The upgraded Russian tokamak T-15 will be launched in 2018

Experimental thermonuclear installation Tokamak T-15 at the Kurchatov Institute

Russian nuclear physicists continue experiments with thermonuclear fusion, begun in the USSR. They take an active part in the international ITER project , and in parallel work on their own thermonuclear facilities of an alternative hybrid design.

At the Kurchatov Institute, a project to modernize an experimental thermonuclear installation tokamak T-15 has come to the finish line.
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Start of installation is scheduled for 2018. This was announced at a press conference by the Deputy Director General of Rosatom Vyacheslav Pershukov. Project financing will amount to a modest 2.5 billion rubles by today's standards.

Tokamak (toroidal chamber with magnetic coils) is a toroidal installation for magnetic plasma confinement in order to achieve the conditions necessary for the flow of controlled thermonuclear fusion.

The Tokamak T-15 is one of the world's largest experimental thermonuclear facilities. The website of the Kurchatov Institute states that “the uniqueness of the installation is made possible by the presence of the world's largest superconducting niobium-tin toroidal magnet” ( video ).

But the most important thing is that on the basis of the T-15, Russian physicists are going to create the first hybrid reactor that promises to make a real revolution in the power industry, providing fuel to all nuclear power plants in the world.

“Thermonuclear neutron can be used in the blanket of a hybrid reactor to produce new fuel,” explains Academician Yevgeny Velikhov, President of the Kurchatov Institute. - Blanket - a layer of material that surrounds the core, for example, a fusion reactor, it is designed to delay particles emitted from the core, as well as to convert the energy of particles into heat and to produce secondary fuel. Having placed in it liquid-salt compositions based on metal fluorides with raw isotopes uranium-238 or thorium-232 and ensuring rapid chemical processing of salt irradiated with thermonuclear neutrons, it is possible to isolate new fissile isotopes and subsequently use them in nuclear reactors. "

This approach has a number of advantages, including a thousand times less radioactivity released from spent nuclear fuel (SNF) depending on the type of reactors in the production of the same number of new fissionable isotopes (see graph).



“Back in 1973, I discussed this idea with an American specialist, John Holdren, today the chief scientific adviser to the US president,” says Yevgeny Velikhov. - And in 1978 we completed the first projects of hybrid reactors, but then we did not have the technical basis for their implementation. Today, thanks to the development of nuclear fusion, we have gained tremendous experience, created a powerful technical base. And now they are able to build a kind of “food factory”: they will produce nuclear fuel and supply them with nuclear power throughout the world. Working conditions at such enterprises will not only be safe and comfortable, but also attractive for highly qualified service personnel. ”

It is tokamak that will become the main energy source of hybrid energy. According to Academician Velikhov, Russia is able to develop a hybrid thermonuclear reactor on its own "along with about a hundred domestic organizations," if for some reason it is not possible to cooperate with colleagues from the international scientific community.