ITER: 'Where the Sun Will Be Re-Born on Earth' (ndtv.com) 89
Long-time Slashdot reader rinka shares an article about "the place where the Sun will be re-born on Earth":
The world's best scientists are trying to create a 'miniature Sun' on Earth to tap its fusion energy, costing over €20 billion... [G]lobally ITER is the most expensive science project on Earth ever to be undertaken in the 21st century. The total weight of the ITER reactor will be about 28,000 tonnes...
Being made collaboratively by USA, Russia, South Korea, China, Japan, European Union and India as equal partners or participating in this mega effort are countries that together hold 50% of the world's population accounting for about 85% of the global GDP... Dr Mark Henderson, a scientist at ITER, said, "This place to me is the coolest place on Earth, because here in the near future we will have a little Sun on Earth and it will be a 150 million degrees Celsius so it will be the hottest place on Earth, ten times hotter than our Sun...."
The project is a herculean effort and operations are expected to start by 2025. Later a full scale electricity generating unit called the DEMO reactor is scheduled to be completed by 2040... On being asked how much carbon dioxide the main culprit for global warming would be released from the ITER project Dr Luce quips "only the carbon dioxide the scientists exhale". The radioactive substances generated from reactions would be the sort that can die off in a hundred years.
Its ultimate goal is to create "an unlimited supply of clean energy."
Being made collaboratively by USA, Russia, South Korea, China, Japan, European Union and India as equal partners or participating in this mega effort are countries that together hold 50% of the world's population accounting for about 85% of the global GDP... Dr Mark Henderson, a scientist at ITER, said, "This place to me is the coolest place on Earth, because here in the near future we will have a little Sun on Earth and it will be a 150 million degrees Celsius so it will be the hottest place on Earth, ten times hotter than our Sun...."
The project is a herculean effort and operations are expected to start by 2025. Later a full scale electricity generating unit called the DEMO reactor is scheduled to be completed by 2040... On being asked how much carbon dioxide the main culprit for global warming would be released from the ITER project Dr Luce quips "only the carbon dioxide the scientists exhale". The radioactive substances generated from reactions would be the sort that can die off in a hundred years.
Its ultimate goal is to create "an unlimited supply of clean energy."
Been there, done that (Score:1)
I mean, seriously. If you want uncontrolled fusion (i.e. the Sun), that's been done before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If you want controlled fusion (with net energy output) ... how long has ITER (not to mention NIF) has been promising that?
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If you want controlled fusion (with net energy output) ... how long has ITER (not to mention NIF) has been promising that?
Back in the 80's, Princeton had a Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (PPPL). It was always just five years away of going online.
And now . . . ?
Disclaimer: I studied at Princeton, but did a BSEE.
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> Noone actually involved in the science has promised working nuclear fusion in the next five years
I'm very well acquainted with the history of fusion reactor design efforts from the 1930s (yes, the 1930s) to today. Short-term claims on the order o 5 to 10 years are common, and more common today than in the past. If you don't believe that's true, I suggest you go read Bromberg's superb history on the topic and get back to me.
Here are some recent examples:
GF: In 2013 they claimed "GF will demonstrate DD-e
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And yet, maybe they actually DID get there, but they were shut down (blocked from publishing) by governments as it might be a big problem for world economics.. Having unlimited 'clean' energy is not something that big oil companies like to hear about, not before their sources (are about to) run out. It's just like with the Tesla tower at the start of previous century, being blocked by the wealthy oil companies from ever getting up and running as it would collapse those companies almost immediately..
Money an
Re:Been there, done that (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, seriously. If you want uncontrolled fusion (i.e. the Sun), that's been done before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That's fission with fusion, as explained by the link. Don't be daft.
If you want controlled fusion (with net energy output) ... how long has ITER (not to mention NIF) has been promising that?
Nobody promised you shit. You read articles in the media and you got confused about which parts the scientists and engineers were saying, and which parts were the journalists saying, "Golly, that means blah blah blah, right?" "No" "Oh that's so cool."
What actually happens is that they announce timelines for the next stage of development that have been pretty accurate, but none of those stages are "cheap power available for sale by your local utility." Nobody ever gave a timeline for industrial builds, the scientists gave timelines for the research. It is up to engineers in industry to make it cheap, or available, or whatever. That stage hasn't even started and nobody promised you anything.
The whole point of the project is to develop the science and engineering, which all the member nations will then have access to. After this is done, then you'll get to find out from local sources what timetable they suggest, or promise, as the case may be.
Are you sure you're a nerd?
Re:Been there, done that (Score:5, Informative)
Also, the Wendelstein X7 had some pretty nice Plasma-Physics results recently. That does not mean commercial fusion in 20 years and may not even mean 50 years. But it means there is real advancement and that means it is worthwhile to continue investing.
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"But it means there is real advancement and that means it is worthwhile to continue investing."
I made a ladder that's 10 feet tall.
Then I made another that's 15 feet tall.
So I should continue investing in my Ladder To The Moon project, right?
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I think your 15 ft ladder prototype has some untapped commercial potential that you might not be considering...
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If you want controlled fusion (with net energy output) ... how long has ITER (not to mention NIF) has been promising that?
Some things take time. Sometimes more than a lifetime. That does not mean they are not worthwhile doing. It just means that people with a limited horizon fail to see why they are useful. If those people were in charge of what gets researched, we would probably still live in caves....
Hottest or coolest? (Score:5, Funny)
"The coolest place on Earth, because here in the near future we will have a little Sun on Earth and it will be a 150 million degrees Celsius so it will be the hottest place on Earth"
So, is it the coolest place or the hottest place? ;)
Is this guy a politician or a scientist?
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"The coolest place on Earth, because here in the near future we will have a little Sun on Earth and it will be a 150 million degrees Celsius so it will be the hottest place on Earth"
So, is it the coolest place or the hottest place? ;)
Is this guy a politician or a scientist?
It all really boils down to what drinks they're serving and who the DJ is... /s
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Re: Hottest or coolest? (Score:2)
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Fun little fact, fusion machines probably have the most insane thermal gradient in the universe - a few inches from liquid helium cooled magnets to a first wall 1000s of degrees (and then millions of degrees plasma).
The power of the sun, in the palm of my hand! (Score:2)
C'mon scientists, has no one seen Spiderman 2? You know where all this is going!
Fusion? Again? (Score:1, Informative)
Since there is no reliable fuel source for deuterium/tritium fusion, if this is aimed at providing an energy source, I'm afraid it was a waste of billions of dollars. There is still no source of tritium except fission reactors. And their tritium output is overwhelmed by their fission power output. It's the equivalent of burning coal to tap the smoke for for windvanes, and calling it "wind power". Hydrogen fusion is interesting physics, but it's not a workable fuel source.
If the fusion involved thorium, _per
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if this is aimed at providing an energy source, I'm afraid it was a waste of billions of dollars.
If you publish now your Nobel Prize for physics will be waiting! But only if you're correct.
If you're just a crackpot on the internet, you won't get shit.
Re:Fusion? Again? (Score:5, Informative)
Since there is no reliable fuel source for deuterium/tritium fusion ...
Yes there is.
Deuterium can be extracted cheaply from seawater for a few dollars per gram. Each gram has about 2 Gw-Hours of energy. I have a bottle of D2O. I bought it on eBay for $20. It is great for making ice cubes that sink.
Tritium can be bred from lithium using the neutrons generated by the ITER itself. Liquid lithium can be used as both a tritium source and as a heat transfer fluid. ITER uses a mixture of molten lithium and lead.
Fuel for Fusion [iter.org]
Re:Fusion? Again? (Score:4, Interesting)
ITER mixes lead with lithium because the problem is actually producing TOO MUCH tritium.
Li6 produces tritium aneutronically: Li6 + N => He4 + T
But natural lithum is 92% Li7: Li7 + N => He4 + T + N
So Li7 not only breeds tritium, but also emits another neutron, so the reaction can continue until a neutron is either absorbed by an Li6, a lead atom, or exits the reactor.
The neutron absorption is efficient enough that the outer containment shell and supporting structures can be made of of cheap steel, rather than more expensive low-neutron-cross-section materials like zirconium.
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> ITER mixes lead with lithium because the problem is actually producing TOO MUCH tritium.
Wow. That's pretty much precisely the opposite of the fact.
The lead is a neutron multiplier. That's because the neutron economy is too low to maintain breeding. Additional multipliers like Be12Ti may be required.
Here is an actual article on the topic by the National Academy. Please read it: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/bpasite/documents/webpage/bpa_187424.pdf
Here is another by the JASON's:
https://fas
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Poisonous ice cubes that sink, though the LD50 level is likely high enough that an ice cube won't kill.
https://www.thoughtco.com/can-... [thoughtco.com] claims that you can replace up to 20% of your bodies water with D2O without harmful effects and 50% is lethal, so the odd ice cube should be safe.
Re:Fusion? Again? (Score:4, Interesting)
Poisonous ice cubes that sink, though the LD50 level is likely high enough that an ice cube won't kill.
A 75 kg human has about 1.5 grams of deuterium in his body.
Since D2O costs several $s per gram, I make very small ice cubes.
If you wet a finger with D2O, and then touch a cube of "normal" ice, the ice will freeze onto your finger. This is because D2O freezes at about 4C (39F).
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The plan is of course to make the tritium by using the fusion neutrons to bombard lithium. This is exactly like the situation with thorium that is also not a nuclear fuel, but requires neutron bombardment to make it into one.
Re:Fusion? Again? (Score:5, Interesting)
Another proposal is to fill the bottom of the reactor with nuclear waste sludge from fission reactors. Then put a layer of molten lithium over that. The lithium is bombarded with neutrons from the DT reaction, and splits into He4 and tritium, while producing excess neutrons from Li7. These excess neutrons then pass into the waste, where they are absorbed by long lived isotopes (plutonium, U-233, etc.), turning them into much shorter lived isotopes. This "burns" the waste, while simultaneously producing plenty of extra heat, and even more tritium to fuel the DT reaction.
Obvious result: No more nuclear waste, plenty of helium for party balloons, and electricity too cheap to meter.
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Wonder how long the containment vessel lasts with all the neutron bombardment?
Re:Fusion? Again? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wonder how long the containment vessel lasts with all the neutron bombardment?
The "containment vessel" is nothing like a containment vessel of a fission reactor. There is no pressure, and no risk of any explosion or meltdown. Fusion reactors just don't work that way.
If you make the lithium blanket thick enough, few neutrons will reach the containment vessel.
Li6 absorbs "thermal" (slow) neutrons.
Li7 absorbs fast neutrons, but does so endothermically, and emits a thermal neutron.
So fast neutrons emitted by the reactor will most likely be absorbed by Li7 in the inner layer of the blanket, which will then emit thermal neutrons. These slow neutrons may pass deeper into the blanket, but will be preferentially absorbed by Li6, which does not reemit any neutrons. So few neutrons will exit the blanket.
The Li7 reaction was discovered accidentally, when Castle Bravo [wikipedia.org] turned out to be more than twice as powerful as expected. The designers had expected Li6 to fission into tritium, but didn't expect Li7 to fission, much less produce additional neutrons. Oops.
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On paper that's a fun exercise but it's an engineering nightmare I don't think will ever see implementation. Far better to just make fission reactors that produce far less waste.
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On review, it also has no "chain reaction" capacity. The neutrons from De/Tri fusion does not create more than one tritium atom from the lithium, so you still need an industrial scale source of fresh tritium. And it is an endothermic reaction, consuming energy that might otherwise be available for power production. It could make tritium use more efficient, but is not a net source of tritium.
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On review, it also has no "chain reaction" capacity. The neutrons from De/Tri fusion does not create more than one tritium atom from the lithium
Wrong. Li6 (8%) creates one tritium per neutron. Li7 (92%) absorbs and reemits a neutron, in a chain reaction.
so you still need an industrial scale source of fresh tritium.
Bullcrap.
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Where exactly did you get the idea that Li7 could produce neutrons effectively? Even if it generated neutrons, what you describe would absorb one neutron to generate another neutron. There is no net yield of neutrons, and it's quite useless for this purpose. In a way, I'm sorry to discredit the idea.
Also, sadly, Li7 is nearly transparent to neutrons. Even if the neutron emitting Li7 reaction were used and harvested by some means, that reaction is triggered by _protons_, not by neutrons.
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Where exactly did you get the idea that Li7 could produce neutrons effectively?
Li7 does not "produce" neutrons. But it is not a net consumer either.
There is no net yield of neutrons
Of course not. The neutrons come from the DT reaction. The purpose of the lithium is to absorb the neutrons while creating tritium. The last thing you want is for the blanket to be a net producer of neutrons.
and it's quite useless for this purpose.
Bullcrap.
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Since there is no reliable fuel source for deuterium/tritium fusion, if this is aimed at providing an energy source, I'm afraid it was a waste of billions of dollars.
Nope. It just mean you have done zero research on the topic. Deuterium/Tritium is used as a stepping stone, nothing else, because there is still not enough known about Plasma Physics. Ever heard of solving a related but easier problem first?
Re: And it will never work (Score:2)
Actually it requires an increased probability of collision between two particles so they can fuse. This can be achieved by increasing the density or the speed of the particles. Neither are dependent on either gravity or magnetism. These two forces drive the containment field for the reaction: gravity for the Sun, magnetism for the Tokamak.
What most posters seem to miss about the Tokamak in general is that the whole plasma physics and magnetism is very well known, highly detailed in models and executed on ve
Re: And it will never work (Score:2)
It's a big Tokamak reactor (Score:3, Insightful)
First experiments are scheduled to start in 2025, assuming construction is done on time. Full-blown deuterium-tritium experimentation won't happen until 2035, according to the linked Wikipedia entry. And the first actual DEMO reactor is, right now, scheduled for 2040...
I want them doing this research, and I want it to succeed... but I've been hearing about fusion energy being 15-20 years off for 50+ years now.
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I came here to say that; Nuclear fusion for power generation has been 20 years away for the past 50 years.
And I think fusion power will ALWAYS be "20 years away".
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If you get your Science info from the press, it sure has. If you talk to actual scientists, it has not.
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If you get your Science info from the press, it sure has. If you talk to actual scientists, it has not.
I attended a course at UW some 20+ years ago (it wasn't my major, but it was when UW still had nuclear engineering courses). The professor of the course, who was involved in the research, said practical tokamak-driven fusion was "probably a decade or so from being attained".
You can't just blame this one on the press.
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And if you point that out, they will hang their entire career on that "probably".
Anyways. While we wait for the promise of fusion power generation, we treat safe fission power generation like red-headed step-child of a rented mule ...
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We do not have safe fission. Its accident rate and accident costs is all out of proportion. Compared to the nuclear industry, Boeing has been producing extremely safe airplanes in the last few years, for example.
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The thing is, due to the insanity of the processes by which research grants are decided on, they often have to give such low estimates whenever they talk in public. Another field were that is happening is Quantum "computing". The actual estimates real experts will give you behind closed doors there are more like 50 years to "never", while publicly it is often more like 10-20 years, for the same reasons. The difference is that the fusion people are making far better progress and do not seem likely to hit any
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> they often have to give such low estimates whenever they talk in public
I've talked to lots of people involved in fusion research over the last 25 years, and they make the same statements in private as well. In fact, in private they will tell you this is *absolutely going to happen* but then point out aren't allowed to say that in public because they might get in trouble for seeming too sure of themselves. I'm sure, in retrospect, they see the wisdom of this.
> The difference is that the fusion people
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When I got my bachelors degree in Engineering Physics in 1979, "20 years" was a pretty common estimate. And a LOT of "actual scientists" have said the same thing in the intervening decades. Jerry Pournelle wasn't a physicist, but the consulted with many of them trying to get the science correct in his science fiction, and that was the line he always used.
I never rely on "the press" for anything that requires accuracy. If the local fishwrap were to print that the Sun would rise in the east tomorrow mor
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I came here to say that; Nuclear fusion for power generation has been 20 years away for the past 50 years.
And I think fusion power will ALWAYS be "20 years away".
The "tipping point" for climate change has been 10 years off for the last 50 years as well.
So it all equals out in the end.
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Not really as we may have passed the tipping point 40 years back, which just leaves the question of how far we'll tip.
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That reactor of yours WILL blow up. Also, harvesting its power is hard, fickle, and limited. Then, you don't get enough power even farther up in the Solar System, much less on the route to other stars. So even those staying on Earth want to have more plentiful[1], more controllable power.
[1]. The Sun has far more energy, but with anything less than a Dyson sphere, fusion wins.
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Re: It's a big Tokamak reactor (Score:2)
Wish them well but (Score:1)
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That's why I'm not really worried about all this global warming stuff. If
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Has the blindseer bitten you or what?
Insane! (Score:2)
We already have more than enough ambient energy to harvest with much less effort.
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We already have more than enough ambient energy to harvest with much less effort.
If that was true it would have been done a long time ago.
Fusion is the only long term solution, although fission would last several hundred years.
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> f that was true it would have been done a long time ago.
The startup cost is often prohibitive, and the world's population continues to grow using up available land and water for food. But for simple energy, orbiting solar mirrors are technologically feasible. Those are, indeed, "fusion powered", and could potentially harvest even more energy than Earth collects by being spread out in even more distant orbits to transfer power to other satellites or to Earth. The logical end of the approach is a Dyson S
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Even fusion is limited. It produces heat and eventually that heat will cause global warming. I'd guess that point is quite a while in the future but will eventually happen if we perfect fusion and civilization continues.
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The waste heat of civilization is extremely tiny though. We use less energy in a year than the Sun hits earth with in an hour.
But good news, we can outsource fusion! we can have it happen in a place 93 million miles away and have no additional heating of earth.
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The laws of thermodynamics are closer than you think [ucsd.edu]
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Fusion is the only long term solution...
Only the natural kind, and there's already more than we can use.
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false, high efficiency solar collections and UHVDC lines that can go half a continent or more are recent innovations.
We already have a fusion reactor in the sky, we have the means to send electricity over a thousand miles, we have storage tech. We could use fossil fuel plants to make up for dark times... or we could collect in space and beam power down with known an understood tech.
billions on something that's always "just around the corner" seems silly. we don't need clean energy in 2060 and later, we n
Outdated Roadmap (Score:5, Informative)
Later a full scale electricity generating unit called the DEMO reactor is scheduled to be completed by 2040.
No it isn't.
The contributor should consult the latest roadmap [euro-fusion.org] not one published 15 years ago (the DEMO completion date prediction is from 2004). The current roadmap has the construction of DEMO starting at some unspecified date after 2040. The roadmap also specifies that "DEMO will be operational around 20 years after high power burning plasmas are demonstrated in ITER", and THAT event is expected to occur some time after 2030. So according to current Euro-Fusion plans DEMO will not be starting until some time after 2050.
The ITER project has given up the practice of specifying target dates, and instead tends to talk about dates after which something is expected to happen.
We can have some confidence, based on all experience to date, that these dates too will slip - so DEMO operating starting about 2060 would be a plausibly optimistic guesstimate.
Reproducing the sun is easy (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason energy production via fusion on Earth is so hard is we're trying to make fusion generate energy at a rate millions if not billions of times higher than it occurs inside the sun.
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Well the Sun fuses hydrogen, something that is very hard to fuse compared to Deuterium. I doubt we'll ever succeed at fusing pure hydrogen.
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Power by Amazon (Score:2)
Vastly hotter than the sun (Score:2, Informative)
Here’s the thing... In order for fusion to be viable on earth, you need a power density and temperature that is vastly higher than the sun, by many orders of magnitude. This is why it is so hard.
The Sun has an energy density that is comparable to your average compost heap. Total energy output of the sun is about 384.6 yottawatts (3.846 x 10^1026 watts) and has a volume of roughly 1.4 x 10^1027 cubic meters. This means that on average, the sun is producing less than a watt per cubic meter. The differen
Re:Vastly hotter than the sun (Score:4, Insightful)
Deuterium+Tritium fuses much easier then hydrogen. Still hard, but much easier then what the Sun does.
radioactives.... (Score:3)
For which read: REALLY radioactive! Not like nuclear waste from a fission reactor, which produces long half-life stuff that is not terribly radioactive (which is pretty much what "long half-lfe" means - not many radioactive decays happening at any given time)...
Which is not to say that it's a bad idea. But the people who scream about long half-life radioactives being a danger should be aware that short half-life stuff is, well, MUCH more radioactive.
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The Farnsworth type fusors are a nice way to generate neutrons from fusion reactions, but so far none have gotten anywhere close to break even. Its fairly easy to make fusion - a deuterium gun at ~10s of KeV on a deuterium loaded target will generate fusion - just not more than the energy needed to accelerate the deuterons
In general fusion reactors scale better at larger sizes (example THE SUN). I haven't seen anything to suggest that electrostatic fusors can reach breakeven at a smaller size / cost than
That shit don't grow on trees (Score:3)
Meanwhile, in the "private" sector . . . (Score:2)
https://www.thedrive.com/the-w... [thedrive.com]
Lockheed announced this project five years ago, and they're apparently making progress. Not quite on their original schedule, but still.
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> Lockheed announced this project five years ago
They announced it in 2013, at which point they had already been working on it since 2010.
During that announcement, they stated they would have a test reactor in one year. It was actually completed in 2016.
Since then it has demonstrated that the system has to be about 100 times larger than the original calculated. It also will weight a minimum of 200 tons if they use magnets that don't exist yet, or 2,000 tons using existing 5T magnets.
It's not going to happ
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Actually the announcement from 2014 said that a milspec reactor would be ready in 2019 (which is more-or-less happening, or will happen next year) and that the civvie-spec reactor would be ready in 2024.
Yeah it's too big, but so what? Apparently the thing works. Boohoo for the military since their version was supposed to be compact.
Written by an american (Score:2)
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Actually the article was written by an Indian and the quote comes from the article. But I get it, you don't like "Americans" and feel inferior. Good luck with that.
Cool Machine But Solar Works (Score:2)
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> at $3.05/watt
Current pricing for utility-scale systems in the US is 80 cents a watt, not $3.
The last major European project I saw was in Spain for 65 cents.
Plot to Spider-Man 2? (Score:1)