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Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

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Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#131

Post by vidarh »

kuschku wrote: post #130
vidarh wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can support that goal by offering immunity to whistleblowers.

Well, offering immunity to everyone who just followed orders is an important part of doing so. And it makes in this case everything a lot easier.

Offering immunity to everyone who just followed orders is far more drastic than offering immunity specifically only to those who actually takes the step of whistleblowing before the issue becomes known.

The former creates no incentive to be a whistleblower - it just takes away one of the risks of doing so. The latter creates a strong incentive to be the first to report something.

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#132

Post by fanf2 »

drjesusphd wrote: post #117
kuschku wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A tokamak is basically an AC transformer, with the plasma acting as one of the windings.

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#133

Post by DennisP »

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…

If the only reason they won't be net positive is that they're not using tritium, that would be a huge win.

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#134

Post by nerdy »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #90
balabaster wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude... refactor that shit. There is no place in today's development world that a 1500 line function is okay :P

When was the last time you've seen pure Assembly? Also, JavaScript namespacing shenanigans & stuff... :P.

I make 3rd party/unsanctioned mods for video games in my free time, which involves plenty of Assembly :)

Re: Germany is turning on its monster stellarator

#135

Post by eru »

jpadkins wrote: post #101
saalweachter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5-10 years is the classic naive/huckster estimate. 30-50 years is the respectable man's "I have no idea" estimate for anything.

We used to build cathedrals that took 3 generations of masons. Imagine working on a design that your granddaughter would see the launch of...

Look at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. They started building in the 1880s, and it's still going on.
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