Allergy Warning: The ITER Fusion Facility Contains Coconuts

It’ll be a while before the first commercially viable fusion facility, ITER in France, is powered up. But before that can even ever happen, there’s a need for a massive amount of coconut-shell charcoal which’ll absorb byproducts of thermonuclear reactions.

Yes, coconut-shell charcoal plays a key role in a facility which is estimated to turn into a $US10 billion project because for some weird reason the stuff acts like an “environmental sponge” and sucks up helium and hydrogen byproducts like nothing else. Experiments with the Tokamak reactor which is the heart of the ITER facility won’t even start until 2018, but I’m already getting concerned about what’s going to happen to the world supply of coconuts now. [H+ Magazine via Slashdot]