ITER seems interesting to me. What gets you excited about ITER? Seems to me that their operational timeline is so far in the future, and the outcomes are unknown. As an engineering artifact, I understand its boner factor. From a broader human achievement standpoint, I can’t really see what all the buzz is about. I want to learn and try to understand.
It’s a fusion reactor (same mechanism that powers the Sun) powered by basically water (the main isotope of “fusion fuel” is deuterium, which is found in ocean water). It’ll produce extremely clean energy, and the science behind it is just mezmerizing. It isn’t just buzz neither, as fussion-product plasma has been achivements in some labs around the world.
Like, seeing this image and feeling we created a mini-Sun (not an accurate representation, but bear with me) in that small space is… I don’t know, just wow. The Sun, an absurdily giant object fuels itself with complex mechanism and a balance between gravity and fussion, and we will have same object there.
One part of my bias is also because things like ITER really animated me to become a physicist. I do concede that while LHC is the no doubts the winner for me, ITER vs SpaceX is a closer match.
As a bonus, from a broader humanity perspective, it also comes from an international cooperation of countries, including rivaling nations, that came together to fund a project that will symbolize a huge advance in the nuclear field, intead of a single person trying to get richer.
_(41783636452).jpg){kind=link}