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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.
great Jazz Fusion band name.
Is this a story from Futurama?
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
Everyone's going to say that it's finally the Mr Fusion from Back to the Future. Noooo. It's Das Mister Fusion. It's German.
You don't have to "draw off" energy - the plasma is more than happy to lose heat to its surroundings. The biggest challenge with fusion is to stop the plasma from giving up its energy too fast!
That said, for continuously operating toruses you do have to "draw off" the "ash" (helium) by means of an "exhaust" system that juts up into the outer reaches of the plasma stream (where the heavier helium concentrates), which is "a" challenge (the component is subject to a very hostile environment and faces huge thermal loads), but it's not a showstopper challenge by any means.
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
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
I should have wikied before I posted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Take a look at the specs in TFA. The magnets in this system are cooled with liquid helium to -270 deg C. The plasma sits inside the magnets. Thus any energy extracted from the plasma has to cross the boundary of the magnets, while at the same time not upsetting the magnets themselves.. What I want is an explanation of how this aspect is being considered. Once you have the energy out of the core you can pipe it into turbines to produce electricity. But that part is easily done.
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"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Nothing says success like the juxtaposition of "Germany" and "technological innovation involving a hydrogen filled container".
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.
"how do you say "D'oh!" in German?"
Deuterium Hydroxide, also known as 'slightly heavy water'
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.
"how do you say "D'oh!" in German?"
Deuterium Hydroxide, also known as 'slightly heavy water'
It's just BIG BONED!
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