michael dittmar

Why is critical scientific or political examination of reports from the ITER Project so rare? Perhaps the problem is the mystification of physics. Dr Dittmar's article demystifies fusion experimentation - theory and methods. This fascinating article is therefore not only very useful for students of physics, energy, economics and other social sciences; it is vitally important for politicians who must make decisions about funding future energy technology.

"Published results from experiments to date consistently fail to show that a window for a self-sufficient tritium breeding currently exists. This suggests that extant proposals for future tritium breeding have no demonstrable scientific basis.

In the absence of any supplementary evidence, this paper concludes that they rely on commercial hope, technological faith and public misunderstanding." [...]

"In light of everything that has been said in this article, it seems urgent that ITER should publish its research with the appropriate conclusions to the effect that:

1. Today's achievements in all relevant areas are still many of orders of magnitude away from the basic requirements of a fusion prototype reactor;
2. no material or structure is known which can withstand the extremely high neutron flux expected under realistic deuterium-tritium fusion conditions; and
3. self-sufficient tritium breeding appears to be impossible to achieve under the conditions required to operate a commercial fusion reactor.

The tax payers, the policy makers and to the media need to be told that after 50 years of very costly research conducted at various locations around the world, enough knowledge exists to state that commercial energy production from nuclear fusion is never going to be a reality."

From Michael Dittmar, Fusion Illusions in Sheila Newman (Ed.) The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, UK, 2008. Also available from Michigan University Press in the US, from Palgrave MacMillan in Australia or order from Amazon.com Get your local bookstore to order it in from these and several other sources.