From your article it's more: "Okay, so ITER will have delivered in that full demonstration that we could have okay 500 Megawatt coming out of the 50 Megawatt we will put in."
That's 50 MW going into the plasma. But they have to draw 440MW from the grid to deliver this power to dump those 50 MW into the plasma (lasers are extremely wasteful).
Also note, the 500MW are the power of the plasma - in the best case scenario, maybe 50% of that could be converted into electrical energy, the rest will be lost as heat.
So grid-to-grid, they will be taking out 440MW of power and putting back in 250MW. Except that is useless, so they didn't even bother with a turbine the full 500MW of plasma power will have to be vented as heat in ITER itself (DEMO will take over, and aims to deliver net power generation ~20 years after ITER is successful).
simiones|4 years ago
Also note, the 500MW are the power of the plasma - in the best case scenario, maybe 50% of that could be converted into electrical energy, the rest will be lost as heat.
So grid-to-grid, they will be taking out 440MW of power and putting back in 250MW. Except that is useless, so they didn't even bother with a turbine the full 500MW of plasma power will have to be vented as heat in ITER itself (DEMO will take over, and aims to deliver net power generation ~20 years after ITER is successful).
leephillips|4 years ago