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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
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.