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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.
1. Tokamak -- has never underperformed models
2. Stellarator -- appears like it will work.
3. MagLIF -- Experiments are following model predictions.
The reason why magnetic fusion doesn't work yet is because of the budget needed to build a large enough reactor.
The reason laser fusion hasn't worked is because the models have been failing. Basically using a neodymium laser works in computer modeling but in real life it sucks. In fact a laser beam itself is too coherent.
Anyway, we still have a track to fusion it is X number of years away because ITER was supposed to be built in 1984 and now it's scheduled for 2035 because of budget reasons. Tokamak has always worked as predicted or better.
MagLIF is probably the easiest and cheapest route to fusion. Lockheed seems to have a good approach too.
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.
The key part is omitted, this is a new version (of an old idea) of a field arrangement that is believed to confine the plasma better:
"The stellarator is different from the other toroidal magnetic surface concepts in that both the toroidal and the poloidal field components—which together create the magnetic surface topology—are created from currents in external coils. In the tokamak and the reversed-field pinch2, a strong toroidal current driven within the plasma is needed to generate the poloidal magnetic-field component. The stellarator’s lack of a strong current parallel to the magnetic field greatly reduces macroscopic plasma instabilities, and it eliminates the need for steady-state current drive. This makes it a more stable configuration, capable of steady-state operation. These are important advantages for a power plant....The stellarator was invented by Lyman Spitzer in the 1950s (ref. 3). So why did it fall behind? And why do some believe that it is about to have a comeback?"
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?
it still produces lots of radioactive waste.
Fusion produces less waste than fission, and it is shorter lived. But it doesn't help with the political problems. The Greenies and NIMBYs are going to oppose fusion just like they oppose fission.
Lemme guess- this fusion reactor is just 20 years from opening, right?
No, that was 20 years ago. Now it's just 20 years from opening.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Normally tritium is horribly expansive because very rare ($30000 per grams...). That would be a killer cost for fusion reactor. So a blanket of Lithium is added to the vessel, and the neutron hitting it, produce tritium and helium. That is where the "tritium is bred from lithium, so essentially free" from parent post come from.
I'm not sure about how expansive it is - it should be similar to ordinary hydrogen gas. But it's expensive to produce tritium and that's a different matter.
But all we talk about is matter.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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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given that among the authors of the Nature paper are R. C. Wolf and C. Biedermann. This Wolf-Biedermann project will of course produce high energy neutrons which must leave magnetic confinement in order to provide useful energy. When these neurtons strike metallic shielding material in the walls of the "stellerator" they generate radioactive elements via the process called neutron activation. And these radioactive elements release gamma rays, alpha and beta particles, x-rays and other components collectively referred to as radioactive waste. So when this ad from the 1950s claims there will be no radioactive waste, it is not telling the truth.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Fusion never!
Fusion funding plot:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png
The small amount of plasma is confined using magnetic forces.
If they lose containment, the pressure and temperature on the plasma reduce significantly and the reaction no longer takes place. There is no runaway scenario AFAIK.
I have been down the hall from a tokamak when it is firing. I have also walked next to a tokamak when it is off. I have crawled through stellarator rings. These things are not scary, they are impressive.
it has been fifty years in the future for the last fifty years. Given the recent success of renewables and advancing battery and storage technology, fusion is unlikely to ever see the light of day.
Actually it has been 50 years in the future for more like the past 70 years. However while fusion power is nowhere close to infinite and, given the complexity of the reactor unlikely to be cheap, it would still be very worthwhile to have. Renewable energy sources have limited capacities and require a lot of area which means they have a limited ability to fill our energy needs so while their capacity can certainly be increased going all renewable is unlikely any time soon.
This may not be much of an issue in North America but in places like Europe finding enough area for all the solar, wind and wave power needed is unlikely to happen because people do not want to live next to a wind turbine or even in sight of one. Building wave power schemes has similar issues as people complain about the environmental impact. Battery technology is also a very long way from being able to cope with the massive storage requirements to counter the variability which would then require enormous numbers of pumped storage schemes. So having a pollution free alternative to coal and gas will still be extremely useful.
The large oil companies have at least $50 billion invested in renewable energy. Google it.
You mentioned storage technology and wind. Here's example news from just one week last year. Total SA, the French oil supermajor, spent $1.1 billion to buy the battery maker Saft Groupe SA, complementing its 2011 purchase of a majority stake in the solar-panel maker SunPower Corp on a Monday. The next day, Canadian pipeline company Enbridge Inc. it would pay $218 million for stakes in offshore wind farms as it attempts to double its low-carbon generating capacity.
What would happen if you fired a magnetic bullet at it?
Plant security would return fire, killing you instantly.
Have gnu, will travel.