ITER is in Trouble

 

ITER is the world's largest tokamak nuclear fusion experiment. It has been under construction in Caderache, France since 2007 and has slowly been taking shape. I have been following its progress on its official YouTube channel, see: https://www.youtube.com/@iterorganization/featured. These videos are primarily promotional and not much has been said in them about a major technical hitch. The heat shields and vacuum vessel have cracks in them caused by corrosion during manufacture; and also stress during installation, because the parts don't fit together properly. Repairing this problem is going to take a long time. It might even be necessary to extract the enormous modules and replace them with new ones which will take a lot of time, effort and money. Source: https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-europe-infrastructure-2023-1-iter-faces-potentially-years-of-further-delay-new-chief-says/. On the subject of money, the project has grossly overspent its original five billion euro budget. State-corporate organizations tend to do that; another obvious example being HS2, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2021/11/hs2-extension-scrapped.html. Its latest price hike is looking to top out at twenty billion euros; and all taken from ITER member taxpayers. The original plan was for the facility to be up and running by 2025; that has now been delayed, obviously. Latest estimates are that first plasma will be achieved in 2033 and energy should be produced in maybe 2039! Luckily for fusion proponents, ITER is not the only kid on the block and there are other cheaper projects being developed, for example see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2022/12/nuclear-fusion-breakthrough.html. The joke about usable nuclear fusion power is that it always ten years away. That was first said in 1982 when the JET at the Culham laboratory opened. However, as you'll see in the background link below, ITER and its associates are gigantic golden elephants wandering in the wrong direction, and I think that's the purpose. Free energy exists already. Energy that costs almost nothing, is simple to generate, safe, practical, infinite and environmentally friendly. It has been developed, it might even be in small scale use; but the general public are forbidden from accessing it. Instead our attention, not to mention our resources, is diverted towards sexy cash-guzzling megaprojects that don't work and are not meant to.
See here for background: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2020/08/free-energy-portal.html.