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Biggest Obstacle of Nuclear Fusion Overcome?
Yetihehe writes "Nuclear fusion could become a more viable energy solution with the discovery of way to prevent super-hot gases from causing damage within reactors. The potential solution, tested at an experimental reactor in San Diego, US, could make the next generation of fusion reactors more efficient, saving hundreds of millions of euros a year."
Hemos, Where did you get this "Biggest Obstacle" from? The researcher didn't claim it in the article, and it isn't true. IANANP, but from what I've heard, the biggest obstacle to nuclear fusion is maintaining the reaction for long periods of time, and doing so with relativly low energy input.
This is a cool development, but unless I read incorrectly it doesn't solve those problems.
Actually, it is about causing damage. The mag field does not 'leak' (implying that the magnetic field becomes somehow compromised); instead, it's overcome. The technique doesn't incerease the mag field's strength, but draws off the cause of the 'bursts'. The end result is that the fusion reactor is damaged less, loses less heat/plasma density, gets better efficiencies, and has to be shut down less often.
Thus saving millions of dollarpounds each year.
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Technically, you can fuse any element lighter then iron (so that the final product is at most iron). However, the heavier you go, the higher temperatures you need and the less efficient the process. This is because iron has the highest binding energy of any element. Past iron, you have to use fission.
Actually, it's the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor . It'll service no one with power (just science), and is being paid for by a lot of different countries.
TFA used euros because it was written from a European perspective. It's generally customary to quote price in the local currency of the audience you are writing for.
Actually, you work your way toward iron from either direction. The farther away from iron that you start, the easier it is to get a net gain in energy. Fusion is best with hydrogen and helium, and fission is best with heavy elements like uranium, plutonium, and thorium.
You can do fission with light elements (except for hydrogen-1 of course) and fusion with heavier elements, but you have to put in more energy than you get out. This is why stars die out.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Technically you can fuse iron - ask an astrophysicist for the gory details.
But it takes more energy to fuse than is released. So iron fusion is pretty much the last fusion reaction to be expected from an end-of-life reactor (of the thermostellar variety)
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_flux
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_radiation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton-proton_chain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNO_cycle
The above links, read in order, should step through nicely outlining the fusion process, and some of the major challanges that are to be overcome in making it a viable power source for use on Earth.
Today, I will have understanding of fusion. Tommorrow I will understand Subscriber trunk dialing, and then, computers. Once I have an understanding of computers, I will rule the world!
My apologies, Terry.
This is too far down for anyone to really see...pity.
Disclaimer: I am a fusion scientist.
The result mentioned in the article has been around for about a year in the fusion community. It is very good work, and opens up further areas of study. However, it is specific to a single Tokamak, and so far has not yet been repeated. Furthermore, the result has not yet been fully understood. (This is linked to it not being repeated.)
This may be sensational news, but it shouldn't be, due to claiming to solve a problem, which so far they haven't fully done. Don't take anything away from the guys who did this. Like I said, excellent work. But until the result is confirmed and understood it should stay out of mainstream media.
There are many big problems for fusion, like plasma instabilites, neo-classical tearing modes, ELMs (as mentioned), ohmic heating in transformer coils. The list goes on, it's a complex subject. Thankfully with all countries signed up, and more than enough money for ITER's budget (even if America pulls out again), the politics can be minimised and the physics can continue.
It is a common perception that early nuclear power proponents boasted of electricity from nuclear reactors becoming "too cheap to meter" in the near future. In fact, while nuclear reactors have become one of the cheapest large-scale options for base-load electricity, it was never the expectation of earlier nuclear engineers that costs would come down low enough to render metering irrelevant.
In fact, the oft-quoted prediction, "too cheap to meter", was made in 1954 by an American bureaucrat, Lewis Strauss, in a speech that very much reflects the public's post-war euphoria over nuclear technology (and technology in general), galvanized by President Eisenhower's vaunted "Atoms for Peace" program launched in December 1953. Strauss' comments predated the first nuclear power plants by three years, and included other optimistic references to wiping out world hunger and extending human life expectancy.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.