This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

It was a project that promised the sun. Researchers would use the world’s most advanced technology to design a machine that could generate atomic fusion, the process that drives the stars—and so create a source of cheap, non-polluting power.

That was initially the aim of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) which 35 countries—including European states, China, Russia, and the United States—agreed to build at Saint-Paul-lez-Durance in southern France at a starting cost of $6 billion. Work began in 2010, with a commitment that there would be energy-producing reactions by 2020.

Then reality set in. Cost overruns, Covid, corrosion of key parts, last-minute redesigns and confrontations with nuclear safety officials triggered delays that mean ITER is not going to be ready for another decade, it has just been announced. Worse, energy-producing fusion reactions will not be generated until 2039, while ITER budget—which has already soared to $20 billion—will increase by a further $5 billion.

Other estimates suggest the final price tag could rise well above this figure and make ITER “the most delayed and most cost-inflated ­science project in history,” the journal Scientific American has warned. For its part, the journal Science has stated simply that ITER is now in “big trouble”, while Nature has noted that the project has been “plagued by a string of hold-ups, cost overruns and management issues”.

“The trouble is that ITER has been going on for such a long time, and suffered so many delays, that the rest of the world has moved on.”

Dozens of private companies now threaten to create fusion reactors on a shorter timescale, warn scientists. These include Tokamak Energy in Oxford and Commonwealth Fusion Systems in the US.

“The trouble is that ITER has been going on for such a long time, and suffered so many delays, that the rest of the world has moved on,” said fusion expert Robbie Scott of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council. “A host of new technologies have emerged since ITER was planned. That has left the project with real problems.”

A question mark now hangs over one of the world’s most ambitious technological projects in its global bid to harness the process that drives the stars. It involves the nuclei of two light atoms being forced to combine to form a single heavier nucleus, while releasing massive amounts of energy. This is nuclear fusion, and it only occurs at colossally high temperatures.

To create such heat, a doughnut-shaped reactor, called a tokamak, will use magnetic fields to contain a plasma of hydrogen nuclei that will then be bombarded by particle beams and microwaves. When temperatures reach millions of degrees Celsius, the mix of two hydrogen isotopes—deuterium and tritium—will fuse to form helium, neutrons, and a great deal of excess energy.

Containing plasma at such high temperatures is exceptionally difficult. “It was originally planned to line the tokamak reactor with protective beryllium but that turned out to be very tricky. It is toxic and eventually it was decided to replace it with tungsten,” said David Armstrong, professor of materials science and engineering at Oxford University. “That was a major design change taken very late in the day.”

Then huge sections of tokamak made in Korea were found not to fit together properly, while threats that there could be leaks of radioactive materials led the French nuclear regulators to call a halt on the plant’s construction. More delays in construction were announced as problems piled up.

Then came Covid. “The pandemic shut down factories supplying components, reduced the associated workforce, and triggered impacts—such as backlogs in shipping and challenges in conducting quality-control inspections,” admitted ITER’s director-general, Pietro Barabaschi.

ITER denies it is “in big trouble” and rejects the idea that it is breaking records for cost overruns and delays. Just look at the International Space Station, says a spokesman.

So ITER has again put back its completion—until the next decade. At the same time, researchers using other approaches to fusion have made breakthroughs. In 2022, the US National Ignition Facility in California said it had used lasers to superheat deuterium and tritium and fused them to create helium and excess energy—a goal of ITER.

It remains to be seen if ITER will survive these crises and its backers will continue to fund it—although most scientists contacted by the Observer argued that it still has promising work to do. An example is the research into ways to generate tritium, the rare hydrogen isotope that is essential to fusion reactors. This can be made at a fusion reactor site by using the neutrons it generates to bombard lithium samples, a process that makes helium—and tritium. “That is a worthwhile experiment in its own right,” said Appelbe.

For its part, ITER denies that it is “in big trouble” and rejects the idea that it is a record-breaking science project for cost overruns and delays. Just look at the International Space Station or for that matter the UK’s HS2 rail link, said a spokesman.

Others point out that fusion power’s limited carbon emissions would boost the battle against climate change. “However, fusion will arrive too late to help us cut carbon emissions in the short term,” said Aneeqa Khan, a research fellow in nuclear fusion at the University of Manchester. “Only if fusion power plants produce significant amounts of electricity later in the century will they help keep our carbon emissions down—and that will become crucial in the fight against climate change.”

This story was originally published by Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

It was a project that promised the sun. Researchers would use the world’s most advanced technology to design a machine that could generate atomic fusion, the process that drives the stars—and so create a source of cheap, non-polluting power.

That was initially the aim of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) which 35 countries—including European states, China, Russia, and the United States—agreed to build at Saint-Paul-lez-Durance in southern France at a starting cost of $6 billion. Work began in 2010, with a commitment that there would be energy-producing reactions by 2020.

Then reality set in. Cost overruns, Covid, corrosion of key parts, last-minute redesigns and confrontations with nuclear safety officials triggered delays that mean ITER is not going to be ready for another decade, it has just been announced. Worse, energy-producing fusion reactions will not be generated until 2039, while ITER budget—which has already soared to $20 billion—will increase by a further $5 billion.

Other estimates suggest the final price tag could rise well above this figure and make ITER “the most delayed and most cost-inflated ­science project in history,” the journal Scientific American has warned. For its part, the journal Science has stated simply that ITER is now in “big trouble”, while Nature has noted that the project has been “plagued by a string of hold-ups, cost overruns and management issues”.

“The trouble is that ITER has been going on for such a long time, and suffered so many delays, that the rest of the world has moved on.”

Dozens of private companies now threaten to create fusion reactors on a shorter timescale, warn scientists. These include Tokamak Energy in Oxford and Commonwealth Fusion Systems in the US.

“The trouble is that ITER has been going on for such a long time, and suffered so many delays, that the rest of the world has moved on,” said fusion expert Robbie Scott of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council. “A host of new technologies have emerged since ITER was planned. That has left the project with real problems.”

A question mark now hangs over one of the world’s most ambitious technological projects in its global bid to harness the process that drives the stars. It involves the nuclei of two light atoms being forced to combine to form a single heavier nucleus, while releasing massive amounts of energy. This is nuclear fusion, and it only occurs at colossally high temperatures.

To create such heat, a doughnut-shaped reactor, called a tokamak, will use magnetic fields to contain a plasma of hydrogen nuclei that will then be bombarded by particle beams and microwaves. When temperatures reach millions of degrees Celsius, the mix of two hydrogen isotopes—deuterium and tritium—will fuse to form helium, neutrons, and a great deal of excess energy.

Containing plasma at such high temperatures is exceptionally difficult. “It was originally planned to line the tokamak reactor with protective beryllium but that turned out to be very tricky. It is toxic and eventually it was decided to replace it with tungsten,” said David Armstrong, professor of materials science and engineering at Oxford University. “That was a major design change taken very late in the day.”

Then huge sections of tokamak made in Korea were found not to fit together properly, while threats that there could be leaks of radioactive materials led the French nuclear regulators to call a halt on the plant’s construction. More delays in construction were announced as problems piled up.

Then came Covid. “The pandemic shut down factories supplying components, reduced the associated workforce, and triggered impacts—such as backlogs in shipping and challenges in conducting quality-control inspections,” admitted ITER’s director-general, Pietro Barabaschi.

ITER denies it is “in big trouble” and rejects the idea that it is breaking records for cost overruns and delays. Just look at the International Space Station, says a spokesman.

So ITER has again put back its completion—until the next decade. At the same time, researchers using other approaches to fusion have made breakthroughs. In 2022, the US National Ignition Facility in California said it had used lasers to superheat deuterium and tritium and fused them to create helium and excess energy—a goal of ITER.

It remains to be seen if ITER will survive these crises and its backers will continue to fund it—although most scientists contacted by the Observer argued that it still has promising work to do. An example is the research into ways to generate tritium, the rare hydrogen isotope that is essential to fusion reactors. This can be made at a fusion reactor site by using the neutrons it generates to bombard lithium samples, a process that makes helium—and tritium. “That is a worthwhile experiment in its own right,” said Appelbe.

For its part, ITER denies that it is “in big trouble” and rejects the idea that it is a record-breaking science project for cost overruns and delays. Just look at the International Space Station or for that matter the UK’s HS2 rail link, said a spokesman.

Others point out that fusion power’s limited carbon emissions would boost the battle against climate change. “However, fusion will arrive too late to help us cut carbon emissions in the short term,” said Aneeqa Khan, a research fellow in nuclear fusion at the University of Manchester. “Only if fusion power plants produce significant amounts of electricity later in the century will they help keep our carbon emissions down—and that will become crucial in the fight against climate change.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A hundred years ago, the plant scientist Arthur Watkins launched a remarkable project. He began collecting samples of wheat from all over the globe, nagging consuls and business agents across the British empire and beyond to supply him with grain from local markets.

His persistence was exceptional and, a century later, it is about to reap dramatic results. A UK-Chinese collaboration has sequenced the DNA of all the 827 kinds of wheat, assembled by Watkins, that have been nurtured at the John Innes Centre near Norwich for most of the past century.

In doing so, scientists have created a genetic goldmine by pinpointing previously unknown genes that are now being used to create hardy varieties with improved yields that could help feed Earth’s swelling population.

Strains are now being developed that include wheat which is able to grow in salty soil, while researchers at Punjab Agricultural University are working to improve disease resistance from seeds that they received from the John Innes Centre. Other strains include those that would reduce the need for nitrogen fertilisers, the manufacture of which is a major source of carbon emissions.

The collection includes lost varieties that “will be invaluable in creating wheat that can provide healthy yields in the harsh conditions that now threaten agriculture.”

“Essentially we have uncovered a goldmine,” said Simon Griffiths, a geneticist at the John Innes Centre and one of the project’s leaders. “This is going to make an enormous difference to our ability to feed the world as it gets hotter and agriculture comes under increasing climatic strain.”

Today, one in five calories consumed by humans come from wheat, and every year the crop is eaten by more and more people as the world’s population continues to grow.

“Wheat has been a cornerstone of human civilization,” added Griffiths. “In regions such as Europe, north Africa, large parts of Asia, and subsequently North America, its cultivation fed great empires, from ancient Egypt’s to the growth of modern Britain.”

This wheat was derived from wild varieties that were originally domesticated and cultivated in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, 10,000 years ago. Many of these varieties and their genes have disappeared over the millennia, a process that was accelerated about a century ago as the science of plant breeding became increasingly sophisticated and varieties with properties that were then considered of no value were discarded.

“That is why the Watkins collection is so important,” said Griffiths. “It contains varieties that had been lost but which will be invaluable in creating wheat that can provide healthy yields in the harsh conditions that now threaten agriculture.”

The project’s other leader, Shifeng Cheng, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said: “We can retrace the novel, functional and beneficial diversity that were lost in modern wheats after the ‘green revolution’ in the 20th century, and have the opportunity to add them back into breeding programmes.”

Watkins realized that “genes that were then thought to be of little use and which were being deleted from strains might still have future value.”

Scientists had wanted to pinpoint and study the wheat genes in the Watkins collection after the development of large-scale DNA sequencing more than a decade ago, but faced an unusual problem. The genome of wheat is huge: it is made up of 17 billion units of DNA, compared with the 3 billion base pairs that make up the human genome.

“The wheat genome is full of ­little retro elements and that has made it more difficult and, crucially, more expensive to sequence,” said Griffiths. “However, thanks to our Chinese colleagues who carried out the detailed sequencing work, we have overcome that problem.”

Griffiths and his colleagues sent samples from the Watkins collection to Cheng and were rewarded three months later with the arrival of a suitcase crammed with hard drives. These contained a petabyte—1 million gigabytes—of data that had been decoded by the Chinese group using the Watkins collection.

Astonishingly, this data revealed that modern wheat varieties only make use of 40 percent of the genetic diversity found in the collection.

“We have found that the Watkins collection is packed full of useful variation which is simply absent in modern wheat,” said Griffiths.

These lost traits are now being tested by plant breeders with the aim of creating a host of new varieties that would have been forgotten if it had not been for the efforts of Arthur Watkins.

Arthur Watkins’ introduction to agriculture was unusual. At the age of 19, he was sent to fight in the trenches in the first world war. He survived, and for several months after the armistice he was ordered to remain in France to act as an assistant agricultural officer, tasked with helping local farmers feed the troops who were still waiting to be shipped home.

The post triggered his interest in agriculture and he applied to study it at Cambridge when he returned to Britain, said Simon Griffiths of the John Innes Centre. After graduating, Watkins—a shy, reserved academic—joined the university’s department of agriculture, where he began his life’s work: collecting wheat samples from across the planet.

“Crucially, Watkins had realized that, as we began breeding new wheat varieties, genes that were then thought to be of little use and which were being deleted from strains might still have future value,” said Griffiths.

“His thinking was incredibly ahead of its time. He realised that genetic diversity—in this case, of wheat—was being eroded and that we badly needed to halt that.

“Very few scientists were thinking of this issue in those days. Watkins was clearly thinking well ahead of his time, and we have much to be grateful for that.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A hundred years ago, the plant scientist Arthur Watkins launched a remarkable project. He began collecting samples of wheat from all over the globe, nagging consuls and business agents across the British empire and beyond to supply him with grain from local markets.

His persistence was exceptional and, a century later, it is about to reap dramatic results. A UK-Chinese collaboration has sequenced the DNA of all the 827 kinds of wheat, assembled by Watkins, that have been nurtured at the John Innes Centre near Norwich for most of the past century.

In doing so, scientists have created a genetic goldmine by pinpointing previously unknown genes that are now being used to create hardy varieties with improved yields that could help feed Earth’s swelling population.

Strains are now being developed that include wheat which is able to grow in salty soil, while researchers at Punjab Agricultural University are working to improve disease resistance from seeds that they received from the John Innes Centre. Other strains include those that would reduce the need for nitrogen fertilisers, the manufacture of which is a major source of carbon emissions.

The collection includes lost varieties that “will be invaluable in creating wheat that can provide healthy yields in the harsh conditions that now threaten agriculture.”

“Essentially we have uncovered a goldmine,” said Simon Griffiths, a geneticist at the John Innes Centre and one of the project’s leaders. “This is going to make an enormous difference to our ability to feed the world as it gets hotter and agriculture comes under increasing climatic strain.”

Today, one in five calories consumed by humans come from wheat, and every year the crop is eaten by more and more people as the world’s population continues to grow.

“Wheat has been a cornerstone of human civilization,” added Griffiths. “In regions such as Europe, north Africa, large parts of Asia, and subsequently North America, its cultivation fed great empires, from ancient Egypt’s to the growth of modern Britain.”

This wheat was derived from wild varieties that were originally domesticated and cultivated in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, 10,000 years ago. Many of these varieties and their genes have disappeared over the millennia, a process that was accelerated about a century ago as the science of plant breeding became increasingly sophisticated and varieties with properties that were then considered of no value were discarded.

“That is why the Watkins collection is so important,” said Griffiths. “It contains varieties that had been lost but which will be invaluable in creating wheat that can provide healthy yields in the harsh conditions that now threaten agriculture.”

The project’s other leader, Shifeng Cheng, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said: “We can retrace the novel, functional and beneficial diversity that were lost in modern wheats after the ‘green revolution’ in the 20th century, and have the opportunity to add them back into breeding programmes.”

Watkins realized that “genes that were then thought to be of little use and which were being deleted from strains might still have future value.”

Scientists had wanted to pinpoint and study the wheat genes in the Watkins collection after the development of large-scale DNA sequencing more than a decade ago, but faced an unusual problem. The genome of wheat is huge: it is made up of 17 billion units of DNA, compared with the 3 billion base pairs that make up the human genome.

“The wheat genome is full of ­little retro elements and that has made it more difficult and, crucially, more expensive to sequence,” said Griffiths. “However, thanks to our Chinese colleagues who carried out the detailed sequencing work, we have overcome that problem.”

Griffiths and his colleagues sent samples from the Watkins collection to Cheng and were rewarded three months later with the arrival of a suitcase crammed with hard drives. These contained a petabyte—1 million gigabytes—of data that had been decoded by the Chinese group using the Watkins collection.

Astonishingly, this data revealed that modern wheat varieties only make use of 40 percent of the genetic diversity found in the collection.

“We have found that the Watkins collection is packed full of useful variation which is simply absent in modern wheat,” said Griffiths.

These lost traits are now being tested by plant breeders with the aim of creating a host of new varieties that would have been forgotten if it had not been for the efforts of Arthur Watkins.

Arthur Watkins’ introduction to agriculture was unusual. At the age of 19, he was sent to fight in the trenches in the first world war. He survived, and for several months after the armistice he was ordered to remain in France to act as an assistant agricultural officer, tasked with helping local farmers feed the troops who were still waiting to be shipped home.

The post triggered his interest in agriculture and he applied to study it at Cambridge when he returned to Britain, said Simon Griffiths of the John Innes Centre. After graduating, Watkins—a shy, reserved academic—joined the university’s department of agriculture, where he began his life’s work: collecting wheat samples from across the planet.

“Crucially, Watkins had realized that, as we began breeding new wheat varieties, genes that were then thought to be of little use and which were being deleted from strains might still have future value,” said Griffiths.

“His thinking was incredibly ahead of its time. He realised that genetic diversity—in this case, of wheat—was being eroded and that we badly needed to halt that.

“Very few scientists were thinking of this issue in those days. Watkins was clearly thinking well ahead of his time, and we have much to be grateful for that.”