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Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

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Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#31

Post by nabla9 »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #6

This is likely to be more important, for much less expenditure, than ITER. Edit: to add some additional context, the main problem with fusion reactors is confinement time and plasma stability. The general idea of a fusion power plant using magnetic confinement is that a gas is turned into plasma, confined magnetically, and heated until it can undergo significant fusion reactions. There are two core problems to creati…

This is wrong comparison.

Wendelstein 7-X is small early experimental reactor for testing stellator geometry for reactor. Research questions are similar to where JET (the largest working tokamak today) was 30 years ago. Stellator is more complex design but promises inherently stable containment.

ITER is solving different questions. ITER solves engineering problems for full-scale electricity-producing reactor that would be practical to build and operate. JET studied containment in Tokamaks. ITER is the last step before first industrial fusion reactor design DEMO (Demonstration Power Plant).

There is also lots of technical overlap of course. Vacuum vessels, cooling, magnets, breeder blankets, etc. ITER is developing these for industrial-scale reactor, even for stellator.

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#32

Post by saalweachter »

lucaspiller wrote: post #28

Assuming these experiments work as desired and this reactor can produce more energy than it takes in, how long will it be (roughly) until a power plant becomes operational (i.e. connected to the grid) that uses this technology? Years, a decade, many decades?

5-10 years is the classic naive/huckster estimate.

30-50 years is the respectable man's "I have no idea" estimate for anything.

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#33

Post by creshal »

lucaspiller wrote: post #28

Assuming these experiments work as desired and this reactor can produce more energy than it takes in, how long will it be (roughly) until a power plant becomes operational (i.e. connected to the grid) that uses this technology? Years, a decade, many decades?

It's not yet designed to produce net energy – it can't handle the necessary (radioactive) tritium fuel.

Assuming it works as intended, the next step would be a research reactor that can, that would be a pilot project to generate net energy which could be connected to the grid (probably more for symbolic reasons at that point…) and breed tritium for further reactors.

Then we can start to plan building actual power plants. So, few decades, as always.

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#34

Post by ck2 »

Every week I learn something new to admire about Germany.

Or at least its responsible investment behavior by its government.

USA would not build such a thing in today's political climate of nonsense unless it had weapons research possibilities.

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#35

Post by creshal »

ju-st wrote: post #19
lnkmails wrote: post #13

It doesn't say how many watts of power this machine would produce and what is the cost to produce per watt? It would be interesting to compare numbers and see if this machine would ever see mass production in next few decades.

Zero watt. It's a research reactor. And they don't want to use tritium (which is apparently needed for power generation) because it would cause radiation. And radiation is bad when you want to do research on the reactor. Source: German wikipedia

> And radiation is bad when you want to do research on the reactor.

As in, you want to partially disassemble and tweak the reactor regularly. Neutron activated metals will be radioactive enough after a while, no need to make things worse by adding tritium to the mix.

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#36

Post by rbanffy »

creshal wrote: post #33
lucaspiller wrote: post #28

Assuming these experiments work as desired and this reactor can produce more energy than it takes in, how long will it be (roughly) until a power plant becomes operational (i.e. connected to the grid) that uses this technology? Years, a decade, many decades?

It's not yet designed to produce net energy – it can't handle the necessary (radioactive) tritium fuel. Assuming it works as intended, the next step would be a research reactor that can, that would be a pilot project to generate net energy which could be connected to the grid (probably more for symbolic reasons at that point…) and breed tritium for further reactors. Then we can start to plan building actual power pla…

I guess we can still say it will be the most important energy source over the next millennium...

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#38

Post by ThePhysicist »

I once did an internship at the MPI in Garching and had the opportunity to visit the Stellarator. Although it looks much less spectacular with all the coils hidden in their housing it is still an incredibly impressive machine with an audacious design.

Today the numerical effort required for realizing it might seem not very impressive given the technological capabilities that we have, but you have to take into account that the first version (Wendelstein 7-AS) was built in the 1980s already.

That said I really hope that the experiment confirms the viability of this design and its (potential) superiority compared to the classical Tokamak fusion chamber.

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