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Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

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Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#61

Post by illumen »

[deleted] wrote: post #52

[deleted]

[ED: this was in response to a deleted comment about world war 3 coming...]

I can assure you Germany is not out of trash.

Germany is still years away from 100% renewable. But is actually making progress to there. There's a lot of coal still dug up and burnt for example.

Germany has had lots of immigrants for decades, and things have been mostly peaceful.

The current leader (Angela Merkel) is considered to be from the right, leading a conservative party.

The democracy is one of the most stable around, and many people are anti war.

There are serious issues with the German economy, and the state of the country in general. It's not highly ranked internationally for things like GDP or internet speed.

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#62

Post by drjesusphd »

zamalek wrote: post #46
ThePhysicist wrote: post #38

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…

I have no doubt that a design that goes with the physics (instead of going against it like Tokamaks do) is going to yield great results, however I hope something comes out if it that will also allow for viable Tokamaks. Stellarators are hellishly complex and expensive.

Can you explain what you mean by tokamaks "going against the physics"?

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#63

Post by AlexC04 »

[deleted] wrote: post #52

[deleted]

But think of the proportion of wealth / GDP that isn't leaving the country to import oil and natural gas. It makes sense that producing the vast majority of your energy needs yourself would have a significant positive impact on your economy.

Not that the single trite explanation could address the whole of their success, but certainly could account for a 'bump'

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#64

Post by sdoering »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #55
flexie wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes they keep it very quiet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal No, seriously. All these statements about German character or German mentality should stop. If the last few months haven't taught us anything else, at least it should have taught us that. First, Germans and the German government were praised as reliable in connection with the Grexit (as opposed to the Greeks), then a few mon…

>I wonder if mentality and national traits even exist. Sometimes, but more often they're more propaganda than truth.

And oftentimes the ones rallying other behind said traits are the first ones to ditch them in private. As seen in history again and again. For example during the fall of the roman empire. Except maybe for Cato the younger[0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_the_Younger

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#65

Post by drjesusphd »

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…

It's more appropriate I think to compare W7X to JET, not ITER. They're not trying to break even on fusion with W7X.

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#66

Post by understand17 »

balabaster wrote: post #41
adrianN wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find watching the assembly of these ultra-high tech machines to be super inspiring. It gives me all kinds of warm fuzzies to see what we're able to do if we put our mind to it.

Mostly it's inspiring because most people sit back and say "It can't be done, it's impossible" or "wow, they must have had a shit ton of luck to get this out of the door" instead of looking for solutions or ways to circumvent or exploit the million little problems along the way that seek to obstruct the endgame. Kudos to these guys for sticking at it long enough and persevering to achieve their vision.

bla bla

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#67

Post by rvense »

[deleted] wrote: post #52

[deleted]

Is that supposed to be a joke?

Besides betraying a rather shallow understanding of history (e.g. implying that "round 1" had the same causes as "round 2"), I do think at this point an American accusing Germans of fascist tendencies and war-mongering is pretty rich, what with the drone wars and the global surveillance and all.

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#68

Post by trdrake »

hahainternet wrote: post #5
adrianN wrote: post #2

Good to see that there is enough money to pursue stellarators while simultaneously working on tokamak designs like ITER.

I was chatting about this with a friend and there are something like 5 different in production technologies which produce or cause nuclear fusion. Only three I think are aimed at sustainable power generation, but it's still pretty cool.

Just saw this: "New advances in magnet technology have enabled researchers at MIT to propose a new design for a practical compact tokamak fusion reactor". Plus the usual "10 years away!"...

http://www.technologyreview.com/article/541996/a-workable-fu...

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#69

Post by illumen »

kuschku wrote: post #56
[deleted] wrote: post #52

[deleted]

Actually, the "someone comes in from the right" is already there, the right-national has almost 14% of the population behind it now, with more people being able to "imagine voting for them". And with them saying things like "Yes, there is a problem with the refugees from Syria, sadly, the concentration camps are currently closed" it’s getting a bit scary.

The AfD [0] has gotten votes mostly from the CDU. But they're still below 7.5% in latest polls from about 3.8% in 2014. The green party even has more than them.

It does seem much of that is a protest against the policies of CDU. These people would rather immigrants freeze it seems.

If an election was called now, then a left coalition would probably get in, since CDU and AfD are unlikely to team up.

[0] http://pollytix.eu/pollytix-german-election-trend

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#70

Post by understand17 »

raverbashing wrote: post #18
frooxie wrote: post #10

I'm glad that Germany now has the option of stellarating the monsters they capture. EDIT: On reading further, it turns out I may have misinterpreted the article.

Even better if they make a portable version and call it Mr. Fusion

ok!
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