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Princeton Nuclear Fusion Reactor Will Run Again
mdsolar writes with good news for the National Spherical Torus Experiment. Tucked away from major roadways and nestled amid more than 80 acres of forest sits a massive warehouse-like building where inside, a device that can produce temperatures hotter than the sun has sat cold and quiet for more than two years. But the wait is almost over for the nuclear fusion reactor to get back up and running at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. "We're very excited and we're all anxious to turn that machine back on," said Adam Cohen, deputy director for operations at PPPL. The National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) has been shut down since 2012 as it underwent a $94 million upgrade that will make it what officials say will be the most powerful fusion facility of its kind in the world. It is expected to be ready for operations in late winter or early spring, Cohen said.
Spherical Torus? Is that some sort of shape that has 4 or more (spatial) dimensions?
Public cynicism about fusion seems to have peaked at almost exactly the same time as there are a lot of new ideas and experiments ready to go.
Even the needlessly big, expensive NIF has hit some amazing recent roadmarks recently(scientific net positive), while at the same time their funding is being slashed. Lots of new clever experiments seem to be promising(like Larwenceville plasma physics' Focus Fusion record heat density), in an era where no one in policy positions seems interested in chasing the tech.
I'm glad Princeton is getting back in the game, but everything I hear says there won't be enough funding to actually get the staffing they need.
FRIST POST!!!
"Princeton Nuclear Fusion Reactor Will Run Again"
Not over-unity it wont.
I visited these folks when they had an open house a few years ago.
It isn't too often you can visit a place that's working on fusion reactors.
There's nothing anti-nuclear about reporting positive events in fusion development. I don't care how much bias you're used to seeing, there's no point in screaming "bias" when bias is clearly not present.
I think you forgot to change accounts before posting.
Oh, I'm so damned slow. I didn't catch that.
With that critical piece of information, I think this is snark directed at his detractors.
Of course it makes no sense!
Why would a nice, stable form of baseline power with a compact, energy-dense fuel supply interest anyone? Amiright?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
There was a good bit of debate among nuclear physicists around the time of the oil crisis on how to best accomplish practical fusion. A Manhattan Project or Apollo Program type approach seemed wasteful given the large available coal resource and it was pretty clear that the problem was bigger than either of those to examples. So, a long term program timed to pay off when the coal ran out was adopted. That decision now frames how many PhD's are produced each year in related fields and how we intersect with the international research community etc.... But, we are probably getting the most bang for our research buck using this moderate approach.
Global warming was not a concern at that time. Fortunately though, other smaller research efforts initiated at that time have delivered sooner and those can provide a solution to end carbon dioxide emissions.
It's the other kind of anti-technology post, the kind that goes "Let's stop and wait for $DISTANT_TECHNOLOGY, for it will be so much safer and cleaner than the known-quantity reactor types we have today." Of course, when the new tech does reach break-even and plans are drawn up to build, the same people will pop up start regaling us with 'unexpected problems' pulled out of their own colons. Each one will be cited as a reason for stopping development and construction so we can 'do more studies'.
Folks, don't forget last week, when the same effect arose in discussion of a new California solar plant.
Instability leading to huge accidents, no solution for the waste, weapons proliferation, too expensive, fuel source depleting....
So, you agree that fission is unsafe. I wonder if their are alternatives available today that are replacing it? http://will.illinois.edu/nfs/R...
Actually, the fuel source could be expanding. One of the "neat" things about fission is breeder reactors. It's part of the concern with the status quo, because most older reactors are no good for expanding our fuel supply.
Nope, you busted yourself as a multi-account troll.
multi-account?
What does a redundant mod on a recursive post mean?
More expensive, worse for proliferation and even less stable....
Proper use of terminology is important in science and engineering.
When we get to any actual science or engineering then I will pretend to care. Until then it really is not important in a forum like slashdot to anyone but a few overly pedantic people who don't know when to pick their battles. Just because people here generally care about science and engineering doesn't mean we can't deal with a little obvious imprecision in a description of a shape. No one will be negatively affected by the fact that it isn't truly a torus and most of us are well aware that it isn't actually a torus by the proper defintion. It's like pointing out that the Saint Louis Arch is actually a catenary instead of a parabola as is commonly assumed. Interesting but ultimately not genuinely important 99.999999999% of the time.
Dick Feynman (1918-1988) says w00t.
Of course, we need to fund more oil power. Don't you think the fossil fuels industry has people working around the clock to discredit and defund this. I would guess even some of the skeptical AC comments on this article are coming from the fossil fuel industry.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
The spherical approach seemed like a great idea until they actually built them. Now it's pretty clear the economics are no better than the conventional MFP approaches. See the Disadvantages of this article, especially the first two items listed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_tokamak
I was going to mod you up for this but I thought it might undermine the logical structure of reality.
It means we don't like you. Hadn't you realised?
I'm almost surprised that the first clients of it weren't porn movie maker.
(I mean they've already done scene in the russian equivalent of the vomit comet, and (un-successfully) attempted have Virgin Galactic allow them to film a porn. A fusion factory set isn't far-fetched).
I can tell I make you cowardly....
Fucking moron
No, any more than I will bother reading that sleeping pill you referenced from - I kid you not - the Institute for Energy and Environment at the Vermont Law School. My local nuke happily chugs away producing 6 GW at, last time I checked, 1.63 cents/kwh. For the vaunted Germans to get anywhere near that, they had to revert to burning lignite, the filthiest stuff it is possible to dig out of the ground. And no, America's nukes are not in general experiencing shortened lifetimes. In fact, we keep finding that we cab run them longer than we originally planned.
But all power plants eventually need replacing. And if you liberals turn out to be correct on climate, apocalypse and all, we are going to need to replace all of our baseload plants other than hydro with new, standardized nuclear much earlier than we once thought.. More power to the fusion researchers, for when they do find their Holy Grail they will keep our economy running for billions of years to come. But what we have available right now is standardized fission. The French got it working, and so can we.
Actually, the opportunity cost of nuclear power delays climate mitigation. It's the wrong choice. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...
One bajillion comments, and nobody's mentioned Thorium yet? I am surprised. Am I the only one around here who thinks a liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) is a very good idea?
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
General Atomic's San Diego Tokamak is till running and performing very useful research, particularly in magnetic controls. http://www.ga.com/magnetic-fus... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
I wonder if their are alternatives available today
This is a good example of a situation where bad grammar can hurt your case.
(same ac)
But an interesting read, nonetheless.
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
If the robotic overlord reads it to you, it'll make sense.
Wake me up when one of the projects actually achieves something...
LLNL laser Ignition, Z Machine, Pollywell, and of course the mother of all money sinks ITER
I think it's amazing that something that will solve the world's energy problems isn't a higher priority.
First successful powered flight was a half mile, fifty feet in the air, with a safe landing.
August 14, 1901 in Fairfield Connecticut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Whitehead
You must be thinking of the late-comer Wright brothers two years later, who flew downhill and crashed at Kittyhawk. THe only reason everyone knows their names is because of their ferocious business practices including a secret contract with the Smithsonian to supress information about earlier successful flights.
Compare anything to military spending and it seems insane. Education, health care, transportation infrastructure ....
Amory Lovins, the Institute for Creation Research of the energy industry. For the uninitiated, opportunity cost means that the capital used to build a nuclear plant producing power at low known rates could have been used to cover several square miles of Environment with its windy-day energy equivalent in wind turbines at a mere ten times the cost per kwh delivered. Deal of the century, clearly.
New wind PPAs are going for 2.5 cents per kWh, http://www.greentechmedia.com/... new nuclear PPA's are going for 15.5 cents per kWh. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C... Looks like you've got you numbers wrong. You can get six times more wind power and have it delivered much sooner for the same cost so there is a large opportunity cost for nuclear power.
It has been scientifically proven to produce endless amounts of energy, that's why they call this a Fusion Reactor... duh.
More expensive because your little horse in the race has a ton of subsidies.
Without them, solar's a VERY expensive beast to push.
As for proliferation. You run more than one reactor. So you burn down any and all byproducts until you essentially have lead.
As for less stable.
Explain stability issues in a liquid fueled molten salt reactor.
Explain how this is better than burning fossil fuels in the megatons every year and blowing most of the waste up a smokestack and into the environment...
Yes, the final byproducts of a fission system tend to be nasty and short lived or long-lived and relatively harmless. But they CAN be contained.
You know what "contains" the stuff the fossil fuel companies blow into the atmosphere?
Nothing. MAYBE outer space. But other than that...nothing.
So, pick your poison. Something you can lock away for a couple hundred years and be done with it, or breath it in over the course of your lifetime.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
molten salt reactors crack to pieces after a couple years' mild use.
(same ac)
But an interesting read, nonetheless.
Mmm, might wanna remember to hit that checkbox next time.
And you know this HOW?
Oh. Right. You don't.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The technology was tried and it failed. And, the clean up was hugely expensive as well.
Please indicate where it "failed".
Your history is faulty.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Fuel in water cooled reactors is clad and most of the neutrons are intercepted by water before the reactor vessel is exposed. The cladding is changed with the fuel so it only has to last a year or two at high irradiation. After that it lingers at after heat conditions in a spent fuel pool. But in a molten salt reactor, the reactor itself sees a hard neutron spectrum and is damaged just like the sacrificial cladding (which is not meant to last all that long under power production conditions). No wonder it does not last and cracks after only a short period of use.
Funny, since, in MSR and LFTR designs there's no cladding, fuel ducts or grid spacers .
That's pretty much it. You've proven that you don't know what you're talking about and are trolling.
The actual problem you seem to be groping after is the corrosion factor and deplating effect on noble metals.
Some of these can be solved with chemistry. Some can be solved with maintenance intervals and part replacement.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Annually replacing the reactor leads to a great deal of high level waste.
proof we still CAN do useful science without $trillions for brand new hardware every year or so.