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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

#91

Post by hyperbovine »

Jach wrote: post #51
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…

In 1976 a plan for how much funding over how much time was made to get fusion ready. This graph shows the possible paths, as well as the actual level of funding, and is a great explanation for why fusion seems to always be x decades away: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusi...

This graph precisely illustrates my point. Let's conservatively posit that a workable fusion reactor is worth $2 trillion; the world spends many multiples of this on energy each year. The cost of acquiring fusion, according to its advocates, is equal to the integral of any one of the curves on this graph, which looks to be on the order of ~$100b. This is well within the range of investment attainable by private sources, just look at pharma. In other words, if fusion advocates are to be believed, the market is failing to the tune of few trillion dollars, roughly the GDP of the United Kingdom, and has been for decades. Now, markets are not necessarily efficient, but is this a believable scenario? I claim no.

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

#92

Post by [deleted] »

nine_k wrote: post #44
adrianN wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If confinement is easier in a large machine, why are not very large machines being built? If this is economically infeasible, then again, building piecemeal may be better, in the same way as taking a credit and paying interest on it might be better if you can't secure the upfront sum anyway.

[deleted]

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

#93

Post by mpweiher »

gmueckl wrote: post #57
jerf wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Stellerator, or any of its descendants, turn out to be the answer to practical fusion, it would have been contingent on vast quantities of computational power being available cheaply. It does not matter how much money you poured into your Stellerator project in 1970, you could never have built the 7-X, because there would have been no way to produce that design in the first place. Personally, I think one of th…

Uhh... are you aware that the 7-X design was computed in the late 80s? It was just an enormous challenge to build this thing. Things like building and validating the field coils required a lot of effort and some novel approaches that they had to come up with along the way.

> 7-X design was computed in the late 80s?

Source for that?

Looking at the German Wikipedia entry, the HELIAS method was invented in the late 80s. I don't see anything about the 7-X design actually having been computed back then. In fact, even the 2002 experiment Wendelstein 7-AS wasn't fully optimised.

Also, Tokamaks were invented in the 1950s. JET started operating in 1983. ITER was proposed in 1987. Given even just a little bit of path-dependency, there really wasn't any realistic overlap.

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

#94

Post by cygx »

nine_k wrote: post #44
adrianN wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If confinement is easier in a large machine, why are not very large machines being built? If this is economically infeasible, then again, building piecemeal may be better, in the same way as taking a credit and paying interest on it might be better if you can't secure the upfront sum anyway.

If confinement is easier in a large machine, why are not very large machines being built?

Money and politics. You might want to take a look at the original logo of the ITER project: https://www.iter.org/img/resize-900-90/www/content/com/Lists...

The Soviet Union collapsed, and the US pulled out of the project in 2000, rejoining only in 2006. This necessitated a down-sizing of the original design.

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

#95

Post by DesiLurker »

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?

Dont forget about the advances in superconductor tech happened over last few decades. Especially with High tesla superconductors possible due to new materials like REBCO tapes have been a great enabler. so much so that the ITER is design locked to use the older tech and cannot easily upgrade to the latest materials. Prof dennis whyte of MIT ARC project actually had a slide explaining the impact of max magnet strength on the containment design and overall cost of the project.

My key takeaway from this is that market/capitalism are really good at finding the optimal solution to an engineering problem using the currently available tech, however, its not so much for cases where you need the enabler tech also to be invented. IMHO this is where govt needs to step up and bring all the necessary pieces in the realm of possibility. after this private business can pick it up and optimize.

on a different note, its really amazing that they can maintain superconductors at -100 F just a few inches from a plasma at 100M F.

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

#96

Post by 08-15 »

antocv wrote: post #30
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.

Molten salts are hot!

SCNR. Seriously though, molten salts are great heat transfer media, a bit like water, just at higher temperature and still low pressure. They are also completely immune to radiation damage, which is a big deal if you have 14MeV neutrons flying around and something has to stop them. Chemistry in molten salts is also interesting. Things can be extracted (say, into a molten metal phase) or precipitated, and some reactions just happen at 600 degrees while they need platinum and palladium catalysts at room temperature. What's not to love?

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

#97

Post by ChuckMcM »

bassman9000 wrote: post #74
ChuckMcM wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is odd that you mention this, unless your name is Karl and were at lunch last Wednesday :-), because it came up as something that companies with big cash hoards might actually be thinking about. Consider the notion that at some point a feasible fusion power plant design becomes "known". Then its a question of money to build one or two or 10. And a company like Google or Apple, with a large cash hoard could jump in…

The conversation came up because I was trying to fathom why a company would sit on billions of dollars when they could make more billions with it They already are, in the cheapest, riskless way possible: those massive cash stashes are sustaining, or even boosting, their valuations. When a company grows too big, it's in its best interest, as in investors best interest, not to spend a few billions on an initiative that…

Ah but cash is dangerous, in a proxy fight it can be used to fund a leveraged buyout. Harder to do with various share classes restricting voting rights but even so.

Consider SpaceX, its a growing business that took what, 10 billion in capital? That is below the 'material' threshold for some of these companies holding 100 to 300 billion dollars in cash equivalents.

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

#98

Post by dvh »

lifeformed wrote: post #27
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…

I think they would better spend their money on Elysium-style refuge. Fewer people means they wouldn't even need fusion, solar, wind and hydro would be enough.

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

#99

Post by chiefalchemist »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #82
theresistor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the opposite. Achieving fusion power is so critical to the long term sustainability of human technological civilization that we cannot afford to put all of our eggs in one basket, and hope that we picked the right one.

Fair enough. And I agree. However, to be clear, that's __not__what this article says. Per the quote I pulled.

Down voted __again__ for stating a fact. Only on HN. And I thought CNN was bad.

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

#100

Post by wuliwong »

olau wrote: post #33
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?

It sounds like you think fusion would be a great alternative source of energy since you're comparing it to fossil fuel exploration. However, this is not necessarily true. It not only has to work, it also has to be economical and not have significant drawbacks. I think that's very much up in the air. Compare it to fission - we know how to build those power plants, but it's just so damn hard that it's too expensive, co…

I agree. I hear the comments about a lack of funding but to me it isn't necessarily a lack of vision from politicians and businessmen. I have a Ph.D. in physics and even worked for 6 months full-time in the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab as an undergraduate and I still hav mixed feelings about fusion power, particular vs other non-fossil fuel options.
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