'Star In a Jar' Fusion Reactor Works, Promises Infinite Energy (space.com) 431
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: For several decades now, scientists from around the world have been pursuing a ridiculously ambitious goal: They hope to develop a nuclear fusion reactor that would generate energy in the same manner as the sun and other stars, but down here on Earth. Incorporated into terrestrial power plants, this "star in a jar" technology would essentially provide Earth with limitless clean energy, forever. And according to new reports out of Europe this week, we just took another big step toward making it happen. In a study published in the latest edition of the journal Nature Communications, researchers confirmed that Germany's Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) fusion energy device is on track and working as planned. The space-age system, known as a stellerator, generated its first batch of hydrogen plasma when it was first fired up earlier this year. The new tests basically give scientists the green light to proceed to the next stage of the process. It works like this: Unlike a traditional fission reactor, which splits atoms of heavy elements to generate energy, a fusion reactor works by fusing the nuclei of lighter atoms into heavier atoms. The process releases massive amounts of energy and produces no radioactive waste. The "fuel" used in a fusion reactor is simple hydrogen, which can be extracted from water. The W7-X device confines the plasma within magnetic fields generated by superconducting coils cooled down to near absolute zero. The plasma -- at temperatures upwards of 80 million degrees Celsius -- never comes into contact with the walls of the containment chamber. Neat trick, that. David Gates, principal research physicist for the advanced projects division of PPPL, leads the agency's collaborative efforts in regard to the W7-X project. In an email exchange from his offices at Princeton, Gates said the latest tests verify that the W7-X magnetic "cage" is working as planned. "This lays the groundwork for the exciting high-performance plasma operations expected in the near future," Gates said.
Reads Like An Ad (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Reads Like An Ad (Score:5, Informative)
Of course saying unlimited or infinite energy are just hyperbole, though it would have a lot of advantages over normal power generation methods.
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This particular fusion system is a stellerator, a type that is currently looking to be the best of our experimental fusion systems for several reasons, not the least of which is that it doesn't have the same leakage and containment vessel damage, a huge problem with tokamaks.
I'm in my 50s, and I've been hearing that practical fusion generators were only 10-15 years off since I was a little nerdling. Then in college we were hearing how tokamaks were likely to solve all the problems inherent with stellarator designs. Now we're back to the future, I guess.
Fusion reactors would be great; but It sure doesn't seem like they've made much real progress at all over the past several decades.
Re:Reads Like An Ad (Score:5, Insightful)
Fusion reactors would be great; but It sure doesn't seem like they've made much real progress at all over the past several decades.
Identifying ways things don't work is still progress when it comes to research. Saying that not much real progress has been made just means you're not actually paying attention to it in anything other than some occasional Slashdot post or the first paragraph of a newspaper article.
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Indeed. Here's my prediction for the future: it won't work, until it does.
And didn't Edison quip something about, I just discovered 10,000 ways not to invent the electric light bulb...
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Indeed. Here's my prediction for the future: it won't work, until it does.
And didn't Edison quip something about, I just discovered 10,000 ways not to invent the electric light bulb...
And I believe Tesla replied, "If Edison had thought more clearly, he wouldn't have had to work so hard."
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You can't really say it never will work as we don't know enough about it yet. In any case though it will most likely never work this century. Maybe in the 22nd.
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Would be better to focus on other technology for terrestrial power generation
This electricity thing will never work. Would be better to focus on other technology to improve lanterns.
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You got that backwards. Fusions bombs use a fission trigger which generates enough neutrons to ignite the D-T. Typically most of the energy in a fusion bomb, at least in a Teller-Ulam design, comes from fusion. Unless the design is flawed somehow.
There are other ways to generate the neutrons to ignite the D-T. The ignition of the fuel has never feel the problem, the problem is how to contain the burning plasma at enough density in a steady state configuration.
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Fusion is still farther away than 10-15 years, probably further than 50.
The point and what matters here is that we are seeing progress now (with concepts that date back to the 50s).
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Its about the ability to read, study and form your own opinions based on reason.
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It sure doesn't seem like they've made much real progress at all over the past several decades.
So .... basically you haven't been paying attention.
Re:Reads Like An Ad (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in my 50s, and I've been hearing that practical fusion generators were only 10-15 years off since I was a little nerdling
There was an article a few years back that put these in perspective. They pointed out that N years in the future really means $M dollars more spending in the future and that these predictions have been quite consistent: if we'd kept funding at the anticipated rate in the '60s, we might have working fusion already.
Re: Reads Like An Ad (Score:4, Insightful)
We *already* have the tech to flawlessly replace CRTs with no compromises besides sacrificing flatness & light weight: bright OLED light engines projecting onto much larger screens. Think: DLP or LCoS-type RPTVs, but with a 10-20" OLED projection source instead of a 2" chip that either reflects or filters light from a bright halogen bulb.
There's also FED, which literally EVERYONE circa 1995 expected to be the next core display technology (basically, take a sheet of r/g/b phosphor-coated glass, then put a solid-state electron emitter behind each subpixel (so that instead of having one powerful electron beam that sequentially refreshes row by row, column by column, you have a few MILLION weak (but individually-addressable & continuous) electron beams. FED's main drawback is energy use... it draws as much power as a comparable CRT, so it's unsuitable for portable devices.
LCDs are truly a technology that *nobody* seriously expected to become dominant for anything besides laptop displays, precisely because they suck so badly at things that CRTs (and 3-laser DLP, and FED, and projected OLED) can all do well, at the trade-off of maybe a foot or two in depth, or a few hundred watts of power draw.
Personally, I'm keeping my kick-ass 3-laser DLP TV until 120fps finally kills it (even if it can't do "4k", a suitable scaler allows 3840x2160 to be scaled down to high-bandwidth uncompressed 1920x1080 that will look 98% as good as 'true' 4k, because TODAY's "1080i" is now compresed to the point where it's achieving less than HALF its theoretical potential. Just compare the picture quality you get from a 20 year old CRT displaying 720p60 content through a scaler via s-video to the PQ that SAME TV used to have with broadcast TV. The difference? 20 years ago, it was displaying a video source with ~3-5MHz bandwidth. Now, it's scaling a video source with 45MHz bandwidth (720p60) down to maxed-out s-video's ~12MHz of bandwidth (~16MHz, if you hacked the tuner to take component video 480i60). Basically, compressed "4k" TV ends up having as much/little REAL detail & PQ as fully maxed-out balls-to-the-wall ~50mbps 1080i60 does (BROADCAST 1080i60 is limited to 20mbps, but HDMI 2.0 can deliver raw 4:4:4 RGB at more than twice that rate without breaking a sweat.
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Is this an advertisement to invest in yet another unlimited free energy scam? Wake me up when some progress occurs.
Yes it is an advertisement, you can buy one of these off the shelf next week.
And Yes it is a scam. because all prestigious research institutes do nothing but produce free energy scams.
And Yes confirmation that the physical device matches theoretical modelling is not "progress" either.
Maybe we should do an academic study on how using the word fusion makes people's brains devolve to a state of uneducated retardedness.
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Is this an advertisement to invest in yet another unlimited free energy scam? Wake me up when some progress occurs.
Unlimited energy sources imply that current sources of energy would be made irrelevant. While you're jumping up and down over the concept of this actually working, I'll still be asleep waiting for a greedy capitalistic society to accept it, for THAT is the real challenge we face with any technology like this.
Greed has withstood the sands of time, along with all of the pain and suffering it has brought to humanity. That is a disease that is not easily cured.
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I think you misunderstand the concept of "greed". First, it is a concept, not an ontological entity. Second, as a concept dreamt up by humans, it served some purpose in how we model the world around us and our relationship to others. Third, those models may have been useful 4000 years ago, and 2000, and maybe 200 years ago, but one day they will no longer be useful. Fourth, just consider that the average wealth and amenities available to you today, would only be available to kings in previous generations. C
Re: Reads Like An Ad (Score:5, Funny)
Any sufficiently tabloid journalism is indistinguishable from advertising
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And does nothing to dispel the belief that fusion is fifty years in the future. And it has been fifty years in the future for the last fifty years. Given the recent success of renewables and advancing battery and storage technology, fusion is unlikely to ever see the light of day. The funding will soon be diverted into military spending for the coming global war between populist fascist states in any case. Who needs science and experts when there is a war against immigrants and foreigners to be fought.
Not Infinite but Still Useful (Score:5, Interesting)
it has been fifty years in the future for the last fifty years. Given the recent success of renewables and advancing battery and storage technology, fusion is unlikely to ever see the light of day.
Actually it has been 50 years in the future for more like the past 70 years. However while fusion power is nowhere close to infinite and, given the complexity of the reactor unlikely to be cheap, it would still be very worthwhile to have. Renewable energy sources have limited capacities and require a lot of area which means they have a limited ability to fill our energy needs so while their capacity can certainly be increased going all renewable is unlikely any time soon.
This may not be much of an issue in North America but in places like Europe finding enough area for all the solar, wind and wave power needed is unlikely to happen because people do not want to live next to a wind turbine or even in sight of one. Building wave power schemes has similar issues as people complain about the environmental impact. Battery technology is also a very long way from being able to cope with the massive storage requirements to counter the variability which would then require enormous numbers of pumped storage schemes. So having a pollution free alternative to coal and gas will still be extremely useful.
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Given what? "Renewables" do not provide base load.
The "battery advances" are exciting for cars, but not for letting a 3 GW wind farm act like a 1 GW base-load power plant. That would take a million PowerWalls. literally.
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Given what? "Renewables" do not provide base load.
The "battery advances" are exciting for cars, but not for letting a 3 GW wind farm act like a 1 GW base-load power plant. That would take a million PowerWalls. literally.
Yeah and that's not eve the big problem. The big problem is getting a solar farm on high (or low) latitudes to deliver power in late winter. Forget about batteries. We're going to need something like a huge underground lake filled with diesel. One of those for each solar farm.
Intermittent power sources really call for a global electric grid with near-zero power loss. Anything short of that will probably never be good enough to completely replace fossil and nuclear power at high latitudes.
It's 2016. Where is
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pump water into reservoirs. energy stored. (half joking)
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Energy storage is making progress, though. It doesn't really matter the form it takes: chemical, thermal, kinetic, hydrogen, whatever: as long as progress keeps being made in energy storage, "renewables" (i.e., easy ways to tap fusion power) will eventually be practical for base load. Eventually.
Today, however, solar + natural gas is quite practical, efficient, and clean, but it's exactly the wrong politics, just like modern fission. You can tell people don't really care about global warming, as ideologi
Re:Reads Like An Ad (Score:5, Funny)
"fusion is unlikely to ever see the light of day."
Was that a pun?
Re:Reads Like An Ad (Score:5, Informative)
Summary dumbed down to the level needed for a six year old to understand it.
It's written as if people here have never heard of fusion before.
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Windscale in a milk pail. Chernobble in a bottle.
Should have a Deep Impact.... (Score:5, Interesting)
given that among the authors of the Nature paper are R. C. Wolf and C. Biedermann. This Wolf-Biedermann project will of course produce high energy neutrons which must leave magnetic confinement in order to provide useful energy. When these neurtons strike metallic shielding material in the walls of the "stellerator" they generate radioactive elements via the process called neutron activation. And these radioactive elements release gamma rays, alpha and beta particles, x-rays and other components collectively referred to as radioactive waste. So when this ad from the 1950s claims there will be no radioactive waste, it is not telling the truth.
Re:Should have a Deep Impact.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Anything generating large amounts of high-energy neutrons is going to be a pain in the ass to keep clean and non-toxic. And, while research is always its own reward, any energy source that's also a neutron source should be put on the shelf until/if we max out renewables.
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That's an overbroad statement, but it's true that this is being well oversold as a "clean energy source". But if it can be made to work properly there are several environments where it would be the best choice. The questions are things like "How much maintenance would it require?", "How self-contained can it be made?", "How small/light/cheap can it be made?" Etc.
This should produce a lot less waste than a fission reactor (though there are interesting claims being made about the molten salt reactors) and
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I think you are correct. Especially since this is more like a warehouse than a jar.
Top 3 promising fusion concepts: (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Tokamak -- has never underperformed models
2. Stellarator -- appears like it will work.
3. MagLIF -- Experiments are following model predictions.
The reason why magnetic fusion doesn't work yet is because of the budget needed to build a large enough reactor.
The reason laser fusion hasn't worked is because the models have been failing. Basically using a neodymium laser works in computer modeling but in real life it sucks. In fact a laser beam itself is too coherent.
Anyway, we still have a track to fusion it is X number of years away because ITER was supposed to be built in 1984 and now it's scheduled for 2035 because of budget reasons. Tokamak has always worked as predicted or better.
MagLIF is probably the easiest and cheapest route to fusion. Lockheed seems to have a good approach too.
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Focus fusion and Polywell are also promising, but underfunded.
Re:Top 3 promising fusion concepts: (Score:5, Informative)
Well, here is a quick calculation (I hope I'm not off too far). The tritium is bred from lithium, so essentially free. Deuterium is about $7/g and that yields about 100 MWh in fusion energy. To get the same amount of energy out of burning coal, you need about 50 tons, or about $2500 worth of coal.
To be clear for those not familiar with concept (Score:3, Informative)
Re: To be clear for those not familiar with concep (Score:3)
I'm not sure about how expansive it is - it should be similar to ordinary hydrogen gas. But it's expensive to produce tritium and that's a different matter.
But all we talk about is matter.
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Anyway: you get a much quicker return on your money by invading a country like Iraq than you do investing in longer term clean energy.
Yeah, I'm pissed off! Where's all the riches and oil we were supposed to get from Iraq after we invaded? The US got snookered on that deal. We went and invaded Iraq and everything, and all we got was a deficit increase!
Or...maybe you're full of shit and spouting lies like a typical Leftist useful-idiot that is only capable of repeating the propaganda fed to you because you're too stupid or lazy to search out the truth yourself, or just so filled with hate and so caught up in your political/ideological pissi
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Yeah, I'm pissed off! Where's all the riches and oil we were supposed to get from Iraq after we invaded? The US got snookered on that deal. We went and invaded Iraq and everything, and all we got was a deficit increase!
If a company gets $1 when the taxpayers lose $1000, it's still pure profit.
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If a company gets $1 when the taxpayers lose $1000, it's still pure profit.
By that standard, every war by every nation that went to war would qualify. What makes the US the exception to be dumped on? What about Russia's invasions of Ukraine and Crimea?
Such fickle and flexible 'standards'!
Strat
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Dude, you are just a guitarist who is full of shit himself.
Playing guitar is a hobby. I have degrees in several fields and experience in many more. Everything from designing missile and torpedo navigation/targeting systems to working on avionics and telemetry systems in the Enterprise space shuttle that were later incorporated into the working space shuttles.
As far as GWB, he's a Progressive and I despise much of what he did. You are correct he was a crony-capitalist just like every POTUS we've had for decades.
The rest of your post is nonsense and/or irrelevant, as
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Saw the first talk, and its quite convincing.
The idea is that new superconductors can have much higher field strengths and this in turn allows for smaller reactors, which are cheaper. I think they estimate ARC which should be able to generate net plus power to cost around $5 billion, and SPARC around a few hundred million.
modern journalism (Score:5, Informative)
Article says "Topology of magnetic field confirmed."
they still haven't powered the thing up. they still don't know if it will work. headlines like this make me want to slap the writer across the face with a bowling ball in a string bag until they stop lying. and then a few more times just to make sure the lesson sticks.
Re:modern journalism (Score:5, Informative)
Re:modern journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
The headline is misleading crap and the summary is embarrassing puff piece for dummies, who apparently are not expected to know what nuclear fusion is. (Hmm, is there anybody reading this site who doesn't know that? If so, you need to go back to your fake Facebook news, Zuck is missing you.)
The project is real enough and it's exciting, as in, it's a fusion design concept that has not yet hit the wall. As far as I can tell, the Wendelstein 7-X is not expected to achieve ignition, much less energy break-even or commercial viability, rather it is intended to demonstrate that a plasma can be sustained over a long period (30 minutes) above ignition temperature (somewhere around 100 million degrees). That's exciting. However, there is no particular new news about this. Wikipedia lists a timeline item of Hydrogen plasma at 80 million degrees for 0.25s. [wikipedia.org] As far as I can tell, the device is currently all apart, being upgraded in advance of a new series of tests that should achieve that, following successful plasma confinement tests early this year. That's all we know. No new news... probably no new news until sometime in the new year. More or less on track, it would seem. Given the sad history of over promising and under delivering in the fusion sector, it is understandable and laudable that the we aren't seeing a lot of breathless predictions from the project. Assuming that Wendelstein 7-X proves something about practicality of the stellarator approach, I assume the next step would be funding for a fancier one. Eventually, the might prove that ITER should be a stellarator and not a tokamak. Who knows. It does not feel like free energy for everyone in the immediate future, but it does feel like progress.
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Lots of ITER advances are as important for stellerators or other approaches as they are for tokamaks: neutral beam injectors (essential for open plasma trap systems), RF plasma heating (essential for stellerators), all the material science required to deal with tremendous heat flow with high neutron fluxes,
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OK, just tell them afterwards that you did it because you love them.
Re: modern journalism (Score:2)
And it's a government issue.
Stellerator (Score:5, Interesting)
The key part is omitted, this is a new version (of an old idea) of a field arrangement that is believed to confine the plasma better:
"The stellarator is different from the other toroidal magnetic surface concepts in that both the toroidal and the poloidal field components—which together create the magnetic surface topology—are created from currents in external coils. In the tokamak and the reversed-field pinch2, a strong toroidal current driven within the plasma is needed to generate the poloidal magnetic-field component. The stellarator’s lack of a strong current parallel to the magnetic field greatly reduces macroscopic plasma instabilities, and it eliminates the need for steady-state current drive. This makes it a more stable configuration, capable of steady-state operation. These are important advantages for a power plant....The stellarator was invented by Lyman Spitzer in the 1950s (ref. 3). So why did it fall behind? And why do some believe that it is about to have a comeback?"
Re:Stellerator (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, design of stellarator is too complicated for human mind. Proper positioning of magnetic coils has to be simulated on a supercomputer. Only the recent advancements in computer technology allowed to make stellarators more efficient than tokamaks.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/bizarre-reactor-might-save-nuclear-fusion
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Probably the EXACT same reason why the LFTR nuclear reactor fell behind... Because they cant be used to make bombs. Seriously. That's it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So sick of the Fusion Scams (Score:2, Insightful)
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No no no, i wanna hear more about this tomahawk fusion, sounds way cooler. 10/10 would pledge its Kickstart!
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No no no, i wanna hear more about this tomahawk fusion, sounds way cooler.
Actually, boomerang fusion is more fun and a hoot and a half for the whole family.
Just remember to "Duck and Cover" after you toss it.
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I couldn't stop watching. I want those 4 minutes of my life back...
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It sounds dumbed down because even here it is difficult to underestimate the technical background of the readers - when a space story comes up most seem to think in terms or orbits as fixed one dimensional circles and anything about electricity generation degenerates into a grade scho
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Can we keep this crap off slashdot?
Not until we all agree on 1) How Trump is going to use this invention and 2) How, if discovered earlier, it could have changed the outcome of this election.
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That's no longer the case. Increases in high-temperature high field superconductors have reduced the size necessary dramatically.
Here's a (refreshingly not dumbed down) talk by the head of MIT's Nuclear Science & Engineering department that discusses this in some detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Pardon me but what the actual fuck is "mansplaining?"
lmgtfy [lmgtfy.com]
Re:So sick of the Fusion Scams (Score:4, Informative)
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A misandric definition of being condescending recently created by the feminist community.
And yes, if a woman does the same thing, it's still called mansplaining because of internalized misogyny due to toxic masculinity.
sorry, it's not that simple (Score:2)
Reliable fusion power would be great. But it's not actually that different from fission power: it still produces lots of radioactive waste.
Re:sorry, it's not that simple (Score:5, Informative)
it still produces lots of radioactive waste.
Fusion produces less waste than fission, and it is shorter lived. But it doesn't help with the political problems. The Greenies and NIMBYs are going to oppose fusion just like they oppose fission.
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The Greenies and NIMBYs are going to oppose fusion just like they oppose fission.
Not quite true. They don't all oppose fission out of hand. For a take on nuclear from one of the UK's more renowned green journalists, George Monbiot, see http://www.monbiot.com/category/nuclear/ [monbiot.com]
Re:sorry, it's not that simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Greenie here. We need fusion and should develop it. What I object to is it being used as an excuse to delay transitioning to clean energy. Eventually it will work and be great for special applications like spacecraft and some kind of role on the electrical grid, but realistically even if we had a working design today most of the world wouldn't be able to build and operate it, not to mention the yet to be determined cost.
There are similar safety issues to fission, mostly to do with managing and storing waste, but they are lessened by the fact that you don't need a limitless supply of water and can thus build the plant in a safer location. Still needs massive regulation and oversight of course.
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> Fusion produces less waste than fission
The only currently available large scale source of tritium for D-T fusion reactors is fission power plants, so there is a very large problem with using fusion energy to reduce the number of fission plants.
Is that anything like... (Score:2)
Star Trek Warp Reactors here we come (Score:2)
WAIT let me guess (Score:2, Funny)
Lemme guess- this fusion reactor is just 20 years from opening, right?
Re:WAIT let me guess (Score:5, Funny)
Lemme guess- this fusion reactor is just 20 years from opening, right?
No, that was 20 years ago. Now it's just 20 years from opening.
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50 years?
Let's assume they have the science-scale reactor actually working and can run the thing for a few hours at a time at a net-positive power output. They've reached the stage where it seems well understood and demonstrate the technology actually works and they're ready to build a demonstration plant capable of feeding the grid with 100 megawatts.
Figure, what, 10 years for funding, design, construction and then another 5-10 years of operation and the inevitable debugging of minor issues associated wit
Re:WAIT let me guess (Score:5, Informative)
Fusion never!
Fusion funding plot:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png [wikimedia.org]
headline (Score:2)
'Star In a Jar' Fusion Reactor Works, Promises Infinite Energy
I thought the story was going to be that a company named Infinite Energy was pushing a snake-oil product called Star in a Jar.
Magnetic bullet? (Score:2)
How big is the containment vessel? How much energy are we talking about in that space? What would happen if you fired a magnetic bullet at it? What would happen in a catastrophic failure?
Re:Magnetic bullet? (Score:5, Informative)
The small amount of plasma is confined using magnetic forces.
If they lose containment, the pressure and temperature on the plasma reduce significantly and the reaction no longer takes place. There is no runaway scenario AFAIK.
I have been down the hall from a tokamak when it is firing. I have also walked next to a tokamak when it is off. I have crawled through stellarator rings. These things are not scary, they are impressive.
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What would happen if you fired a magnetic bullet at it?
Plant security would return fire, killing you instantly.
Old news (Score:2, Insightful)
The technology has been workable since the 1960s, but big oil ,.&*(
no carrier
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You should be blaming 'big coal.'
That should be "King Coal".
I will hazard a guess (Score:2)
No it doesn't (Score:2)
If the makers really were promising infinite energy, I think the rest of their math woudl need to be looked at again.
It works* (Score:2)
* - For some definition of works.
All they've done is create the plasma. All that's left is the fusion part. Just the easy bit left I'm sure they're saying. /s
Deiterium-Tritisum Fusion no good for power (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm afraid that this design, like nearly all modern fusion designs, relies on deuterium-tritium fusion. Both are awkward, expensive, and even dangerous to produce and refine. Tritium, in particular has a quite short half-life and is best refined from nuclear waste at fission plants. If you are already producing enough tritium to run fusion reactors, you already have more than enough fission plants to provide far more and far more reliable energy. There are numerous old papers laying out the difficulties, su
By any other name (Score:2)
Re: Not gonna happen (Score:2)
Uh, do you realize it takes years to build a stellarator? Besides, who do you think will own the stellarators if now the oil companies? They have the capital.
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In Germany? The power companies.
In other countries? Perhaps the state? Not every nation is paranoid about the state running something, I have heard some states even run navies and airforces etc.
Re: Not gonna happen (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Not gonna happen (Score:2)
Big Oil is not investing in solar power, wind turbines or storage technology which will be the choice of alternative energy for now. Why should they invest in fusion?
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Why should a capitalist corporation bother investing in developing fusion when governments are doing the spending for them? Since they have the politicians in their back pockets they will have no difficulty getting access to the technology for free if it ever succeeds. Big Oil is just investment capital looking for an investment, research is what the public pay for with their taxes.
At least $50 billion invested by oil companies (Score:4, Informative)
The large oil companies have at least $50 billion invested in renewable energy. Google it.
You mentioned storage technology and wind. Here's example news from just one week last year. Total SA, the French oil supermajor, spent $1.1 billion to buy the battery maker Saft Groupe SA, complementing its 2011 purchase of a majority stake in the solar-panel maker SunPower Corp on a Monday. The next day, Canadian pipeline company Enbridge Inc. it would pay $218 million for stakes in offshore wind farms as it attempts to double its low-carbon generating capacity.
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The oil companies and oil producing nations dont care about things like this because it doesn't hurt them. This project (or any other project that changes how electricity is generated) has a near-zero impact on the demand for oil for use as a fuel.
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Wouldn't it be as simple as the containing vessel heating up, and you pump water along it? I mean, the plasma inside can be millions of degrees, and that would probably radiate to heat up the vessel as well when it starts producing energy.
A cubic millimeter of superhot plasma is not gonna heat up the entire containment vessel to melting point, but it might heat it up to say a nice comfortable 500 degrees orso...
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Yea; a lot wrong about this.
There is a lot of really interesting research in this field. The real headline I hope to read one day, hopefully not too far into the distant future, is one that states scientists have found a way to hold the plasma for over an hour.
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Yeah like irradiating giant magnets that are (a) hard to procure to begin with (b) inevitably very difficult to simply "get rid of".
I thought that was kind of the reason fusion never got off the ground in the first place, because none of the scientists or engineers who are so avid about it can state how, exactly, they are going to deal with this giant, irradiated magnets issue.
Re: (Score:2)
Neutron flux can and does make stuff radioactive, and deuterium-tritium fusion releases one neutron in addition to the helium nucleus.
Re: (Score:2)
"Gamma radiation does not make things radioactive"
Sorry, yes it does [wikipedia.org].
Whiskey in a jar, always (Score:2)
Why so negative? All those negative vibes is killing our mood.