How To Line a Thermonuclear Reactor

sciencehabit writes "One of the biggest question marks hanging over the ITER fusion reactor project — a giant international collaboration currently under construction in France — is over what material to use for coating its interior wall. After all, the reactor has to withstand temperatures of 100,000C and an intense particle bombardment. Researchers have now answered that question by refitting the current world's largest fusion device, the Joint European Torus (JET) near Oxford, U.K., with a lining akin to the one planned for ITER. JET's new 'ITER-like wall,' a combination of tungsten and beryllium, is eroding more slowly (PDF) and retaining less of the fuel than the lining used on earlier fusion reactors, the team reports."

Comments

Solar

[Bananatree3]

Solar is orders of magnitude simpler in technological complexity, but economic return on solar is just starting to happen. Not because of the technology, simply because population is growing and the cheaper black shit is running out.

Same thing with Fusion. Technologically, we have enough engineers and scientists in the world to make it a world-scale Apollo type endeavour and get Fusion to market by 2020-2030.... if we wanted to. But honestly, the economy doesn't want to. Not until it runs out of whatever is cheaper.

Re:Solar

[doublebackslash]

Bananatree3 likely wasn't being ignorant, but rather stating the situation simply. The economics are driven by... economics. Just because they know where more is and are getting at it faster does not mean that it is the cheap stuff that used to spring out of the ground and soak the plains of Texas and Texans alike. This oil is deeper, dirtier, and more spread out.

We are really good at getting at oil, because we need it for every piece of modern life, or at least it is the only feasible way to do it. So we get the oil, however we can.

It would have been more accurate to say, "the CHEAP shit is running out". Other than that I think it is a fine comment.

Re:Solar

[Bananatree3]

You're missing the point. I was really pointing at all Fossil Fuels too.

We'll switch over to alternative fuels long before we run out of Fossil Fuels, simply because they'll be cheaper to produce. A gallon of bio-diesel be cheaper per gallon than petrol diesel at some point, Solar will be cheaper per KWh than burning coal at some point. When that happens, the entire economy will flock over to these alternatives because of price benefits. There will probably be some economic swings as oil/gas/coal producers try to keep competitive, but they're prices will eventually be too high to compete against alternatives.

It's classic supply and demand. When exponential demand meets a finite resource, prices go up. All the alternative fuels are also finite (only so much KWh of sun can be extracted, for example) but they are also renewable. Fossil fuels don't.

Re:Solar

[bmo]

forbid some rich dude has see an oil platform...

Fucking this. God forbid they see a fucking windmill. I live here in the Northeast and the fucking Cape Wind project should have been finished 5 years ago (I may be exaggerating) but for the fucking douchebags on Nantucket being butthurt seeing windmills on the horizon TEN FUCKING MILES AWAY.

We could have a combination of wind, solar, tide, and nuclear weaning our asses off of the middle-eastern oil, but no, NIMBYism abounds. So we continue to get our asses mired in the middle east, where politics is not just a social structure, but a full contact sport with no rules and every day being a grudge match over slights done 1500 years ago.

We're fucking masochists wanting to be a part of that. We must be. No other explanation make sense.

--
BMO

THORIUM

[sanman2]

Thorium is better, it's clearly doable, much safer, and it's incredibly abundant.

Re:Fraudsters

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not supposed to work economically, experiments are like that.
Troll harder next time.