UK's Newest Tokamak Fusion Reactor Has Created Its First Plasma (futurism.com)

After being switched on for the first time last Friday, the UK's newest fusion reactor has successfully generated a molten mass of electrically-charged gas, or plasma, inside its core. Futurism reports: Called the ST40, the reactor was constructed by Tokamak Energy, one of the leading private fusion energy companies in the world. The company was founded in 2009 with the express purpose of designing and developing small fusion reactors to introduce fusion power into the grid by 2030. Now that the ST40 is running, the company will commission and install the complete set of magnetic coils needed to reach fusion temperatures. The ST40 should be creating a plasma temperature as hot as the center of the Sun -- 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million degrees Fahrenheit) -- by Autumn 2017. By 2018, the ST40 will produce plasma temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit), another record-breaker for a privately owned and funded fusion reactor. That temperature threshold is important, as it is the minimum temperature for inducing the controlled fusion reaction. Assuming the ST40 succeeds, it will prove that its novel design can produce commercially viable fusion power.

Comments

Re:That won't prove commercially viable power

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh

It's easy to be viable in mythical places. How bout actually citing examples.

About the only spots where it is are those that have ridiculous taxes/regulations on fossil fuels, wont permit nuclear batteries, or are isolated and low population so grid ties/large power plants are uneconomic.

Hell the unreliability of wind and solar has Australians going back to diesel.

Re:Wind cheaper than coal, solar than nuke/oil

[thegarbz]

Both already have a ROI in less than a decade

Except solar definitely does not in the wonderful cloudy parts of the world near the north sea.

Re:That won't prove commercially viable power

[Anonymous Coward]

"wont permit nuclear batteries"

LOL WUT? This isn't the Bionic Man... What "nuclear batteries" are you talking about here?

So use what you have

[sjbe]

Except solar definitely does not in the wonderful cloudy parts of the world near the north sea.

You mean those locations with cloudy skies and lots of wind? So use wind power if your specific location isn't ideal for solar. Last I checked there was no lack of wind in the North Sea.

I don't get why some people keep arguing that solar isn't good in general because it doesn't work for every circumstance everywhere. Solar works fine and it's now economic in a huge number of cases. Better yet it's going to continue to get cheaper and more efficient with time. Yes if you live somewhere where it is foggy 300+ days a year solar is probably not for you. That doesn't describe most places where people live.

Re:So use what you have

[jonnyj]

Solar works fine and it's now economic in a huge number of cases...

So here's the problem for the UK. As I write, renewables are doing well at 18.5% of power generation: a rare sunny day means that 15.1% is from solar with a gentle breeze producing a further 2.9%.

But the sun doesn't shine at night. Britain is a cold, dark country so we need lots of energy at night. At 6.30 this morning, only 4% of our energy came from renewables and, as a result, we had to import more than 10% of our energy requirements from France's largely nuclear power stations. Thanks, France - without you, my morning would have been a bleak one.

Data from here: http://nationalgrid.stephenmor...

Re:So use what you have

[Barsteward]

We still have to wait until they get their act together and invest in a suitable storage solution to store all the power produced by things like wind (which does work at night) then there will be less reliance on power from abroad

Re:So use what you have

[conquistadorst]

It's almost as if people want a single answer to any problem instead of understanding the complexities of multiple answers in most situations. There are after all over 20 different types of hammers, they all do something better than the other. Not every hammer is ideally suited for every situation.

Re:So use what you have

[jonnyj]

> Britain is a cold, dark country so we need lots of energy at night

No you don't. The night time load is about 1/2 the daytime, and that's why it's cheaper if you're on Economy 7 and 10.

You're missing the point.

Our peak electricity demand usually falls between 5.00pm and 6.00pm in winter when people get home and switch on their electric kettles, electric cookers, electric lights, electric TVs, electric showers, electric water heating and, in many cases, supplementary electric heating. In winter it's dark at that time of day; hence my use of the term 'night'. In the winter months, it's exceptionally rare for solar power to produce any of our power needs at the time of peak demand. Typically the only exception is Christmas Day when millions of turkeys and roast potatoes are simultaneously roasted whilst the weak winter sun feebly attempts to spark a photo-voltaic reaction through dense blankets of winter cloud.

Of course energy consumption falls dramatically later in the day when people do to bed, but it also rises again when they get up before dawn. The problem comes when it's cold and dark outside but we're all wide awake inside.

Re:That won't prove commercially viable power

[TheRaven64]

Are you sure it's $1/kW, not $1/W? The former would mean that it would pay for itself in about two days, the latter in a year or two. If the RoI is under a week, then I'd expect a lot more construction than exists currently.

Stop Converting to F

[Anonymous Coward]

We shouldn't keep enabling the US to keep using its backwards measurement system, let alone the UK or Canada where it's mixtures of metric and imperial in inconsistent ways.

Just give C, no one here should need F

Re:That won't prove commercially viable power

[Anonymous Coward]

But Denmark is a net importer of electricity and they don't include that in the statistic.