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Wendelstein 7-X: Gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes

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Re: Wendelstein 7-X: Gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes

#191

Post by downvotetruth »

dylan604 wrote: post #179
mastersummoner wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've listened to that song hundreds of times yet somehow never realized it was Worf.

I didn't either, since I spelled it Warf! I never watched Star Trek (probably get my HN privileges revoked for that), but I did know that much. And then the Reading Rainbow guy's "whatever happened will happen again". I know the character's name is Geordie or whatever, but he didn't have the right accent for him to be a Geordie, so he will forever be Reading Rainbow guy instead.

Kunta Kinte is closer to his roots.

Re: Wendelstein 7-X: Gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes

#192

Post by QuantumG »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #139
cmplxconjugate wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My best friend works for them in diagnostic sub-systems development. The product is still a long way off delivery with many systems being actively designed and refined. Basically it’s busy but will still be quite a while (3-5+ years at least).

Makes sense. I would love to see a blog post with some progress pics, but I understand that building a fusion reactor is simply a slow process!

I expect they'd happily give access to anyone who wanted to cover it. Say, if someone wanted to do quarterly update videos, and had the appropriate skills, they'd only have to find the right person to ask, on the academic side. Hint.

Re: Wendelstein 7-X: Gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes

#193

Post by cyberax »

moffkalast wrote: post #120
mjfl wrote: post #67

The Stellarator is theoretically a superior design over the Tokamak, designed to neutralize the JxB force, where J is the current through the plasma and B is the magnetic field guiding the plasma around the device. By twisting the plasma into a shape where the curl of B (proportional to J) is parallel to B, i.e. a helix, the cross product is 0, and thus there are no net magnetohydrodynamic forces on the plasma.

The last time it was in the news I think naysayers listed the main caveat with stellerators as something along the lines of very low plasma density compared to tokamaks, which makes them unable to get anywhere close to the energy break even point.

The main problem with stellerators is their murderous complexity. You need to manufacture several thousand different parts with complicated 3D geometry, micron-level precision, and from unobtanium-class materials.

All while not being able to properly simulate the outcome on a computer.

Stellarators are superior to tokamaks, so an energy-positive stellerator will be about 2 times smaller than a tokamak. But we're still talking about a building-sized vacuum chamber.

That's why for ITER it makes sense to go with a simpler design to de-risk the main objective: building a burning plasma laboratory.

Re: Wendelstein 7-X: Gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes

#194

Post by nomel »

eternityforest wrote: post #76
themagician wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the geometry of things like this fascinating. We typically think in such simple shapes. I feel like my brain can do triangle, rectangle and maybe hexagons and that's about it. I remember when I finally understood radians enough to really understand circles and waveforms—I felt so enlightened. Like I actually remember the moment when it clicked. For years I was just "doing the work" without actually understandi…

Doing CAD design is really interesting. A lot of stuff is just 2.5D, extrusions of 2D sketches sitting on other 2D sketches. Then you accidentally make something truly 3D by intersecting things and realize you have no idea what you're looking at, couldn't imagine it if you closed your eyes, couldn't replicate it if you had a picture of the result and didn't know the 2D inputs that made it... and then you realize ther…

Coming from 3d sculpting to CAD was...eye opening. It really makes you realize how much of design constrained by the CAD tools, which are mostly constrained by manufacturability.

If true 3d printing* ever gets cheap, it'll be interesting to see how much form will be able follow function, rather than manufacturing cost.

* true 3d, as in overhang are allowed. Something like a cheap FDM is more 2.5d, since overhangs aren't allowed.

Re: Wendelstein 7-X: Gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes

#195

Post by jkestner »

eternityforest wrote: post #76
themagician wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the geometry of things like this fascinating. We typically think in such simple shapes. I feel like my brain can do triangle, rectangle and maybe hexagons and that's about it. I remember when I finally understood radians enough to really understand circles and waveforms—I felt so enlightened. Like I actually remember the moment when it clicked. For years I was just "doing the work" without actually understandi…

Doing CAD design is really interesting. A lot of stuff is just 2.5D, extrusions of 2D sketches sitting on other 2D sketches. Then you accidentally make something truly 3D by intersecting things and realize you have no idea what you're looking at, couldn't imagine it if you closed your eyes, couldn't replicate it if you had a picture of the result and didn't know the 2D inputs that made it... and then you realize ther…

CAD is hard! I think about this a lot as I'm doing a makerspace at an elementary school and adults think it needs a 3D printer, but what are kids going to print on it?

I think for me, the prerequisites for mastering CAD were 1) the practice I got visualizing 3D shapes so I could translate them into unambiguous mechanical drawings on paper (I swear, I'm not that old but my college was behind and we were the last class to actually do mechanical drawings with a pencil), and 2) having a procedural thought process from coding so that I could sequence the CAD operations to get where I want.

Re: Wendelstein 7-X: Gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes

#196

Post by cyberax »

greesil wrote: post #180
gregfjohnson wrote: post #178

Question for this knowledgeable group of people: Which fusion start-ups look promising? How does inertial confinement look? Any thoughts on the newly funded start-up Blue Laser Fusion? Any thoughts on one of the older players, TAE? How about Commonwealth? Helion? Others?

Zap Energy. They're at least thinking about co-opting existing infrastructure. https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newszap-energy-considers-re... Also their concept is just so weird, I love it. Worst case it works in space as a nuclear fusion drive :) My guess is that they're all going to tank without government money, unless by some miracle they have truly found some special low-cost of operation on the first try that…

Sorry, but this is bullshit. A steam turbine and a generator will be a _minor_ detail in the overall list of expenses building a fusion generator.

It's like saying: "We should build an airport here in the desert, because we'll be able to save on cutting the grass!"

Re: Wendelstein 7-X: Gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes

#197

Post by hinkley »

dylan604 wrote: post #179
mastersummoner wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've listened to that song hundreds of times yet somehow never realized it was Worf.

I didn't either, since I spelled it Warf! I never watched Star Trek (probably get my HN privileges revoked for that), but I did know that much. And then the Reading Rainbow guy's "whatever happened will happen again". I know the character's name is Geordie or whatever, but he didn't have the right accent for him to be a Geordie, so he will forever be Reading Rainbow guy instead.

He could have been the Jeopardy guy too.

Re: Wendelstein 7-X: Gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes

#198

Post by aeyes »

peteradio wrote: post #40
t0mas88 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For less than 15 billion euro you could buy enough solar to power a country the size of the Netherlands. With 5 billion to spend on batteries you might even make it through night time usage. Or in other words: Fusion is too expensive at this point to be useful.

How exactly is that calculated?

From listening to the episode I'd say that it isn't much more than a gut feeling derived from their experience building the experimental reactor, coming from the head of W7X I'd give it at least some credibility. Without sufficient political will this isn't feasible at all.

Re: Wendelstein 7-X: Gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes

#199

Post by fastball »

mastersummoner wrote: post #177
dylan604 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even just reading "mobius" and I cannot not hear the line from Warf "There is this theory of the mobious. It twists in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop. Time becomes a loop. Time becomes a loop." Of course, I'm referencing the Orbital track

I've listened to that song hundreds of times yet somehow never realized it was Worf.

Genuine question: why? That isn't even a song, it's just a vinyl record skipping for a minute and a half.

Re: Wendelstein 7-X: Gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes

#200

Post by cyberax »

gregfjohnson wrote: post #178

Question for this knowledgeable group of people: Which fusion start-ups look promising? How does inertial confinement look? Any thoughts on the newly funded start-up Blue Laser Fusion? Any thoughts on one of the older players, TAE? How about Commonwealth? Helion? Others?

I invested a non-trivial amount of my personal money into TAE (Tri-Alpha Energy). They periodically raise more funds, so it's not hard to get in.

From the overall perspective, Tokamak Energy also looks promising and I'm planning to invest.

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