Slashdot Mirror
'Star In a Jar' Fusion Reactor Works, Promises Infinite Energy (space.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: For several decades now, scientists from around the world have been pursuing a ridiculously ambitious goal: They hope to develop a nuclear fusion reactor that would generate energy in the same manner as the sun and other stars, but down here on Earth. Incorporated into terrestrial power plants, this "star in a jar" technology would essentially provide Earth with limitless clean energy, forever. And according to new reports out of Europe this week, we just took another big step toward making it happen. In a study published in the latest edition of the journal Nature Communications, researchers confirmed that Germany's Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) fusion energy device is on track and working as planned. The space-age system, known as a stellerator, generated its first batch of hydrogen plasma when it was first fired up earlier this year. The new tests basically give scientists the green light to proceed to the next stage of the process. It works like this: Unlike a traditional fission reactor, which splits atoms of heavy elements to generate energy, a fusion reactor works by fusing the nuclei of lighter atoms into heavier atoms. The process releases massive amounts of energy and produces no radioactive waste. The "fuel" used in a fusion reactor is simple hydrogen, which can be extracted from water. The W7-X device confines the plasma within magnetic fields generated by superconducting coils cooled down to near absolute zero. The plasma -- at temperatures upwards of 80 million degrees Celsius -- never comes into contact with the walls of the containment chamber. Neat trick, that. David Gates, principal research physicist for the advanced projects division of PPPL, leads the agency's collaborative efforts in regard to the W7-X project. In an email exchange from his offices at Princeton, Gates said the latest tests verify that the W7-X magnetic "cage" is working as planned. "This lays the groundwork for the exciting high-performance plasma operations expected in the near future," Gates said.
Article says "Topology of magnetic field confirmed."
they still haven't powered the thing up. they still don't know if it will work. headlines like this make me want to slap the writer across the face with a bowling ball in a string bag until they stop lying. and then a few more times just to make sure the lesson sticks.
There are other articles on other science sites that read better. This particular fusion system is a stellerator, a type that is currently looking to be the best of our experimental fusion systems for several reasons, not the least of which is that it doesn't have the same leakage and containment vessel damage, a huge problem with tokamaks.
Of course saying unlimited or infinite energy are just hyperbole, though it would have a lot of advantages over normal power generation methods.
Apparently, design of stellarator is too complicated for human mind. Proper positioning of magnetic coils has to be simulated on a supercomputer. Only the recent advancements in computer technology allowed to make stellarators more efficient than tokamaks.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/bizarre-reactor-might-save-nuclear-fusion
Fusion never!
Fusion funding plot:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png