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'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.
Is this an advertisement to invest in yet another unlimited free energy scam? Wake me up when some progress occurs.
I'm sick of these articles that sound like they are mansplaining the basics of tomahawk fusion that we have known since the 1970s and then claims its a new thing. Moreover, they supposedly have a working commercial reactor when we know that a commercial reactor would need to be ITER sized for positive energy generation. Can we keep this crap off slashdot?
The headline is misleading crap and the summary is embarrassing puff piece for dummies, who apparently are not expected to know what nuclear fusion is. (Hmm, is there anybody reading this site who doesn't know that? If so, you need to go back to your fake Facebook news, Zuck is missing you.)
The project is real enough and it's exciting, as in, it's a fusion design concept that has not yet hit the wall. As far as I can tell, the Wendelstein 7-X is not expected to achieve ignition, much less energy break-even or commercial viability, rather it is intended to demonstrate that a plasma can be sustained over a long period (30 minutes) above ignition temperature (somewhere around 100 million degrees). That's exciting. However, there is no particular new news about this. Wikipedia lists a timeline item of Hydrogen plasma at 80 million degrees for 0.25s. As far as I can tell, the device is currently all apart, being upgraded in advance of a new series of tests that should achieve that, following successful plasma confinement tests early this year. That's all we know. No new news... probably no new news until sometime in the new year. More or less on track, it would seem. Given the sad history of over promising and under delivering in the fusion sector, it is understandable and laudable that the we aren't seeing a lot of breathless predictions from the project. Assuming that Wendelstein 7-X proves something about practicality of the stellarator approach, I assume the next step would be funding for a fancier one. Eventually, the might prove that ITER should be a stellarator and not a tokamak. Who knows. It does not feel like free energy for everyone in the immediate future, but it does feel like progress.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
His point is that there aren't really any oil companies left anymore. Most of the 'big oil' companies are now fairly diversified energy companies. Fusion would be great for them, because it has very large capital costs, but huge return on investment, meaning that only companies with experience in power systems and a lot of spare capital will be in a good place to be first movers. They wouldn't want to kill this, they'd want to own it and be the first to provide electricity in the kinds of quantities promised by fusion.
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Greenie here. We need fusion and should develop it. What I object to is it being used as an excuse to delay transitioning to clean energy. Eventually it will work and be great for special applications like spacecraft and some kind of role on the electrical grid, but realistically even if we had a working design today most of the world wouldn't be able to build and operate it, not to mention the yet to be determined cost.
There are similar safety issues to fission, mostly to do with managing and storing waste, but they are lessened by the fact that you don't need a limitless supply of water and can thus build the plant in a safer location. Still needs massive regulation and oversight of course.
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