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Germany Fires Up Bizarre New Fusion Reactor (sciencemag.org)
New submitter insitus writes: On 10 December, Germany's new Wendelstein 7-X stellarator was fired up for the first time, rounding off a construction effort that took nearly 2 decades and cost €1 billion. Initially and for the first couple of months, the reactor will be filled with helium—an unreactive gas—so that operators can make sure that they can control and heat the gas effectively. At the end of January, experiments will begin with hydrogen in an effort to show that fusing hydrogen isotopes can be a viable source of clean and virtually limitless energy.
FTA: "This story was originally published online on 21 October and in the 23 October issue of Science. It has been updated with new information."
And yes, this story was on Slashdot then.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Same as a fission reactor?
The cooling system powers steam turbines
Heat. Thermal transfer to steam turbines. It would be sweet if we could directly extract the energy, but there's no known way of doing that yet. The turbine method is decently efficient, though.
Germany Fires Up Bizarre New Fusion Reactor
Could at least give a hint as to what's so bizarre about it in the summary.
Y'know, as opposed to all those boring run-of-the-mill fusion reactors...
Possibly the headline writer meant to say "Germany Fires Up Weird New Fusion Reactor" and forgot to add "Guess what happens next!"
Yes, it is click-baitism infesting the summary.
What is really interesting about this is that the stellerator is the oldest fusion reactor design approach, being given a new trial with 21st Century design techniques.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Regular fusion reactors are either spherical or toroidal. The stellerator is more like a helical shape twisted round so that it forms a continuous loop. Words alone don't do it justice:
http://www.fusion-eur.org/fusi...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
That would be Herr Fusion.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
First of all, this reactor, like all current fusion reactors does not create excess energy.
There are two ways to energy transferred out, one is to utilize the so called MHD effect (was in favour the last century), now people say that you need to breed tritium from lithium, so the have a shell of lithium around the reactor core. That core is heating up by hits of neutrons. From that core you can extract heat ... as some other poster said: like in an fission reactor to drive turbines.
However: I doubt anyone ever did the math, you have "inside" a hot core that needs to get heat to the "outside" to drive a steam engine. "In-between" you have super conducting cooled coils (close to absolute zero) which generate the magnetic containment field.
But I guess, you can insulate the cooled coils good enough to bypass the heat transfer in a way that it is not disturbing the cooling of the coils.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
So what are the conceptual ideas for taking the energy out from a fusion reactor?
They have a FAQ which includes an answer to your question.
...the fielding of the ONLY jet fighter of WW2 [by Germany] which out classed and out ran ANYTHING flying only too late to make a difference.
Not true. The British Royal Air Force developed and flew the Gloster Meteor in World War II, which was another jet fighter of the time.
Actually, the fist actual nuclear power plant was built in the USSR.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I think you're overstating the two relative to each other.
The Me-262 despite having a 30mm cannon didn't have the capacity to heft the long barrels and so had a relatively low velocity and crucially short range main armament. In terms of performance, the Meteor was slightly shorter ranged, but faster, higher flying and with a substantially better rate of climb (well, some of the later versions, it's harder to find details on the precisely contemporary versions). The very earliest meteors were mostly slower by about 100mph, though they had reached over 600 mph (faster than the 262 by late 1945). Either way the two aircraft were of comparable performance. The ME262 was also not a dogfighter, it was an interceptor. It had a rather high wing loading so it's manoverability was lower than the Meteor. That said,tight turns in an early jet of either sort was a recipe for complete disaster.
The choice of the short ranged 30mm cannon reflects that: few shots available, get in hit hard and fast and get out. The longer range hispano 20mm on the Meteor with more ammunition was a better dogfighting gun. Also, the 30mm cannon was prone to jamming.
The ME262 had more advanced engines, but due to the technology of the time, that meant they were beyond what could be reliably produced: their lifetime was a scant 50 hours and they were pretty finicky in flight. High speed centrifugal compressors are much easier to build. Modern engines still often use them ,especially in smaller units, unless they're sufficiently large that frontal area becomes a problem
Both planes were a bit crappy to fly compared to the prop fighters of the day. They both had a tendency to snake at speed, so dogfighting would have likely been hilarious as neither aircraft would be remotely able to hit the broadside of a barn. The bomber tactic with the 262 was to slow greatly at the last minute to increase engagement time, so snaking there would not have been a problem.
The meteor problems were all correctable in practice, and later models became very popular on the export market.
Finally though, the ME262 just looks cooler.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Yes I'm sure all those physicists have not "done the math" on how to get power out of a reactor. I mean it's just this big important aspect of reactor design which you could get a Ph. D in by running simulations and doing the math, so I'm sure no one anywhere is looking at it.