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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

#31

Post by pueblito »

throwaway744678 wrote: post #26
spacephysics wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Your argument is sound, but the issue is also budget allocation: financial resources are not infinite, and we must choose how to allocate them.

That's a very good point, we need to allocate much more towards fusion R&D

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

#32

Post by throwaway744678 »

The_rationalist wrote: post #14
jansan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My understating of the issue is that one need to keep the plasma is the adequate state for 1. the reaction to occur (i reckon we can do that for a fraction of a microsecond or something) 2. make it self-sustaining (we're not here yet) 3. Obviously without producing an H-bomb. Neighbours might get unhappy.

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

#34

Post by ajakate »

AQuantized wrote: post #16
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.

Reminds me a little of this xkcd on the James Webb delays: https://xkcd.com/2014/

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

#35

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#36

Post by Certhas »

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…

It's simply not true that nuclear is the only way. Renewables plus methanization can definitely do it at a price not much above what we currently pay. It's not clear at all that nuclear is cheaper, though it would require less restructuring of infrastructure.

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

#37

Post by Avicebron »

Certhas wrote: post #36
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…

It's simply not true that nuclear is the only way. Renewables plus methanization can definitely do it at a price not much above what we currently pay. It's not clear at all that nuclear is cheaper, though it would require less restructuring of infrastructure.

I'm not familiar with how you are using methanization in this context. Are you referring to deliberately pumping methane into the atmosphere?

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

#38

Post by fabian2k »

nharada wrote: post #20
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 ar…

I wonder how much the possible magnet strength affects the design of a tokamak. There are very clear limits on the field strength you can achieve with classical superconductors, and I know e.g. in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance those limits had been almost hit maybe a decade ago or so. But very recently spectrometers based on new high-temperature superconductors have been delivered, so the technology seems to be far enough for actual production use now. I'm not sure how big the possible increase in field strength will be. Right now it's 23.5 Tesla for the largest NMR spectrometer with conventional superconductors compared to 28 Tesla for the new ones with high-temperature superconductors (actually it's a hybrid with high-temperature superconductors on the inside, and conventional ones on the outside), but I suspect there is more room with the new ones for higher fields.

It would be interesting whether the availability of better superconductors would change the design of a fusion reactor much, and allow significantly smaller ones.

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

#39

Post by andrepd »

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…

I'm also a fusion power fanboy but

>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

This is just not true, there's no way you can say this. Solar costs are going down massively. Hydro is dirt cheap already. So renewables can absolutely be part of an energetic transition in the near future, while fusion is at best many decades away. So while I think fusion energy has the potential to transform energy generation, and by extent everything about our life, it's wrong to assume renewables aren't probably our safest bet in the near future.

Also there's something amusing about "Here's my sure assessment. Anyway I checked the wiki page on fusion power and".

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

#40

Post by bawolff »

vosper wrote: post #29
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…

> 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 I assume by "energy crisis" you mean "how do we continue to generate energy while drastically decreasing climate effects"? Because if we're not worried about climate there's no looming energy crisis. There's plenty of oil, gas, and coal out there still. And…

> There's plenty of oil, gas, and coal out there still.

I was under the impression we only had ~100 years worth of oil left, just that its not talked about because climate is more pressing and normal ecconomic pressures will fix the problem if we run out of supply. Is that wrong?

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