ITER Live: Start of Machine Assembly
1–10 of 14 posts
Re: ITER Live: Start of Machine Assembly
#2I recall multiple conflicting stories about how this is the future and how this is waste of money on a ill conceived giga-project.
I also recall a skunk works reactor that takes radically different approach (smaller reactors, instead of big) and was supposed to have results if few years.
[2014]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458339
Then there are new stories about skunk works being on track.
https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/lockheeds-skunk-works...
Re: ITER Live: Start of Machine Assembly
#3I recall multiple conflicting stories about how this is the future and how this is waste of money on a ill conceived giga-project. I also recall a skunk works reactor that takes radically different approach (smaller reactors, instead of big) and was supposed to have results if few years. [2014]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458339 Then there are new stories about skunk works being on track. https://aviationw…
IIRC, when ITER was conceived, it wasn't a waste of money. They just chose a conservative development path that was expensive but very likely achievable. Technology and theories have since advanced that might leapfrog it, but the project has still contributed a great deal to our understanding of fusion and the engineering required to produce it.
Relevant talk by one of the MIT professors working with Commonwealth Fusion Systems:
Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion? - Prof. Dennis Whyte (2016) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4
Timeline (in case you want to skip over some parts):
00:01:00 - introducing Dennis Whyte, MIT department head for nuclear science
00:04:24 - presentation starts
00:06:00 - identifies breakthrough with REBCO magnets
00:07:25 - explains deuterium-tritium fusion
00:12:30 - basic metrics for reactor performance
00:17:15 - energy output of other previous fusion experiments
00:19:00 - examines ITER and the problems of its approach
00:22:00 - problems solved by high energy magnetic fields
00:28:15 - full scale reactor concept, teardown of REBCO magnets
00:37:00 - design limits and margins
00:39:00 - fixes plasma instabilities found in weaker magnetic chambers
00:40:00 - maintainability, lifespan, component replacement
00:45:00 - solution to neutron damage and energy capture
00:50:30 - cost and profitability
00:54:00 - full graph of field strength vs reactor scale (and thus funding requirements)
01:01:50 - Q&A
01:30:00 - question about the biggest risks
Re: ITER Live: Start of Machine Assembly
#4All the while, we have the new company formed out of the work of the SAFIRE project that uses self-organizing plasma fields that makes traditional tokamaks look entirely stoneage.
Not only are they doing fusion at a tiny fraction of the power, they're doing it with a much much much smaller system that is producing heavier elements out of thin air while having started as just a "sun in a bottle" research system to understand how the Sun interacts with the electromagnetic field of the galaxy (and why the 1960s nuclear fusion model of the Sun explains nothing of the past 50-60 years of observations published since).
They did it on basically a shoestring budget, too.
Re: ITER Live: Start of Machine Assembly
#5I recall multiple conflicting stories about how this is the future and how this is waste of money on a ill conceived giga-project. I also recall a skunk works reactor that takes radically different approach (smaller reactors, instead of big) and was supposed to have results if few years. [2014]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458339 Then there are new stories about skunk works being on track. https://aviationw…
IIRC, when ITER was conceived, it wasn't a waste of money. They just chose a conservative development path that was expensive but very likely achievable. Technology and theories have since advanced that might leapfrog it, but the project has still contributed a great deal to our understanding of fusion and the engineering required to produce it. Relevant talk by one of the MIT professors working with Commonwealth Fus…
> Technology and theories have since advanced that might leapfrog it
With "might" being the operative word. As long as none of these new approaches has achieved viable fusion (so, more power out than in) I think it's not a bad idea to just continue with the less radical plan that will probably work, even if it is slower.
Re: ITER Live: Start of Machine Assembly
#6How far behind? How much over budget?
Re: ITER Live: Start of Machine Assembly
#7Does this mean we are only 10 years away from fusion?
Re: ITER Live: Start of Machine Assembly
#8All the while, we have the new company formed out of the work of the SAFIRE project that uses self-organizing plasma fields that makes traditional tokamaks look entirely stoneage. Not only are they doing fusion at a tiny fraction of the power, they're doing it with a much much much smaller system that is producing heavier elements out of thin air while having started as just a "sun in a bottle" research system to und…
I really wanted to believe in the SAFIRE project, but it looks like an embarrassing scam, unfortunately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmVdPgkudC8
Really hope I get proved wrong in the next years.
Re: ITER Live: Start of Machine Assembly
#9All the while, we have the new company formed out of the work of the SAFIRE project that uses self-organizing plasma fields that makes traditional tokamaks look entirely stoneage. Not only are they doing fusion at a tiny fraction of the power, they're doing it with a much much much smaller system that is producing heavier elements out of thin air while having started as just a "sun in a bottle" research system to und…
Stoneage for sure but probably more realistic.
Anyway, in my opinion it's not a waste of money. Besides the potential scientific results which will always be interesting, manufacturing skills are evolving this way as well.
I don't know so much about SAFIRE and which state it reached, but Wendelstein 7-X and ITER are the two projects I'm confident with, and I don't see them as competitors but both bringing more knowledge about fusion.
Re: ITER Live: Start of Machine Assembly
#10All the while, we have the new company formed out of the work of the SAFIRE project that uses self-organizing plasma fields that makes traditional tokamaks look entirely stoneage. Not only are they doing fusion at a tiny fraction of the power, they're doing it with a much much much smaller system that is producing heavier elements out of thin air while having started as just a "sun in a bottle" research system to und…
I really wanted to believe in the SAFIRE project, but it looks like an embarrassing scam, unfortunately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmVdPgkudC8 Really hope I get proved wrong in the next years.
Yeah, I don't get the point of those kinds of Youtube videos. If they think its a "scam", they should publish a paper on the inability to replicate of the results.
Instead its just some weird reaction video by some rando on Youtube that has not cited his sources. The irony of this is, he accuses them of doing the same thing EU proponents have accused modern Cosmology of doing: filtering out anything that doesn't fit their narrative, even when its established science in another field for the past few decades.
The SAFIRE guys aren't cosmologists, they're approaching the problem of the Sun the same way a plasma physicist would. Literally, they are following in the footsteps of Hannes Alfvén (the guy that got the Nobel for magneto-hydrodynamics), and Kristian Birkeland (nominated for a Nobel seven times due to his work in this field), and continuing their work.
The people who claim that plasma physics has no place in space, in solar/planet interactions, in galactic/star interactions, etc are, frankly, insulting both the Nobel committee and the work of NASA for the past 30+ years. They're on the same delusion spectrum that flat earthers are on, just not quite to that extreme.
I'm not saying SAFIRE is right, but SAFIRE isn't even saying they're right. They've literally asked for other labs to replicate their results because they've found a novel way of replicating the Sun's activity in their lab, and they need to rule out measurement error in ways they haven't already. They are seeking replication and validation, something scammers don't do.