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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.
Not another anti-nuclear post from mdsolar.....
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.
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.
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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'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).
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?
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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
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 ....
It has been scientifically proven to produce endless amounts of energy, that's why they call this a Fusion Reactor... duh.
proof we still CAN do useful science without $trillions for brand new hardware every year or so.