"Designed in Hell" - really? Goddamn, I hate modern media outlets...
Worth pointing out that this phrase was the title of a linked 3rd party YouTube video, not from Business Insider Malaysia who did a reasonably decent job on the article.
Germany is turning on its monster stellarator
111–120 of 136 posts
Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator
#112A naive question - if this kind of reactors start producing more energy than consuming, what kind of fuel would they need? AFAIK the Sun slowly burns hydrogen into helium. Does it mean that stellarators would only need hydrogen to operate? That would be basically free energy.
Fusion reactors typically use some combination of Deuterium (heavy Hydrogen) and Tritium (super heavy Hydrogen), though sometimes also use Helium-3, Lithium or Boron.
Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator
#113Tell me that doesn't look like it came straight out of Akira... :)
Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator
#114Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator
#115A naive question - if this kind of reactors start producing more energy than consuming, what kind of fuel would they need? AFAIK the Sun slowly burns hydrogen into helium. Does it mean that stellarators would only need hydrogen to operate? That would be basically free energy.
Different isotopes of hydrogen:
Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator
#116Better article: http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2167675...
Thanks! The diagram at the top of that one made more sense than the entire OP article.
Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain what you mean by tokamaks "going against the physics"?
Tokamaks need, to contain the plasma, a continuously changing magnetic field. To create a continuously changing magnetic field, you need to continuously increase or decrease the current. The issue is that you can not turn up the current more than a maximum level, and you have to keep the direction the same (so you can’t switch between turning off and on). Stellerators instead solve this with complex geometry and the…
> Tokamaks need, to contain the plasma, a continuously changing magnetic field
Do you have a citation for this claim?
Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator
#118Assuming 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?
Here's a comment on that by Prof. Dr. Sibylle Günter, Max-Plank-Institut für Plasmaphysik (In German): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sweAVoaVB34 The current schedule is to have an operational power plant in 2050.
For those who don't speak German, that's the schedule for 2050:
ITER is supposed to show by 2027 a successful result to produce more energy than put in. Then they want to rework the design and start building an actual power plant around 2035, allow 10 years of construction, with being connected to the grid around 2050.
Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator
#119Every 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.
Actually, the US invested in both the National Ignition Facility for H-Bomb and Fusion research, and in ITER. Just because the US invests rarely in civilian research doesn’t mean they never do (compared to military research; compared to other countries they still invest a lot in civilian research)
NIF is weapons research, hence my point.
Congress won't fund a civilian space shuttle anymore but we spend billions for the military to have their own.
Like I said, if it's not about killing people, destroying things and spying on the world (including our own people) we pretty much won't spend money on it anymore here.
Germany did the investment beyond war.
Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator
#120A naive question - if this kind of reactors start producing more energy than consuming, what kind of fuel would they need? AFAIK the Sun slowly burns hydrogen into helium. Does it mean that stellarators would only need hydrogen to operate? That would be basically free energy.
Fusion reactors can use different fuels based on how good they are at containing plasma.
Right now, almost all research is directed towards the easiest possible fuel that requires least powerful containment, that is, Tritium (H3) and Deuterium (H2). Deuterium can be separated from water, and Tritium can be bred from Lithium using waste neutrons.
T+D is inexhaustible, but also quite expensive as both separation and neutron breeding are relatively expensive. However, as a fusion reactor consumes tiny amounts of fuel per unit of energy, a T+D reactor could potentially still run profitably.
If we get better at containing plasma, other fuel choices become available. Most important being Boron + Hydrogen, which would be inexhaustible, cheap, and produces minimal neutrons during fusion, making it easier on the equipment.
However, free fuel doesn't mean free energy. The cost of all nuclear power, including current fission power, is utterly dominated by the capital cost of equipment.