Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Revamped German stellarator should run longer, hotter and compete with tokamaks

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 157 posts

Re: Revamped German stellarator should run longer, hotter and compete with tokamaks

#71

Post by ForHackernews »

pfdietz wrote: post #59
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that 50 years is a reasonable timeframe to give fusion the possibility of delivering results. But I agree with you, it's pretty much impossible that anything will come out of fusion in the coming 10-15 years, despite the publicity we keep hearing lately.

We've already given it more than 50 years.

Solving hard engineering problems is expensive. You have to put lots of money into it. Say, 30% of the funds invested by VCs in jitney cabs and collectable JPEGs.

Re: Revamped German stellarator should run longer, hotter and compete with tokamaks

#72

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

SapporoChris wrote: post #54
cl0ckt0wer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"our need will be the real creator" - Plato

"Necessity is the mother of invention" Proverb of unknown origins. Earliest reference Aesop's fable. I've been quoting the proverb for a long time. Thank you for the quote, I feel it says basically the same thing but I appreciate the different wording and that it is attributed to Plato.

"Laziness is the mother of invention."

- Forgot where I heard that. It may have been a comedian.

Re: Revamped German stellarator should run longer, hotter and compete with tokamaks

#73

Post by PicassoCTs »

NKosmatos wrote: post #28

Just like COVID helped the mRNA/CRISPR technology evolve and come faster and closer to us, with the potential for many more usages in various diseases, I hope that the ongoing/coming energy crisis will help all nuclear fusion technologies tokamak/stellarator become real. We’re still a few years away from having them in actual power plants and a few decades away from solving our energy problems for every, but I hope w…

No post body was provided.

Re: Revamped German stellarator should run longer, hotter and compete with tokamaks

#74

Post by lettergram »

NKosmatos wrote: post #28

Just like COVID helped the mRNA/CRISPR technology evolve and come faster and closer to us, with the potential for many more usages in various diseases, I hope that the ongoing/coming energy crisis will help all nuclear fusion technologies tokamak/stellarator become real. We’re still a few years away from having them in actual power plants and a few decades away from solving our energy problems for every, but I hope w…

> Just like COVID helped the mRNA/CRISPR technology evolve and come faster and closer to us, with the potential for many more usages in various diseases, …

I don’t think it’s actually evolved all that much. They just deployed something that wasn’t really tested. I recall learning about theoretical mRNA vaccines back in 2014-2019 (granted they were killing the hosts and stuff). As someone who’s studied bioengineering (university, reading papers and some projects) I’d really like to see 10-15 years of usage before we consider anything with the tech.

I for one home we don’t do the same thing with fusion. There is an amazing amount of risk as technology has expanded, we have to be far more cautious.

Re: Revamped German stellarator should run longer, hotter and compete with tokamaks

#76

Post by marcosdumay »

zasdffaa wrote: post #68
marcosdumay wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I'm not convinced fusion will ever be economically feasible Not on Earth. But put a good enough fusion reactor on a rocket, and you can reach neighboring stars in 3 or 4 decades instead of the 15 one would expect for fission. (Of course, nobody is even sure reactors can get that good, but it does look possible.)

That is highly tangential to the issue of economic viability, and the energy crisis.

Economic viability only exists relative to an application.

And there is absolutely zero chance of fusion solving our current energy crisis, the odds for fission are already low enough. There is no point on speculating on that.

Re: Revamped German stellarator should run longer, hotter and compete with tokamaks

#78

Post by speeder »

davesque wrote: post #77

What's the theoretical advantage of the German stellarator over a tokemak? Seems like a complex design but I assume there must be a reason for the complexity.

I am complete layman here. Still from what I read the whole point of stellarator is to be same as tokamak except you use CAD to make it twist in the same way plasma naturally would twist, to make it easier to keep the plasma in the path you want.

Re: Revamped German stellarator should run longer, hotter and compete with tokamaks

#79

Post by sidkshatriya »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #47
sidkshatriya wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all the fast neutrons emanating from a fusion reactor (and the heavy confinement that it requires) I don't think a container ship would be a safe enough environment (threat of disaster at sea, constantly jostling which might affect plasma stability etc.). But yes, there is a potential for a lot of space applications and other things we haven't thought of yet.

what kindof disaster could be relevant in this context? If the ship sinks, the minor radioctivity of a shutdown reactor will not be relevany Technically, container ships are enormous and can use ballast water for shielding. I can't judge the ecobomics ofcourse

Well fusion reactors are likely to cost a huge amount of money when they do become operational. No point having them sinking in a storm. Probably just safer to charge a huge battery and put it on a ship (if you don’t want to use fossil fuels). Avoids a lot of unfoseen commercial risk. Even though you could use water for shielding, the metal container and other things that hold the reactor would be highly radioactive and brittle due to continuous neutron bombardment. You wouldn’t want that to be lost at sea spewing radiation (even though the reactor itself would shutdown automatically).

Re: Revamped German stellarator should run longer, hotter and compete with tokamaks

#80

Post by pfdietz »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #17
sidkshatriya wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've understood from previous discussions (don't know much about plasma physics though): It is a multistep challenge. Step 1: Figure out how to get a self-sustaining fusion reaction. Step 2: figure out how to extract the energy in a useful, safe, non-destructive (to the reactor) way. Doing Step 1 alone is very difficult so the've postponed Step 2 to the future. I may be wrong though.

I would imagine since, combined, we're spending tens of billions of dollars on Fusion research - someone must have some ideas for step 2, right?!

There are currently major unsolved problems with step 2.

https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/research.seas.ucla.edu/dist/d/...

Post reply on HN