Is ITER actually going to be able to achieve a net energy positive reaction?
>>7914801
Of course it will... eventually
A better question to ask would be "when". In which decade? (Or century lel)
>>7914801
wendelstein, look it up
>>7914811
ITER. It's a specific reactor.
Might never work. Might blow up. Might get its funding cut.
Project was launched in 1985. Now they're saying first plasma in 2025. Maybe.
>you're a keen young fusion researcher
>26 years old with a fresh PhD
>you get onboard with the new project that's going to build the first net-power fusion reactor
>the day is finally here
>you turn it on
>but just to test it
>there's no real fusion fuel in it
>you're 66 years old
>you're not scheduled to put tritium in it for more 7 years
>...on a delay-plagued project
>it's D-T day
>you're 78 years old
>you're really going to do it, you're going to try for net power fusion
>you turn it on
>magnetic reconnection
>the plasma burns a hole in the chamber
>the cryocooling system is breached
>a spot on containment coil goes ohmic
>liquid helium becomes gaseous helium
>it all explodes
>you're at a safe distance but
>heart attack
>as you die
>you bitterly
>think
>of
>fusion
>>7915431
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
>the inventor of television disagrees
>>7915682
wow I did not know this existed
how are fusors not a thing? are they useless? they look so beautiful
and whats the difference between a stellerator, a tokamak, a polywell and a fusor?
>>7915737
>how are fusors not a thing? are they useless?
Pretty useless, unless you really need to make your own low-end neutron source.
>whats the difference between a stellerator, a tokamak, a polywell and a
>fusor
Spherical electrostatic confinement with solid inner electrodes that the ions bonk into, eroding the electrodes and losing the plasma energy. Very inefficient. Could never be a net energy source.
>polywell
Fusor with a virtual inner electrode made by using a bunch of magnets to trap a cloud of electrons. Might work for net energy, but kind of fringe. Hoped to produce net energy at smaller scales (and therefore be cheaper to develop and use) than pure magnetic confinement because it's trying to compress the plasma toward a 0-dimensional point rather than a 1-dimensional ring or line.
>tokamak
Toroidal (donut-shaped) magnetic confinement. Straightforward construction thanks to its simple shape, but you're basically trying to trick the plasma into containing itself and a torus isn't an inherently stable configuration for that. Might work for net energy, if they can solve the plasma instability problems, but they're a real bitch and each time you fuck up it can damage the reactor.
>stellerator
Fancy-pants tokamak that's a bitch to build but solves the plasma instability problems with an inherently stable containment field geometry. Would almost certainly work for net energy, if someone builds one big enough.
>>7914801
No, probably not.
Maybe in another 20 years.
It's good that they keep trying. The scientists, engineers and industrial mechanics are doing great work furthering the vast expanse of mankind's understanding of how fusion power doesn't work.
I hope if they do develop sustainable fusion they don't use it to fucking turn a steam turbine designed in the 50's.
>>7915859
>I hope if they do develop sustainable fusion they don't use it to fucking turn a steam turbine designed in the 50's.
Why? The Rankine Cycle is very efficient.
>>7915851
Whats the problem with Wendelstein then? Not big enough for net energy or have they just not tried it yet?
>>7914801
>Is ITER actually going to be able to achieve a net energy positive reaction?
Yes, it will work, there is no doubt about it. As I often repeated, the reactor is big enough for that, and by a large margin. The problem was to find the money to build it (but thankfully the EU seems very serious about it lately) and to develop the technology (such cooling systems, divertors, lithium blankets, etc), the problem is NOT the physics behind the reactor.
https://fusion.gat.com/iter/iter-ga/images/pdfs/IPB%20pdfs/IPB_01_Overview_Intro.pdf
https://fusion.gat.com/iter/iter-ga/images/pdfs/IPB%20pdfs/IPB_02_Conf%2BTransport.pdf
From my experience, most people complaining about fusion not going fast enough are generally liberal arts majors who have never computed an integral in their lives. It sure will never work if we simply shrug it off when it becomes too expensive.
Fusion works, get over it bitches.
>>7916700
>the problem is NOT the physics behind the reactor.
Bullshit. The plasma physics for a tokamak isn't solved. They're going in blind, hoping they can solve the problems once they can experiment on this scale.
>The problem was to find the money to build it
If that's the problem, then they're not building something useful. They're not the kind of people who can build something useful. Practical people would find ways to make it cheaply.
Nobody with any sense WANTS fusion power to be developed. That's why it's all being done by these bumblers who whine about not having enough money and spend billions of dollars and whole careers failing to generate power.
What does fusion power give you that fission doesn't? Reduction of radioactive waste and catastrophic failure potential. Okay. Well, what does that cost? Harder to build, doesn't scale down as well, increased weapon proliferation threat due to the larger neutron surplus. Oh. Why aren't we using more fission now? Too hard to build, doesn't scale down well enough, and the weapon proliferation threat is intolerable.
>>7916769
>t. liberal arts major
if any post-highscool education at all, that is.
>>7917020
>herp dee derpity doo
The option of fusion power, once developed, will be less desirable than the established option of fission power. This is obvious to anyone who looks at it seriously.
What special materials do you need for nuclear weapons? Natural uranium, lithium, deuterium, and an abundant neutron source to transmute the uranium and lithium into plutonium and tritium.
Which one of those things is hard to get? The neutron source.
What is a fusion power reactor? An abundant neutron source. The D-T fuel cycle already requires it to be set up with a multiplier and a breeding blanket. All you have to do is put uranium in the multiplier. This will make it a better multiplier, increase the energy output, and cause it to produce plutonium.
How would you stop this? Exactly the same way you stop people making plutonium in fission reactors: keep the number of reactors small, watch them constantly, be ready to go to war on short notice, and don't allow countries you don't trust to have reactors at all. So fusion power puts us in the same boat as fission power: either let everyone have nuclear weapons, or don't bother with it. If you prefer the former, then we could just use fission, which is far easier and less expensive.
Nobody halfway sane actually wants fusion power plants. Some people want to occupy naive manchildren with go-nowhere projects, others want to be involved in big-budget projects for profit or prestige, and some want to make grand gestures for the dumb masses.
>>7915681
ok I laughed
>>7914801
ITER will probably work, but it will never yield anything practical.
There just isn't enough tritium on earth for use in tokamemes
>>7917091
Funny how you're not specifying which parts are "outright wrong".
You know I'm right, and if you try to argue the facts, you're going to just end up looking stupid and unreasonable. But you don't like the truth and you're mad at me for pointing it out.
Sorry for offending your religious beliefs, but cleanpowerfusiongod isn't real. Big stupid government boondoggles and symbolic gestures are real.
>>7917094
>There just isn't enough tritium on earth for use in tokamemes
You've missed a key point: they make the tritium from the reaction of lithium with neutrons.
Each deuterium-tritium fusion reaction consumes a tritium nucleus and produces a very fast neutron. This single neutron can produce two tritium nuclei in one of two ways: by knocking a Li-7 nucleus apart without being consumed and then being consumed in a reaction with Li-6, and by undergoing a neutron-multiplication reaction with something like beryllium or lead (or uranium in a hybrid reactor) so there are two neutrons to react with Li-6.
Incidentally, the neutron/Li-6 reaction is exothermic, so this would produce a large fraction of the fusion plant's output.
This doesn't mean in practice that you can breed two tritium nuclei per D-T fusion, but it does mean you can breed more than one and produce a tritium surplus.
I'm no fusion power supporter, but keep your facts straight. This is me: >>7916769
>>7916769
>Bullshit. The plasma physics for a tokamak isn't solved. They're going in blind, hoping they can solve the problems once they can experiment on this scale.
You're talking out your ass. The problems they seek to solve with ITER is the reason it's being built, it's an experiment. Those problems are not plasma physics problems anymore, they're reactor problems. Engineering, not plasma physics.
>If that's the problem, then they're not building something useful.
Total non-sequitur.
>>7917141
>>>the problem is NOT the physics behind the reactor.
>>Bullshit. The plasma physics for a tokamak isn't solved. They're going in blind, hoping they can solve the problems once they can experiment on this scale.
>You're talking out your ass. The problems they seek to solve with ITER is the reason it's being built, it's an experiment. Those problems are not plasma physics problems anymore, they're reactor problems. Engineering, not plasma physics.
So you made an assertion, and I asserted that you're wrong, and now you asserted that, no, you're actually right.
I think the claim that plasma physics is all worked out and needs no further development is an extraordinary one, considering the number of theoreticians actively working in the area.
Could you perhaps link me to a source supporting your position that physicists no longer consider the plasma dynamics of tokomak reactors to be an interesting area of study?
>Total non-sequitur.
It was a statement, not a complete argument. I rather hoped anyone reading it would be able to work out for themselves why prohibitively high construction cost indicates strongly against a large, immobile power generator design being useful.
This is me: >>7917163
A few seconds of googling gave me this:
http://www.physique.upmc.fr/modules/resources/download/ufr925/Les_plasmas_a_upmc/dossier_journees_plasmas/journee_26_27_09_2012/Maget_2012.pdf
It's a few years old, but I don't think the situation has changed dramatically since then, and I believe this represents the mainstream of fusion physics quite well. Page 39 states that certain considerations of plasma physics will be fundamentally different in ITER than in previous tokamaks, leaving "open issues" of the plasma physics which will need to be studied and resolved in this novel regime outside of experimental experience.
My position is that they can't really start solving these problems until they build ITER.
>>7917163
I'm not the person you originally replied to.
>I think the claim that plasma physics is all worked out
Nobody claimed that. You're putting words in peoples mouths now. That's pretty cheap.
>It was a statement, not a complete argument.
The "complete argument" still doesn't justify it either. Hence it's a non-sequitur.
>>7917123
I admit that I didn't know about the Li-6 blanket, but it sounds more of a protective layer to prevent neutron activation with the added bonus of producing some tritium, not a major way of producing tritium. I'm also skeptical about how much of a surplus would be produced.
I'm all in for activating fertile materials and using these wasted neutrons, but that's more of a hybrid reactor rather than a pure fusion tokamak.
>I'm no fusion power supporter
Why the hell not?
>>7917188
>>I think the claim that plasma physics is all worked out
>Nobody claimed that. You're putting words in peoples mouths now. That's pretty cheap.
Are you going to niggle over details like whether I type out "the plasma physics of tokamak reactors" completely every time, or are you going to address the substance of what I'm saying?
The ITER project employs and consults with physicists, and will continue to do so after it starts operating. Indeed, the physicists are the ones most interested in what happens when they turn it on. They haven't handed it entirely off to the engineers because it's not entirely an engineering problem. There are still many physics problems to solve before a net-power tokamak can be built.
>>7917187
Open issues doesn't mean there aren't proposed solutions. It doesn't even say if they are showstoppers on the goals of ITER whether or not they are solved. The first simply says ITER is different and the second is an engineering remark. There's no context. You're claimed "they're going in blind", this doesn't support that.
Posting random shit isn't helpful.
>>7917199
>it sounds more of a protective layer
It isn't. Read up on it.
>>I'm no fusion power supporter
>Why the hell not?
I linked you to the post in which I explained my reasons.
>>7917206
>It doesn't even say if they are showstoppers on the goals of ITER whether or not they are solved.
If you're not going to take this discussion seriously, I'm not going to bother with it.
>>7917201
>Are you going to niggle over details
...which change the entire meaning to the quote. And then you simply reply to this strawman instead of what was actually said. Yes, I do have a problem with you completely changing the argument.
There is no substance to that argument because it's a stawman.
ITER does emply large numbers of physicists but if you knew anything about physics you would know when building an experiment physicists often act as the engineers. Yes there are unsolved plasma physics problems for ITER but that doesn't mean they stand in the way of ignition.
>>7917214
It doesn't say what you want it to say. It's as simple as that. I'm sorry I don't accept you posting random shit.
>>7917188
He's right though. The previous guy claimed that "Those problems are not plasma physics problems anymore, they're reactor problems", which is totally not the case.
>>7917209
Fusion ends the issue of nuclear waste, which is huge.
Weapon proliferation issues didn't stop more than a dozen countries to build nuclear reactors.
And nowdays, anyone with a budget on the range of 10-50M$ and enough technical knowledge can build a nuclear weapon with enough yield to wipe out a medium city. That's not the problem with fusion. It's just that nobody wants to bear the non-recurring engineering costs, which might run up to half a trillion or more.
>>7917237
>which is totally not the case.
Ok. So which plasma physics problems stand in the way of ignition?
>>7917248
Most plasma models are inadequate and only apply to a very specific set of conditions. Some domains, ie high pressure, high density plasmas are extremely under-researched.
When you have all these instabilities, currents and magnetic fields, you get a vast clusterfuck of conditions that make your model fail to predict what happens accurately.
I'm not a plasma physicist, but feel free to search the literature. It's sort of the same reason combustion simulations are really hard, lots of error propagations.
>>7917263
You're talking out your ass, that's literally the most vague answer you could come up with. The conditions in Tokamaks are perhaps the best understood because of decades of research with them.
>>7917020
>>7917079
>>7917091
>>7917141
The guy speaks complete truth, that we are flopping because we are trying to build the thing before completely understanding the theory. As he said they are virtually using trial and error which would be fine except that each fuckup costs millions. His other point that no real progress is made because nobody really cares or wants it is also spot on. Look how fast the Manhattan Project got done. This is government-tier research but the government doesn't seem to care much therefore it's relegated to relatively small research groups who are strapped for cash. It's clear that with current technology Fusion is just not worth the money because when something is worth money people are all over it.
why is noone talking about the superior divertors of w7x?
>>7917358
>Look how fast the Manhattan Project got done.
Building nuclear bombs isn't hard, though. Just middling expensive and hard to hide.
The Manhattan Project only cost the equivalent of $24 billion in today's money, and it produced two entirely different working bomb designs (gun type and implosion type) and three practical ways to produce the material for them (centrifugal enrichment, gas diffusion enrichment, and plutonium production reactor). They've already spent $14 billion on ITER alone, and it's nowhere near done. For comparison, the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier program is budgeted for $36 billion.
A "Manhattan Project effort" is a fairly modest effort by today's standards. Comparable to a quarter of the current funding of NASA for a half a dozen years. It was only 7 years between the discovery of nuclear fission and the first nuclear bomb, and only 3 years between the first critical fission reactor and the first plutonium bomb. They had to invent everything they were doing and figure out most of the physics!
If you didn't have to hide it, wouldn't get in trouble, and weren't too fussy about safety, you could probably get together a dozen smart guys, mortgage your houses for funding, and build a nuclear bomb from scratch within five years. You can look up all the basic ideas, nuclear data, and chemistry, and the physics and reactor engineering is all textbook stuff now.
Fusion power is genuinely hard. It was pursued sincerely in the days of wild-eyed nuclear power optimism (and in the days of rampant nuclear arsenal expansion, which D-D fusion sounded very useful for), before the realities of weapon proliferation control set in. There *were* Manhattan Project efforts in the 1950s. Practically every basic fusion reactor concept was invented then: inertial confinement, magnetic confinement, electrostatic confinement. Tokamaks and stellerators are 1950s ideas.
>>7917733
The basic trouble of fusion power is that it has to happen at very high temperatures, which means heat will escape from it very quickly, either destroying any reasonably-sized generator or cooling off the fuel too quickly.
So you either need to build a huge reactor to improve the surface-area to volume ratio, or you have to accept receiving your energy in the form of large explosions. You just can't scale it down and get more energy out than you put in.
After 60+ years and many billions of dollars worth of serious study, whole careers of geniuses spent on the problem, there's still no reasonable expectation of beating this problem, only hopes and chances. We can certainly do net-power fusion, in the form of sufficiently large pulses. This is not particularly hard and was achieved almost immediately (at much larger scales than necessary, since the goal was to surpass the destructive power of the pure fission bomb), and it could certainly be made into a power plant, just not on the scale we're used to, which is based on technologies that naturally work well at small scales and needed to be scaled up tremendously to meet power demands.
People working on gigawatt-scale nuclear fusion power are fighting the nature of the phenomenon, always certain that they'll overcome the complications somehow, without a clear justification for this belief. This half-century of disappointment is the fruit of hubris.
why wouldn't they build a stellerator instead and transfer their research knowledge to it? it's so much better.
>>7917733
If that were true Iran would have nuked Israel decades ago.
>>7917920
>If you didn't have to hide it, wouldn't get in trouble, and weren't too fussy about safety, you could probably get together a dozen smart guys, mortgage your houses for funding, and build a nuclear bomb from scratch within five years.
Iran has to hide it, and has trouble puttting together a dozen smart guys who want it to have the bomb.
Not that there aren't smart people in Iran, but it definitely lacks smart people who want its awful government to have nukes. They have to try to push that shit forward with third-raters.
It's too complex to be mass produced and mass maintained unless it were to become a priority.
>>7918068
That's because everytime they get some together they all conveniently die in car bombs
>>7917894
they already did that and Merkel is about to shut down ITER if the W7X proves itself
ITER is an outdated design and can't confine plasma as efficiently as it was thought to do.
>>7918640
Mossad sends their regards....
