and on heatingÖ you will ionize the gas and reach the 4th state: Plasma! Ö Electrically conductive and reacting to magnetism. Now, Letís run the tokamak together: Click on the left switch to turn it on! Letís turn on the power that feeds the whole process. Click on the left switch to turn it on! Now letís turn on the toroidal field coilsÖ click on the logo. Look at the field generated by 18 coils, each one is as heavy as one airbus plane! It is time to inject gas, our fuel! We use Deuterium, an isotope of Hydrogen, which is found in natural abundance in oceans or rain water! We also need Tritium, another cousin of hydrogen. Now, inject the fuel components! Click on the control panel! Go! Press to change the voltage of the transformer's solenoid faster and faster, As we start to become short of energy here, I need all of you to participate: use your joystick as a dynamo, turn as much as you can, as fast as you can! all of you! OkÖ Level is not bad Öagain: carry on! turn your joystick! Hey, you ionized the gas, perfect, at this point; the fuel becomes plasma, congratulations! Click on the panel to power the poloÔdal field coils: they generate a magnetic field that will expand the plasma to its full size. Here we are! Ow! As the plasma gets hotter it becomes a better electrical conductor, and its temperature stops rising We need more heat Ö to reach 150 000 000 degrees Celsius for fusion, Click on the control panel! Turn the additional heaters on: neutral beam heating and microwave heating At this stage, the temperature reaches 150 000 000 degrees, and Deuterium and Tritium start to fuse! It is important to maintain the magnetic fields in order to guarantee that the particles are held close to each other for enough time to have a chance to fuse! Weíve reached the burning plasma state. We now produce fusion power! Now have a look at whatís happening in the ìblanketî around the Tokamak: the neutrons resulting from the fusion reactions give up their energy and this heats the ìcoolantî, a fluid flowing through pipes in the blanket. The coolant becomes so warm that it can be used to make steam, and that is used to drive gigantic generators which produce electricity! OKÖ so thatís how a power plant like DEMO will work, But at the moment we are in the building phase. Compared to JET, ITER will be twice and as high as the Tower of Pisa in Italy! and its successor DEMO will be the one producing electrical power; this will be your source of energy for the future! D'accordÖ J'en vois certains qui sont sceptiquesÖ..  tes-vous concernÈs? OKÖ I see some of you are skepticalÖ do you have concerns? Environment? Fuel supply ? Safety and waste ? Click on the button of your choice! As you see in the table, you have selected Safety as your main concern; Letís look into this topic: You have seen all the parameters you have to control to keep a fusion reactor going! Get one of them wrong and instantly everything stops straight away: pshittt! Not only that, but the amount of Fuel present in the reactor is never more than a few grams, it cannot make a big explosion or cause a ìmelt-downî! In fact, even in the case of the worst possible accident, people living in the surrounding areas would be quite safe. Thatís it for today, as you can see, fusion is our daily business at Euratom. It is our present! But it is also YOUR FUTURE Be part of it! As you see in the table, you have selected Supply as your main concern; letís look into this topic: Deuterium can be extracted from ocean or rain water where there are huge quantities of it, and its extraction leaves the rest of the water.. intact and clean! Tritium is made by a reaction with the light metal Lithium inside the blanket surrounding the Tokamak; Lithium is the most abundant light metal on Earth. The water in half of a bathtub and an amount of lithium equal to that in one single laptop battery could supply all the electricity needed by one person for 30 years! and more than that : once it is used, this metal is recyclable ! Thatís it for today, as you can see, fusion is our daily business at Euratom. It is our present! But it is also YOUR FUTURE Be part of it! As you see in the table, you have selected Waste as your main concern; letís look into this topic. After some years of operation the reactor could show signs of fatigue and some of the components would need to be replaced. The volume of radioactive waste would be only a few cubic meters. This waste can be stored and after less than 100 years, it will be safe to handle, meaning that it can be recycled, and re-used in another Tokamak ! Thatís it for today, as you can see, fusion is our daily business at Euratom. It is our present! But it is also YOUR FUTURE Be part of it!