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MIT Designs Less Expensive Fusion Reactor That Boosts Power Tenfold
jan_jes writes: Advances in magnet technology have enabled researchers at MIT to propose a new design for a practical compact tokamak (donut-shaped) fusion reactor. The stronger magnetic field makes it possible to produce the required magnetic confinement of the superhot plasma — that is, the working material of a fusion reaction — but in a much smaller device than those previously envisioned (abstract). The reduction in size, in turn, makes the whole system less expensive and faster to build, and also allows for some ingenious new features in the power plant design.
"Smaller, but still pretty big"
Down from 5m and 2m. That's substantial progress.
Or... we could spend the money on solar and wind (and battery storage) which we could implement in just a few years using proven technology.
Why wait 20 or 30 years for something that might (or might not) work when we have a solution now that we know works.
Nuclear has gone from "too cheap to meter" to "too expensive to matter".
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
It really could be a game changer. REBCO tapes are still pretty expensive but their prices should drop to competitive levels when scaled up. This could cut costs 1/2 to 1 order of magnitude for the same amount of power generation. And beyond that, smaller reactors are much easier to get funds to build, and are more useful in that they can supply power to smaller markets.
The "30 years" joke is annoying; the amount of advancement that's been occurring has been huge. But the projects are so big and expensive that you don't go through iterations very fast. So again the ability to "scale down" is a massive benefit.
I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
At the ICOPS conference (International Conference on Plasma Science) I asked a couple of professors what they thought of this.
They thought it was pretty telling that Lockheed wasn't investing a lot more money in this concept than they are.
If Lockheed isn't putting significant money into it, maybe you should think twice about putting your money (figuratively speaking) into it.....
That said, I really hope Lockheed does succeed with this, and starts shipping units like crazy and displacing coal power production worldwide.
--PM
Do you want to live near nuclear plant? I don't, no matter how new and shiny with latest "bug-free" design it is.
Well done, NIMBY. I hold you arseholes partially responsible for the fucking mess we're in today. Thanks so much for your efforts!
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
All fusion reactors absolutely generate energy. What they don't do is generate more energy than they consume (ie: they're net-negative.)
It would certainly be nice if they can make it commercially viable, but there's plenty of science you can do in an net-negative reactor and advancing the tech is still an overall benefit to mankind -- just not necessarily a financial benefit.
From the first source I found, nuclear deaths per TWh are 0.04 (coal is 15-170, depending on the statistics you pick). While 0.04 is not quite zero, that's where it would end up if you did any rounding...
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