Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Ignitor to Challenge ITER

Italy and Russia are poised to build a new fusion facility called Ignitor.

Russia and Italy announced on Monday that they will collaborate to build a new tokamak fusion reactor called Ignitor. Following talks between Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, other ministers signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on building the Italian-designed device on Russian territory.

The reactor is the brainchild of Bruno Coppi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who worked on MIT's Alcator tokamaks from the 1970s until the present day.


This is certainly a legitimate alternative to the budget-busting ITER that has been beset by delays and cost over-runs. Whether they can actually achieve the goal is another matter and the whole reason why this is being built in the first place.

Zz.

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