Slashdot Mirror
Fusion Plasma Plant in The Future
NightWulf writes "The BBC reports that Europe and Japan are currently looking to host a new JET power plant. This new plant creates plasma, which is akin to creating a star on Earth. Interesting to note that 1kg of fusion fuel would produce the same amount of energy as 10,000,000kg of fossil fuels."
50-100 years is way better than tens of thousands of years, as with fission waste. That won't outlast the containers it's in.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I think you are way off base. Fusion power would not end energy companies. I doubt it would even end fossile fuel exploitation. Oil gives more bang for the buck then any other fuel source which is why we are so addicted to the damned stuff. Bonus points for the fact that it is cheap and easy to make an engine that will run on it.
Now, fusion offers a great deal of possibilities, but there are two very large problems with it even when it is 'worked out'. First, it will be expensive. It is a major task to build such a plants. Building enough to power the world would take many decades and cost far more then I imagine most nations would be willing to spend. I am not saying that it couldn't eventually be done, but don't expect it to happen over night. Further, even if the world was covered in fusion plants, that energy would not be free. You still need to pay for all the parts and labor it takes to keep such a plant going. Sure, you might cut costs on material expenses, but they would rise everywhere else. Electricty wouldn't suddenly become cheap, just abundent. Second, fusion is large. You can't throw a fusion engine in your car and electric motors just don't have the capacity of a gas engine. If electricity was free tomorrow we still wouldn't hav electric cars.
I doubt energy companies are cowering at the prospects of fusion. Even if fusion was to completely upset the need for oil and coal, there is still the fact that people need energy and in a nation like the US that energy is going to be brought by a corportation. An energy company is in a perfect position to fill that need. At worst it means they have to shift their bussiness to focus less on oil and coal and move to fussion. The world won't end for them.
The plasma does not constantly bump into the walls of the container. As some previous posters have touched on, if the plasma touches the walls of the vessel it loses so much of its power that the reaction dies.
Another problem is that if the current in the plasma passes through the walls of the vessel it creates a magnetic field around them which kicks against the plasma's own magnetic field with incredible force. This is called a disruption, and it kills the plasma. Back in the project's infancy a particularly bad disruption actually caused the entire torus to jump a clear centimetre off the floor. If that doesn't sound impressive then you need to have another look at a picture of the torus!
I had the privlidge of working at JET during the third year of my degree*, and I can say that JET has some of the coolest gear and cleverest people working there that I have ever seen.
For anyone who's wondering about the computing equipment they use: they have a lot of big Sun servers which host X sessions from Linux PCs or some Xterminal like things called Igels (they also still use some original X Terminals.. I don't know if those are still in production?) on which most development is done. They use Linux in as many places as they can, including a ~80 node analysis cluster (JET produces data at a rate of about a gigabyte a day during operations). Windows PCs are available for desktop use by those who prefer them.
* If anyone thinks my very basic description of the physics is a sign of BS, I should point out that I was there as a Software Engineering student, not a physicist.