First Helium Plasma Held By German Fusion Reactor

http://www.sciencealert.com/german-has-just-successfully-fired-up-a-revolutionary-nuclear-fusion-machine

http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/10/feature-bizarre-reactor-might-save-nuclear-fusion



1 billion euro, two decades and over a million man hours later

 

This is seriously awesome. It shows what happens when a country has its priorities straight and uses its talent to the greater good.

Thanks for sharing this!

 

And All Of Those Billions Will Amount To Nothing When Somebody, Somewhere,

Accidently Bumps A Big "Red Button"......



Cheers Glen.

 

I seriously doubt that there is a stereotypical 'red button' that melts everything down. Seems a bit comical a flaw to spend over a billion on. I'm sure that there are hundreds of points where temperature and pressure is monitored. Well before they even begin the fusion.

 

Does this thing generate more energy than what's required to run those huge magnets and keep them cool? How do you extract energy from it?

 

Hello,

in the sketches above you see the funny looking magnetic coils of the stellarator. They produce a magnetic field with a special geometry in 3D. One goal, amongs others, for the Wendelstein experiment is to find out if the geometry of the field holds with the needed precision if you scale up the machines. They heat the plasma with about 10MW of microwave power and about 10MW neutral beam injection for a short time. Don't nail me about the exact numbers. And then there is power needed for the magnets and for cooling. And they use helium and then hydrogen and/or deuterium for generating the plasma, not tritium, like you would do if you want to generate energy.

Regards
Gyro

 

Well the next step would be hydrogen, and then we are talking


Probably still 20 years away from having one powering every city

But economically, I wonder what its going to do to the world

It isnt just about slashing power bills but slashing the costs of all production , construction and transport....and therefore consumption would probably skyrocket

Use the 4th generation of one of these things to power a desalination plant, a country never has to worry about water. Could even use arrays of these to reverse global warming

Of course you could also power an army of robot warriors with laser blasters

 

I'm going to nail you about the exact numbers

 

Knowing fuck-all about plasma physics and fusion reactions, I would guess they would use the heat to generate steam and drive a turbine.

 

There are a lot of things I dislike about my country, but when they do shit like this I love it. We do have the best engineers in the world though, so it helps. I think the German reactor will go online before ITER, but we shouldn't get overly excited. This tech is still many years away from being stable and a production machine.

 

People are stupid...

Why didn't they spend that much time and money figuring out how to utilize the one we already have...

 

Who’s to say Germany intends to use that technological breakthrough for good.

[SIZE=11pt] Perhaps it’s the first step to create a plasma based weapon of extraordinary power[/SIZE]


[SIZE=11pt]Hotwater[/SIZE]

 

I see a huge amount of energy input to get this thing going, but can they extract more energy, i.e. more energy output than the amount used to initiate and maintain it? I guess what I'm wondering about is the net energy. A huge amount of energy is right there it seems, but getting it out is the tricky part I think.

It's interesting to me that the geometry of the coils was designed using supercomputers, especially supercomputers .. I can't begin to fathom the amount of trigonometry and and other math related to physics that needs that much computing power to work through in a reasonable amount of time.

This is some truly epic engineering, physics, mathematics and computer science/engineering ... It's one thing to master each of these, I guess if you have the right team of researchers in the relevant fields that they each have enough knowledge of the other fields where there is some "overlap" making this type of coordination and truly epic engineering possible.

STEM fields are where its at, and I have a lot of respect for. Non stem majors ... well, that's another thing I can't honestly say I respect those fields as much, they see education and a degree as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself ... especially some of them you know like the ones that study the tax codes and how to optimize and exploit them, and at the same time making them so obscure and cryptic, enabling corporations to legally conduct in actions that ought to be illegal, and would be for most of us probably resulting in criminal charges, not civil. There's a difference between fucking up on ur taxes cuz you don't know what you're doing than "fucking up on the taxes knowing damn well what you're doing". We don't need any more of that shit, but then again, if you do need a lawyer you'll be glad that you have one that knows his stuff. So I have a decent amount of respect for lawyers, a lot less for MBA, and marketing degrees .... and if your pursuing a degree in "advertising" ... well, fuck you, you're part of the problem, not the solution

 

These people definitely aren't stupid. I have no clue what the answer to your question would be though, these guys are way smarter than me so I don't know why they chose to do things a certain way. They would probably know better than anyone what those reasons are though.

 

Becuase its not portable

And you've already lost how ever many % by the time that energy gets to earth

And, probably most importantly, the amount of rare metals that are needed to extract solar power vs amount that goes into this...per megawatt/kilowatt...probably means this will make solar power obsolete

This prototype is only 16m wide, about the length of a container truck. I assume as with everything, they will probably get smaller. Why bother with solar panels if you can have something smaller that basically runs on water costs less and produces 1000 times the power.

Fusion reactors may wipe out fossil fuels, but i suspect the economics of the future will still be dependant on those rare metals

 

Great Scott...

 

Hello,

put that hammer away.

Regards
Gyro

 

Hello,

like VG said: it's 20 years away. Again and again .

Regards
Gyro

 

Hello,

that would be helpfull in possibly violating the law of nations and starting a war in Syria. But if you look how difficult it is to find a few fighter jets that could actually fly and find supplies for a good war (I think there is enough amo for four weeks of battle) there is not much hope that a plasma based weapon will change anything.

Regards
Gyro

 

Hello,

as I said, no. They run that machine on helium and later on hydrogen/deuterium. You need deuterium and tritium to start fusion. There might be spontaneous fusions with the deuterium and that might active the metal materials of the enclosure (oh no, more radioactive waste), but that's a side effect in this experiment. The machine is built to study the behaviour of the magnetic fields and the plasma and some other things.

I haven't looked it up, but there should be papers that describe the theory of that coils. So if you need something to entertain you in the upcoming long winter's nights .

Regards
Gyro