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AI for real-time fusion plasma behavior prediction and manipulation

control.princeton.edu

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Re: AI for real-time fusion plasma behavior prediction and manipulation

#141

Post by CuriousCosmic »

rcxdude wrote: post #109
CuriousCosmic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah machine learning is more or less just very complex application of control theory techniques and notably it is usually done by people without formal control theory backgrounds. Super useful for control applications but obviously you really want to know control theory so that you aren't just using ML to throw darts at a wall.

More like optimization. Signal processing and control theory are basically the same maths with different applications, optimization is a bit different but has some overlap (especially with, e.g. optimal control techniques).

Eh to a certain degree. The architecture of the models is very much control theory and then the training is control system tuning (which of course is an optimisation problem like you said).

I would definitely agree that optimisation fits the definition in part but I find really only control theory covers that entire field of signal processing, optimisation, and decision making systems.

And importantly, because ML in some amount touches on all of those, control theory tends to fit better as it focuses so heavily on providing a comprehensive framework for reasoning about all of those elements together.

Re: AI for real-time fusion plasma behavior prediction and manipulation

#142

Post by PittleyDunkin »

rajnathani wrote: post #126
noname120 wrote: post #5

TIL: it's not just buzzwords. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Machine_learning

AI is not a buzzword, try beating Go without machine learning. Just ignore the whole enterprise speak, and you'll see a lot of really cool things which are possible almost only by means of neural nets.

Neural nets is a useful term that refers to a class of algorithms, though. "AI" doesn't appear to have any use beyond marketing to people who don't know what they want.

Re: AI for real-time fusion plasma behavior prediction and manipulation

#143

Post by lazide »

varjag wrote: post #100
ben_w wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in ~2004, when I was looking for a job for the industrial placement year of my degree, one of the options was a nut packing factory using computer vision systems. I was intrigued, but went for the job processing satellite images instead. Even well before that, ML is very closely related to statistics, so early practical applications would have been as simple as gathering data points on widget production and doin…

From what I remember reading at the time, most of industrial vision applications 20 years ago had very little to do with neural networks. Or even with ML in general, relying on bespoke feature detectors.

CNNs are the gold standard, and neural networks. Not ‘AI’ though.

Re: AI for real-time fusion plasma behavior prediction and manipulation

#144

Post by koe123 »

fragmede wrote: post #113
atomic128 wrote: post #12

Neutrons make hardware radioactive. Many on Hacker News fantasize about fusion (not fission) reactors. These fusion reactors will be an intense source of fast neutrons. All the hardware in a fusion reactor will become radioactive. Not to mention the gamma rays. If you have to deal with radioactive materials, why not just use fission? After 70 years of working with fission reactors, we know how to build and operate th…

> Many on Hacker News fantasize about fusion (not fission) reactors. These fusion reactors will be an intense source of fast neutrons. All the hardware in a fusion reactor will become radioactive. Not to mention the gamma rays. My personal ideology about fusion aside, it should be mentioned there is an easy fix for these radiation problems. What you do is put the fusion reactor in space, and collect the energy with s…

For such an approach I’ve always thought it seemed a risk to launch something like that into the air. E.g. what happens if the rocket explodes while taking off? Or something bad happens when in space? Will it rain nuclear material?

Re: AI for real-time fusion plasma behavior prediction and manipulation

#145

Post by lazide »

cossatot wrote: post #118
adrian_b wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Neutron bombardment due to fusion makes hardware radioactive for less than 10 years Very false. The current design target for fusion reactors is that the materials taken out of the reactor should become "low-level radioactive waste" after being stored for one hundred years . It is acknowledged however that it is likely that a small fraction of the materials will not satisfy the criteria for "low-level radioactive w…

There is a trade off between the half life and the intensity of radiation (i.e. the number of particle emissions per unit time), correct? So even if waste products are radioactive for thousand of years, they can be more easily handled than materials with a faster decay rate, even if they need to be stored for longer.

Not if total flux at the beginning is still higher - and some elements will get very high flux.

Re: AI for real-time fusion plasma behavior prediction and manipulation

#146

Post by lazide »

lupusreal wrote: post #36
atomic128 wrote: post #12

Neutrons make hardware radioactive. Many on Hacker News fantasize about fusion (not fission) reactors. These fusion reactors will be an intense source of fast neutrons. All the hardware in a fusion reactor will become radioactive. Not to mention the gamma rays. If you have to deal with radioactive materials, why not just use fission? After 70 years of working with fission reactors, we know how to build and operate th…

The only hard part of dealing with nuclear waste is the social aspect. If not for that, you can simply and safely dump it into the ocean. Water is excellent shielding and the amount of uranium/etc already dissolved in sea water is absurd. Put it in a stainless steel vessel first if you want most of it to decay before coming into contact with the water, but that's not even necessary.

They were referring to the Sun.

Re: AI for real-time fusion plasma behavior prediction and manipulation

#147

Post by varjag »

lazide wrote: post #143
varjag wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I remember reading at the time, most of industrial vision applications 20 years ago had very little to do with neural networks. Or even with ML in general, relying on bespoke feature detectors.

CNNs are the gold standard, and neural networks. Not ‘AI’ though.

Perhaps in 2024. Not in 2004.

Re: AI for real-time fusion plasma behavior prediction and manipulation

#148

Post by lazide »

varjag wrote: post #147
lazide wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CNNs are the gold standard, and neural networks. Not ‘AI’ though.

Perhaps in 2024. Not in 2004.

since the 90’s [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolutional_neural_network]

Re: AI for real-time fusion plasma behavior prediction and manipulation

#149

Post by DoctorOetker »

ben_w wrote: post #133
adrian_b wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of deuterium contained in a planet is a very small fraction of its hydrogen content. The amount of hydrogen contained in a medium-sized planet like Earth is extremely small in comparison with the amount of hydrogen contained in a star. The amount of energy that can be produced by fusion per deuteron is smaller than the amount of energy that is produced in stars per proton. With all these factors multiplied…

I am already aware of those things. On earth, there is an estimated 4.85×10e13 tonnes of deuterium; the energy density is 3.4x10e14 J/kg, giving a total yield of 1.649e31 joules. If you deleted the sun, this would be sufficient to maintain the current temperature of the Earth for ~9.5 million years: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%281.649×10%5E31+joules... At "merely" the level of current human power consumptio…

Do you have an opinion on using N2O (laughing gas) as an energy carrier?

2 molecules of N2O exothermically react to form 2 x N2 and 1 x O2 molecules, approximately the same composition as our atmosphere.

It is a very potent greenhouse gas, so quite disturbing on that front.

I've been making calculation for designing earth suits, where the suit replaces the home, internal showering, ventilation, heat recovery etc. Using N2O for heating looks rather promising because with fossil fuels one is forced to lose heat by inefficient heat exchange or forced to be exposed to the exhaust fumes; laughing gas decomposed is just warm atmosphere like air.

Re: AI for real-time fusion plasma behavior prediction and manipulation

#150

Post by meindnoch »

cesarb wrote: post #137
meindnoch wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mercury from burning coal is an extremely dilute pollutant. There's zero hope for capturing and containing it. Nuclear waste in contrast is literally just barrels/boxes of stuff. You can pick it up with a forklift and put it inside a sealed container for the next thousand years.

> Nuclear waste in contrast is literally just barrels/boxes of stuff. You can pick it up with a forklift and put it inside a sealed container for the next thousand years. You can't pick it up with a forklift to put it inside the sealed container. That would make the forklift (and its operator) radioactive. You can only use a forklift after it's already within the sealed container. See for instance this real-life vide…

You park the forklift in the storage container and seal it in. It's not that hard.

Anyway, the forklift example wasn't about literally picking up pieces nuclear fuel with a forklift. You obviously use the forklift to move the shielded container around which contains the nuclear waste. Nuclear fuel in general is always at least in a water bath, which shields the neutrons, so your forklift is going to be fine.

In contrast to nuclar fuel, you cannot use a forklift (or any other equipment) to feasibly pick out the evenly mixed mercury atoms from the ocean or the atmosphere that we put there from burning coal.

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