French scientist leading nuclear fusion project dies at 72

Bernard Bigot, a French scientist leading a large worldwide effort to show that nuclear fusion can be a feasible source of energy, has actually passed away

PARIS — Bernard Bigot, a French scientist leading a large worldwide effort to show that nuclear fusion can be a feasible source of energy, has actually passed away. He was 72.

The company behind the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, stated Bigot passed away Saturday from an undefined health problem. The company’s director basic given that March 2015, Bigot was approaching the midway point of his 2nd term, due to end in 2025.

An ITER declaration explained his death as “a tragic blow to the global fusion community.”

His deputy, Eisuke Tada, will take control of management of the ITER project throughout the look for Bigot’s follower.

Unlike existing fission reactors that produce radioactive waste and often devastating crises, supporters of fusion state it provides a tidy and practically unlimited supply of energy if researchers and engineers can harness it.

ITER project members —- China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States — are developing a doughnut-shaped gadget called a tokamak in Saint-Paul-les-Durance in southern France. It is billed as the world’s biggest science project. The goal is to trap hydrogen that’s been heated up to 150 million degrees Celsius (270 million Fahrenheit) for enough time to enable atoms to fuse together.

The procedure leads to the release of big quantities of heat. While ITER won’t produce electrical energy, researchers hope it will show that such a fusion reactor can produce more energy than it takes in.

ITER is now more than 75% total and researchers intend to fire up the reactor by early 2026.