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Successful second round of fusion experiments with Wendelstein 7-X

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Re: Successful second round of fusion experiments with Wendelstein 7-X

#11

Post by hyperbovine »

ttul wrote: post #3

Experiments like Wendelstein remind me that the only thing holding back fusion power is money for research like this. Every year, we spend billions on fossil fuel exploration because the return on investment is quick - just think about all the wells going in to extract shale oil. What if we collectively had the will to invest this much into fusion?

Err no, money is not "the only thing" keeping us from having fusion power. I can think of one other thing which is that it's damn hard to create stellar-core conditions inside of a small containment vessel on Earth. It's not obvious that throwing more money at the problem is going to change this. After all, fusion research has been funded in some form or another since the 1950s. I'll bet if you added up all the research dollars that have been expended on fusion, it would come to quite a tidy sum indeed. Despite this, we still have little to show for it.

Re: Successful second round of fusion experiments with Wendelstein 7-X

#12

Post by nine_k »

With fusion devices having trouble to confine the plasma for long times, I wonder if a massively-parallel fusion plant woud be feasible.

Let's assume that plasma destabilisation does not damage the device, and is a mundane event.

Build 10 or even 20 fusion devices (economy of scale!) feeding the common heat buffer, e.g. a large reservoir of a molten salt or metal. Feed conventional turbines off the heat of the heat tank. The tank evens out the input power jumps.

Now we can restart the fusion in every fusion device every so often, provided that restarting it is made a mundane operation, too. It, of course, takes a lot of electricity to pump into the magnets. Conveniently, we have a mighty power plant right here. Dumping the magnetic/electric energy from the magnets requires a huge sink. Luckily, we already have such a sink co-located.

Building the plant takes a massive investment. Luckily, the architecture allows to build it piecemeal, feeding the next added unit with the power of the already built units.

BTW the waste heat could be directly reused in some kind of chemical processing, like smelting, or maybe even synthesis of carbohydrate fuels from ambient carbon dioxide and water.

Re: Successful second round of fusion experiments with Wendelstein 7-X

#13

Post by nine_k »

saganus wrote: post #5

Does anyone have any idea how do they take pictures of the plasma? That seems quite hard considering the temperatures and the strong magnetic field.

I can imagine that this is just the neutron flux picture. The neutron streams should pass the walls pretty well (unfortunately), so registering it should not be hard.

Re: Successful second round of fusion experiments with Wendelstein 7-X

#14

Post by travisoneill1 »

ttul wrote: post #3

Experiments like Wendelstein remind me that the only thing holding back fusion power is money for research like this. Every year, we spend billions on fossil fuel exploration because the return on investment is quick - just think about all the wells going in to extract shale oil. What if we collectively had the will to invest this much into fusion?

Private money is coming in now:

http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-newly-formed-company-launch-nov...

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion...

Re: Successful second round of fusion experiments with Wendelstein 7-X

#16

Post by _ph_ »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #2

"Although Wendelstein 7-X is not designed to generate energy, the device is intended to prove that stellarators are suitable for use in power stations. With Wendelstein 7-X the intention is to achieve for the first time in a stellarator the quality of confinement afforded by competing devices of the tokamak type." This was at the very end. While competition is certainly a positive, this doesn't sound like they're int…

Wendelstein is clearly targeted at research leading to fusion. It is just, that the Wendelstein 7-X experiment is purely limited to reasearching plasma containment. Once this experiment is concluded successfully - and all the results are very encouraging, implementing actual fusion would be the purpose of a successor to 7-X.

Re: Successful second round of fusion experiments with Wendelstein 7-X

#17

Post by bicubic »

nine_k wrote: post #12

With fusion devices having trouble to confine the plasma for long times, I wonder if a massively-parallel fusion plant woud be feasible. Let's assume that plasma destabilisation does not damage the device, and is a mundane event. Build 10 or even 20 fusion devices (economy of scale!) feeding the common heat buffer, e.g. a large reservoir of a molten salt or metal. Feed conventional turbines off the heat of the heat t…

This doesn’t solve the fact that a single fusion pulse (all existing reactors are pulsed) currently consumes more energy than it produces.

Re: Successful second round of fusion experiments with Wendelstein 7-X

#18

Post by adrianN »

nine_k wrote: post #12

With fusion devices having trouble to confine the plasma for long times, I wonder if a massively-parallel fusion plant woud be feasible. Let's assume that plasma destabilisation does not damage the device, and is a mundane event. Build 10 or even 20 fusion devices (economy of scale!) feeding the common heat buffer, e.g. a large reservoir of a molten salt or metal. Feed conventional turbines off the heat of the heat t…

Confining the plasma is easier in a larger reactor, so you might be better off building one big reactor instead of 20 small ones.

Re: Successful second round of fusion experiments with Wendelstein 7-X

#19

Post by emilfihlman »

nine_k wrote: post #12

With fusion devices having trouble to confine the plasma for long times, I wonder if a massively-parallel fusion plant woud be feasible. Let's assume that plasma destabilisation does not damage the device, and is a mundane event. Build 10 or even 20 fusion devices (economy of scale!) feeding the common heat buffer, e.g. a large reservoir of a molten salt or metal. Feed conventional turbines off the heat of the heat t…

>BTW the waste heat could be directly reused

Yes, for district heating.

Re: Successful second round of fusion experiments with Wendelstein 7-X

#20

Post by adrianN »

hyperbovine wrote: post #11
ttul wrote: post #3

Experiments like Wendelstein remind me that the only thing holding back fusion power is money for research like this. Every year, we spend billions on fossil fuel exploration because the return on investment is quick - just think about all the wells going in to extract shale oil. What if we collectively had the will to invest this much into fusion?

Err no, money is not "the only thing" keeping us from having fusion power. I can think of one other thing which is that it's damn hard to create stellar-core conditions inside of a small containment vessel on Earth. It's not obvious that throwing more money at the problem is going to change this. After all, fusion research has been funded in some form or another since the 1950s. I'll bet if you added up all the resea…

Fusion research is chronically underfunded. We actually have made surprising progress despite basically not funding research at all.
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