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ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

bbc.co.uk

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Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#11

Post by d_silin »

usui wrote: post #7

I am going to need some help on this one as my knowledge on physics is limited: What makes scientists believe that the solution to nuclear fusion power is only a matter of scale? I desperately want nuclear fusion to work because nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone. It's also 500% more important…

Scaling factor in fusion is pretty well understood science. Last JET tokamak was the experiment that confirmed this part.

Fusion science has evolved to the point where it is necessary to bring the fusion engineering on the same level.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#13

Post by petschge »

usui wrote: post #7

I am going to need some help on this one as my knowledge on physics is limited: What makes scientists believe that the solution to nuclear fusion power is only a matter of scale? I desperately want nuclear fusion to work because nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone. It's also 500% more important…

The simple answer is that the surface only goes up a factor of 4 if you increase the radius by a factor of 2, but the volume goes up by a factor of 8. So the ratio of (energy containing) volume to surface (where energy get's lost) if getting better with increasing size.

There is of course much more complicated answers, all the way up to full-device simulations using gyrokinetic codes like Gene or Gkeyll that take millions of core hours and predict that ITER will work (and that predict performance of existing devices correctly).

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#14

Post by The_rationalist »

jansan wrote: post #4
iandanforth wrote: post #3

Is Iter aiming for breakeven or net plus energy?

One objective is a Q value of greater than 10 for a moment. And a steady Q value of 5. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Objectives

Maintain a fusion pulse for up to 8 minutes What does this mean?

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#15

Post by spacephysics »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #2

I think fusion is cool, but I also think it distracts from more important and promising approaches to clean power. No one has ever demonstrated a self-sustaining, net positive fusion reaction. It will probably take >30 years to make this technology cheap , safe and reliable and another >20 years to deploy it at scale. We don't have 50 years to wait on clean energy, we need it today. We should be focusing our attentio…

I agree we should look at multiple possible paths for renewable energy, but to say that they shouldn’t work on this, is a bit far fetched.

This assumes the researchers working on fusion can work on the other renewable energies, when that’s typically not the case with highly specialized fields. Further, estimating the time it takes for advancement with the described time magnitude is a frivolous pursuit, if you put any weight behind it. Within 5 years, sure let’s predict. But at 30 years, now we’re talking a bit too far into the future. It’s much harder to guesstimate what will occur from now to then.

Lastly, if we assume it will take 30 years to produce a working model, then that only assumes we’re working on it today. If we could, let’s say, divert all scientists away from fusion research onto other renewables, the 30 year estimate would be perpetually pushed until we start working on it once more. Let’s have people who are passionate about their field pursue as many paths to solving the energy crisis as possible. We could have a breakthrough sooner than 30 years, which I would place money on.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#16

Post by AQuantized »

StanAngeloff wrote: post #6

Some years ago, likely around 2010, I had the priviledge to visit Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (it was called UKAEA Culham back then). During my visit, we were shown around various experiments and after a long evening, we had the opportunity to attend a Q&A with the staff. The question everyone wanted to know the answer to was When will it be ready? The scientists and everyone else involved honestly thought 10 yea…

About 15 years ago my physics professor told me fusion would always be 20 years away, so at least we're getting progressively shorter times away.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#17

Post by kzrdude »

StanAngeloff wrote: post #6

Some years ago, likely around 2010, I had the priviledge to visit Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (it was called UKAEA Culham back then). During my visit, we were shown around various experiments and after a long evening, we had the opportunity to attend a Q&A with the staff. The question everyone wanted to know the answer to was When will it be ready? The scientists and everyone else involved honestly thought 10 yea…

People underestimate time. I'll do something very HN and compare with software. When did Git get really good? Finished, mainstream? It took a good ten years for it to be really established. And that's just for a simple hack of an idea, that needed this time to be fleshed out.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#18

Post by cinntaile »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #2

I think fusion is cool, but I also think it distracts from more important and promising approaches to clean power. No one has ever demonstrated a self-sustaining, net positive fusion reaction. It will probably take >30 years to make this technology cheap , safe and reliable and another >20 years to deploy it at scale. We don't have 50 years to wait on clean energy, we need it today. We should be focusing our attentio…

Can you explain why and how this distracts from renewables? I don't get how you reached this conclusion.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#19

Post by qwertox »

mbgerring wrote: post #12

> The facility could see plasma generated in the machine - a notional start to operations - shortly after the assembly phase ends in 2025. So you're saying it's... 5 years away?

The generation of plasma is approximately 5 years away.

Around 2035 the first experiments with tritium will me made, at least that's the expectation.

And even then ITER isn't designed to be a usable reactor, it's just a prototype. They intend to build a real one afterwards, and even that one will be a demonstration reactor.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#20

Post by nharada »

usui wrote: post #7

I am going to need some help on this one as my knowledge on physics is limited: What makes scientists believe that the solution to nuclear fusion power is only a matter of scale? I desperately want nuclear fusion to work because nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone. It's also 500% more important…

There's a good talk here about why ITER is so large: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk

The idea is essentially that to get the parameters needed to make net energy with tokamaks, you need either very strong magnets or a large device. At the time of ITER's design, they used the strongest magnets they could find and then made the thing big enough to get the energy gain they wanted.

The speaker of this talk argues that it's size that stalled progress in tokamaks, since they'd become so big that building them became a massive, multinational project.

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