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MIT Inches Closer To ARC Reactor Despite Losing Federal Funding (computerworld.com)
Lucas123 writes: Experimenting with a fusion device over the past 20 years has edged MIT researchers to their final goal, creating a small and relatively inexpensive ARC reactor, three of which would produce enough energy to power a city the size of Boston. The lessons already learned from MIT's even current Alcator C-Mod fusion device — with a plasma radius of just 0.68 meters — have enabled researchers to publish a paper on a prototype ARC that would be the world's smallest fusion reactor but with the greatest magnetic force and energy output for its size. The ARC would require 50MW to run while putting out about 200MW of electricity to the grid. Key to MIT's ARC reactor would be the use of a "high-temperature" rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) superconducting tape for its magnetic coils, which only need to be cooled to 100 Kelvin, which enables the use of abundant liquid nitrogen as a cooling agent. Other fusion reactors' superconducting coils must be cooled to 4 degrees Kelvin. While there remain hurdles to overcome, such as sustaining the fusion reaction long enough to achieve a net power return, building the ARC would only take 4 to 5 years and cost about $5 billion, compared to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the world's largest tokamak fusion reactor due to go online and begin producing energy in 2027.
"building the ARC would only take 4 to 5 years"
We all know this is at least 10 years out.
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
"While there remain hurdles to overcome, such as sustaining the fusion reaction long enough to achieve a net power return"
When anyone accomplishes this it is news. Until then it's a waste of $5 billion dollars.
ARC is a very interesting scientific and engineering development project, but it is not a power generation facility. It is a demonstration experiment to learn how to run a fusion reactor with net energy production. There are still several major steps between ARC and a commercial electric generation facility.
With a box of scraps!
Does this mean we'll have a bunch of Ironmen guys running around with halo lights in their chests?
If so, maybe we should rethink things..
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
It is about the cost of regular nuclear reactor that is by order of magnitude more powerful and is most expensive source of electricity now, that can't compete with natural gas or wind or PV. Maybe it is time to forget it, we already have big source of fusion up in the sky that works just fine.
Marvel will be suing them for trademark infringement.
The world's smallest or largest [anything] will tend to have the most [any characteristic] and the least [any characteristic] for it's size.
~cost about $5 billion, compared to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the world's largest tokamak fusion reactor due to go online and begin producing energy in 2027. Which "is now expected to cost at least $21 billion and won't turn on until 2020 at the earliest."
Cite: http://www.sciencemag.org/news...
Also worth noting is that ITER was also originally expected to only cost 5 billion to build.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
I see I'm not the only vault dweller here playing as Tony :)
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Bill, Warren, can you look into funding this? If it works, it could have great ROI for the foundations...
Greed is the root of all evil.
MIT wants me to pay $28 to read this paper at Elsevier.
Is this how MIT plans to finance construction of the reactor?
It might be faster to borrow $5 billion from the Harvard endowment.
Oh wait, almost forgot that MIT has a $12 billion endowment,
yet they still want to nickel and dime the public.
Hey, MIT go fuck yourself.
If he can help MIT pull this off, it could help the world forget about Windows.
Could someone explain the difference between what MIT accomplished with the ARC reactor, versus what the Wendelstein 7-X demonstrated today; successful hydrogen plasma containment. Sounds like the German project is closer to success... The ARC reactor sounds like it's smaller and less expensive?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X
"While there remain hurdles to overcome, such as sustaining the fusion reaction long enough to achieve a net power return, "
So apparently actually generating power is just a small final detail with building a new power station.
Next up... the new perpetual motion machine. Designs are done which sustain motion for a while, now we just need to work out how to get around the laws of physics.
Note: not trying to say fusion power is impossible, but it is a pet hate hearing how something is almost done, when they still have the biggest challenges in front of them.
Yep. And as for the "three would power the city of Boston" remember that Boston is TINY. In a list of the top 150 largest cities in the US, Boston comes in at "too small to be on the list." It's barely half the size of the 150th largest city. So that's hardly impressive. (Not that you'd be able to tell by how important Boston thinks it is, but it's one of our nation's smallest "cities.")
Boston? 600MW? I think these MIT folks may be off by as much as a factor of 10 on the 'Boston' thing. If "The Greater Boston area, which includes the North Shore, represents about half of the state's electricity use." [and] 2012 Actual Peak Demand was 12,429MW then at 200MW apiece it would require ~32 of them not 3. That would make their claim true only for really small numbers of Boston.
Not trying to belittle the achievement of a 200MW fusion reactor. The most astounding figure of all is that no matter the size of the reactor, it would produce exactly 100% more electricity than fusion produces today.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Because you removed non-radioactive material that would be perfectly safe to carry around in your pockets, then fissioned it to create highly radioactive waste, which you now want to dump into the same hole so that it can leach out and contaminate the surrounding environment for centuries to come.
Key points
- Virtually all fissionable material is NOT radioactive. Those multi-millenia half lives mean essentially nothing is going to decay in any given moment, and so essentially no radiation will be produced.
- Fission byproducts (the actual "waste") tend to have relatively short half-lives, which means lots of atoms decay in any given moment, so lots of radiation is produced. Potentially good for making radiothermic generators, bad for anyone exposed.
- Long-term storage is a problem because we store the radioactive material all mixed in with unspent fuel, just like it came out of the reactor. Which means the decaying waste can trigger fission in the remaining fuel, producing fresh radioactive waste.
The logical solution is reprocessing, wherein the fuel is separated from the waste to be reused, and the waste can either itself be used in radiation-driven processes, or buried for a few centuries to decay to safe levels. We don't do that because reprocessing is an dangerous and moderately expensive process that can't compete economically with mining and refining fresh fuel. And God forbid we mandate reprocessing and roll the cost into the initial purchase price of the fuel. I mean the cost of fuel is several percent of the lifetime cost of a fission reactor. Won't somebody think of the profit margins!
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I know this is a summary, and I expect the full figures will be behind one of the links; but honestly, if you aren't going to provide the actual comparison, don't tease us. The ARC reactor (which stands for what, I might ask?) would take 4 or 5 years and around $5 billion to build, compared to the ITER, which is expected to take how long, and cost how much?
Apples are a mixture of red and green in colour, have a crunchy texture, and provide roughly 52 calories each; compared to oranges, which are also a thing which exist.
It sounds like the powers-that-be behind ITER are going to press ahead with it, despite the fact that progress would come better, faster and cheaper by switching to an ARC-like design.
Just as the powers that be are pressing forward with Space Launch System, even though we could put more stuff in orbit, sooner and cheaper, by developing the Falcon XX instead.
The phrase "shaking my head" is apt here.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Profit, or rather the unprofitable nature of nuclear power, is the real issue. Nuclear operators basically rely on subsidy to survive. Governments want to keep the subsidy as low as possible, operators want to maximize profits... And all the time other forms of energy are doing it cheaper.
To fix this we can either push for new, cheap and clean forms of energy, or start pushing prices up. Governments tend to take the third option, which is to pay lip service to new forms of energy and do the absolute minimum they can everywhere else.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
To think that you can create what is essentially a tiny star, and then keep it in a bottle chilled to 100K (it's wrapped around a sun!!) is, by itself, astounding. That you can get three times more energy out of it than you put in is just icing on the cake of awesomnitude.
You've got to be kidding. Left, right, it makes no difference both are just worshipping the dripping tips of different corporate phallis. Meanwhile both sides support domestic spying, more firmly centralizing federal power, ending net neutrality, a perpetual imaginary war, denying actual healthcare to our citizens, and keeping the wealthy wealthy. Neither wants anything resembling the Constitution restored.
Annoyed about your Netflix having hiccups... vote for the party that wants to put a stop to your internet provider causing those disruptions intentionally to create the illusion their own video service is more stable and reliable. You know, the imaginary party that doesn't exist.
I'm sorry, you seem to confuse our corporate owned politicians with Americans. Those aren't Americans those are traitors and they've been quite successful in disarming the people, turning our right to bear arms and form militas to fight them into a combination of a joke and a debate on what weapons are useful for hunting rather than distributing military power. Our corrupt courts have done away with jurors rights as direct representatives of the people as well instructing juries that they are not permitted to nullify unjust laws or applications of them but instead merely assess whether a technical violation has occurred.
How come as soon as someone mentions fusion, some idiot starts spouting nonsense about the dangers of nuclear power. For the record, Fusion is not Nuclear Power. Radiation is not an key issue restricting its development or use.