Germany Fires Up Bizarre New Fusion Reactor

Megalith

Megalith

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Am I the only one who thinks this looks like something out of a Doom or Wolfenstein game?

On 10 December, Germany’s new Wendelstein 7-X stellarator was fired up for the first time, rounding off a construction effort that took nearly 2 decades and cost €1 billion. Initially and for the first couple of months, the reactor will be filled with helium—an unreactive gas—so that operators can make sure that they can control and heat the gas effectively. At the end of January, experiments will begin with hydrogen in an effort to show that fusing hydrogen isotopes can be a viable source of clean and virtually limitless energy.
 
Amazing! I wish we had more information on the start-up from the 10th.
I wonder what they're using to heat the gas to 1,000,000C?
 
^ Just magnetism I believe. Err... is it magnetism holds the plasma to be stable.. Not sure actually. lol.
 
I understand the magnetism holding the plasma... I dont understand what they are using to create the plasma... That's a lot of Celsius lol
 
So... How do you end up generating the electricity? Where do you heat the water to make steam? Or is there some other way they use of turning thermal into electrical energy?
 
Im sure the excessive amount of heat will be used for steam turbine. Unless we have some kinda stuff like they used in lThe Core" lol
 
this one is not intended to have over unity gain, it is a prototype to learn about and improve the stellerator design
 
CombatChrisNC said:
So... How do you end up generating the electricity? Where do you heat the water to make steam? Or is there some other way they use of turning thermal into electrical energy?
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at this point it's not about making steam or electricity - this is a prototype to see if we can get this working. we've done fusion with plenty of experiments in the past, but the energy required to initiate the reaction has always been less than what you get out of it.

if they can come up with a design that works (and prove that it works) harvesting the heat, creating steam, turning turbines, etc. will be the next step - if not several steps later. fusion power that is commercially viable is still quite a ways off, you're not going to see the fission plants go anywhere anytime soon.

i think it's great that we're finally trying to get some of these ideas going. between this, ITER and a few others in design/being built we may finally see some real progress.
 
THRESHIN said:
but the energy required to initiate the reaction has always been less than what you get out of it.
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I think you have that backwards. If they got more out than put in it would be viable technology already.
 
alxlwson said:
Amazing! I wish we had more information on the start-up from the 10th.
I wonder what they're using to heat the gas to 1,000,000C?
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Essentially a gigantic microwave oven. One that causes massive dielectric loss at the tuned frequency (I don't remember what it is for helium, which is what they're doing these demos with).
 
I feel exactly the opposite. It's the complex engineering design which fascinates me more than anything else. The potential to harness the power of a star in such a unique containment would be such a marvelous achievement for humanity. I could not even fathom the stress levels of the engineers who had to design it though, I could easily see their anxiety the night before testing wondering if it's going to fail, or worse, blow up? Fuck that noise...
 
This is really neat. I'm glad someone is actually doing real experimentation that might fail, rather than all of these safe incremental advances we've had lately. I'm all for changes. Hopefully this will create something new and interesting that rakes in a bunch of money and gets all of these "play it safe" companies to finally start taking some chances, too...

Eh who am I kidding...
 
On the topic of fusion reactor, not nearly the same scale but this guy is really "nuts" but also science genius and is doing some remarkable work and progress on his own that I recommend following (interesting character too I may add which really got good intensions): https://www.youtube.com/user/DCFusor

I think he's still up in the process of making his 2nd appartment work remotely to control his reactor in the basement of his old house since it started to get dangerous to stay near his reactor now despite some plentiful isolation n stuff.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
This is really neat. I'm glad someone is actually doing real experimentation that might fail, rather than all of these safe incremental advances we've had lately. I'm all for changes. Hopefully this will create something new and interesting that rakes in a bunch of money and gets all of these "play it safe" companies to finally start taking some chances, too...

Eh who am I kidding...
Click to expand...

I'm really failing to understand where this rant is coming from. This isn't a company but a multi-governmental massive scale physics experiment, more alike to CERN's LHC, LLNL's NIF (see: failure to get meaningful fusion), ITER, etc. These are designed with the ultimate in play it safe, as that's the only way you're going to get good data.
 
Hail the Germans!
One time they say: we do not need nuclear power plants. then you close your eyes for a split second and they are finishing test for a fusion plant!
 
Really awesome that they started testing with helium and will be using hydrogen next month. From what I've read, that design should allow the plasma to be sustained a lot longer that the Tokamak design. With that they might achieve energy positive fusion. Tokamak ones have fundamental stability issues because the magnetic field that contains the plasma is weaker on the outside than it is in the inside.
 
Interesting. But fission works just as well (other than meltdowns OFC), so this seems a bit... Pointless. They should be working on better reactors, like molten salt or thorium.
 
alxlwson said:
Amazing! I wish we had more information on the start-up from the 10th.
I wonder what they're using to heat the gas to 1,000,000C?
Click to expand...

When completed, Wendelstein 7-X will be the world’s largest fusion device of the stellarator type. Its objective is to investigate the suitability of this type for a power plant. It will also test an optimised magnetic field for confining the plasma, which will be produced by a system of 50 non-planar and superconducting magnet coils, this being the technical core piece of the device.
 
alxlwson said:
That will be one of the tests I'm sure. 100,000,000C may just do that..
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Right,
So the goal is to get 100M C sustained and controlled within the dohickey.

Once they prove they can do this then they will move forward with a prototype power plant .

Then we all get flying cars from santa under our tree.
 
Derfnofred said:
I'm really failing to understand where this rant is coming from. This isn't a company but a multi-governmental massive scale physics experiment, more alike to CERN's LHC, LLNL's NIF (see: failure to get meaningful fusion), ITER, etc. These are designed with the ultimate in play it safe, as that's the only way you're going to get good data.
Click to expand...

Probably because you approached it from the entirely wrong angle. I'm not talking about "damage to personnel or property" safe, I'm talking about "financial investment vs return" safe. Try re-reading what I said with that in mind.
 
HardUp4HardWare said:
Right,
So the goal is to get 100M C sustained and controlled within the dohickey.

Once they prove they can do this then they will move forward with a prototype power plant .

Then we all get flying cars from santa under our tree.[/QUOTE

Hahaha! That's a far way off though. Aside from this thing being functional, a big milestone in itself is going to be breakeven.]
Click to expand...
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Probably because you approached it from the entirely wrong angle. I'm not talking about "damage to personnel or property" safe, I'm talking about "financial investment vs return" safe. Try re-reading what I said with that in mind.
Click to expand...

No, that's my point entirely. We're talking multi-billion dollar projects...not me playing around with old reagents and a pipette. (I do lots of those types of experiments cuz we grad students are usually broke). :D These projects are insanely expensive because that's the level of experimental quality they need to even have a chance to get good data. Our money tree broke some time ago, which is why these types of risky (in the may utterly fail to produce a result) are so rare. So to rant that we as the world are being namby pamby about financially risky projects seems a little lost.
 
There is a lot at stake in Fusion though, mainly because it would solve a lot of energy issues we currently have, such as, but not limited to:

1. No radioactive nuclear waste as dangerous as fission products (Tritium is radioactive, but that is easily dispersed and doesn't last long).

2. Doesn't generate waste that contribute to green house effect like fossil fuels do.

3. Doesn't harm wildlife that a lot of renewable energy sources do (EG hydroelectric).

4. Fuel deposits are much more plentiful than fossil fuels.

This isn't just 'another' multi-billion dollar science project, the success of fusion technology have profound immediate and long term effects for the future. The theory is all there to, it's just the engineering that must be overcome.
 
No, I agree that the potential benefits of fusion are enormous. Just multi-billion dollar projects aren't a dime a dozen, nor have really any of the prior fusion experiments been play-it-safe in terms of their overarching aim (as stolemyowncar alludes), yet incredibly play it safe in terms of their implementation, because the scope of the work is so high, the quality and rigor are as well.

Tritium is really only dangerous if ingested. The specific beta decay doesn't get through our outer layer of dead skin.
 
Out of curiosity, what is powering those magnets, and more importantly what would happen if the power to the magnets were to fail unexpectedly?
10^7 deg C plasma does not cool off that easy.
 
1. An external generator or eventually maybe the power directly from the Fusion core itself.

2. Probably not a lot, because there isn't that much fuel inside the reactor itself. Fusion reaction would have to be sustained externally in order for fusion to occur (IE it is not self sustaining in anyway).
 
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