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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

#21

Post by cygx »

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…

Just for the record, you don't re-create stellar-core conditions with earth-bound fusion devices: We don't have the means, and the yield would suck.

Now, it is true that there's still fundamental research to be done until energy production via nuclear fusion becomes a reality, but we're reasonably confident that we could make the conventional approaches work.

However, that research is Big Science, and there's no political will to fund it properly (the graph that people like to cite is https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusi... ). ITER suffered from this as well, and W7-X basically only exists because German reunification happened, and the German government was looking for a big science project - any project - they could leverage to funnel money into East Germany. The plans for W7-X just happened to be ready at the right time.

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

#22

Post by scarejunba »

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…

You have not adequately argued that a Depth-First Search is superior to a Breadth-First Search here (or that the balance here is wrong). The value you describe is the goal value which influences the search strategy not very much.

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

#23

Post by madaxe_again »

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…

The total since research started is somewhere between $25bn and $50bn.

In the US alone, oil subsidies are >$400bn a year.

Here’s an article - about the same amount, annualised, is spent on Halloween costumes for pets.

http://www.fusionenergyleague.org/index.php/blog/article/hav...

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

#24

Post by gus_massa »

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…

Nobody knows if it's easier to build a commercial fusion power plant with the tokamak design or with the stellarator design or with another of less known competing designs or with another design that nobody has imagined yet.

Moreover, perhaps some of these design (including thetokamak and stellarator) perhaps are nice for a lab demo or a model plant that doesn't break even or a tiny scale plant, but they may not scale to a full power plant that can produce energy at a useful level. (That's why this is called "research", you don't know if it will work.)

So they are following the usual path that is allocating some money to a few competing groups with different ideas and hope that one of them will get something useful. The problem is how to distribute the money between the alternative approach, and the method is a mix of analysis of the proposals, the intermediate results, grantbaits, and politics.

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

#25

Post by sandworm101 »

cygx wrote: post #21
hyperbovine wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just for the record, you don't re-create stellar-core conditions with earth-bound fusion devices: We don't have the means, and the yield would suck. Now, it is true that there's still fundamental research to be done until energy production via nuclear fusion becomes a reality, but we're reasonably confident that we could make the conventional approaches work. However, that research is Big Science, and there's no poli…

>>> However, that research is Big Science,

Not all of it. The big science approach is a function of "pure" fusion research done from the assumption that containment/ignition only comes from magnetic fields and particle collisions. Some are approaching it from different directions, even using physical forces to trigger ignition (ie slamming the hydrogen with a big hammer). This isn't crazy stuff, just a more practical approach from people who see the problems from a different perspective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Fusion

https://www.canadianbusiness.com/technology-news/crazy-geniu...

"At the centre will be a sphere, three metres in diameter, inside which molten lead swirls at high speed creating a vacuum, or vortex, in the middle. Arrayed around it will be 200 to 300 pistons, each the size of a cannon. Firing in perfect harmony, they will create an acoustic wave that collapses the vortex at the very moment a plasma injector shoots hydrogen isotopes, the nuclear fuel, into it. If General Fusion has its physics right, the heat and pressure will ignite a fusion reaction that spins off countless neutrons which will heat the lead even more. Pumped through a heat exchanger, that hot lead will help generate steam just like a conventional thermal power plant."

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

#26

Post by empath75 »

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?

If they had a clear path to fusion and money were the only thing in the way, money would flow into it from every direction.

The problem is that nobody knows how to build a functioning reactor yet or if it's even possible to build a functioning reactor. It's very possible that we could throw trillions of dollars at this and still not figure it out.

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

#27

Post by lifeformed »

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?

A company like Apple has a quarter trillion in cash laying around, they could jump start fusion and control near-limitless energy in several decades. I wish there was more of a visionary drive among institutions for intellectual curiosity and pushing the boundaries of humankind. And yes, I know why they don't... shareholders business plans risk blah blah blah. Reality is just so BORING. Maybe one day we'll find a way to make life's ultimate pursuit something more interesting than an optimization function on some integer in a bank server.

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

#28

Post by cygx »

alexgmcm wrote: post #10
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…

From my classes some years ago IIRC the main benefit of the Stellarator was the lack of a plasma current which is no longer needed for plasma heating due to advances in neutral beam injection technologies. The plasma current seems to create some instabilities so we may be able to achieve better confinement with a device that doesn't have one. I would also agree with the other comments that we can't afford to put all…

The promise of stellarators is continuous operation, whereas tokamaks traditionally rely on inductive pulses for the two-fold purpose of confinement and heating.

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

#29

Post by cygx »

sandworm101 wrote: post #25
cygx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for the record, you don't re-create stellar-core conditions with earth-bound fusion devices: We don't have the means, and the yield would suck. Now, it is true that there's still fundamental research to be done until energy production via nuclear fusion becomes a reality, but we're reasonably confident that we could make the conventional approaches work. However, that research is Big Science, and there's no poli…

>>> However, that research is Big Science, Not all of it. The big science approach is a function of "pure" fusion research done from the assumption that containment/ignition only comes from magnetic fields and particle collisions. Some are approaching it from different directions, even using physical forces to trigger ignition (ie slamming the hydrogen with a big hammer). This isn't crazy stuff, just a more practical…

Hence my qualifier 'conventional approaches'. I wish those working on alternative approaches the best of luck, and some of the experiments look like a lot of fun (they get to blow things up - I've seen videos where plastering was raining from the ceiling of the control room ;)).

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

#30

Post by antocv »

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…

What is it with physicists and molten salt?

Every battery-tech, pro-nuclear, fusion related news have to have somebody chiming in "molten salt".

Just an observation.

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