Inside ITER: "Preparing to Burn" (Steve Cowley)

[@andersolofsson2841]

simulations today must be a lot better than they were at 2012. I'd like to see a follow up on this.

[@FlashFizz]

ITER: • 3 years preparation • 10 years construction • 7 years of tritium-free experiments Total of 20 years before deuterium-tritium experiments begin. How long did the Manhattan Project last?

[@Mathview]

Brilliant accessible lecture on magnetic fusion energy development by Prof. Cowley. Highly recommended.

[@ChilapaOfTheAmazons]

Thank you for the great presentation!

[@Barskor1]

Low cost energy production in a closed loop vacuum system: You have a water tank filled with degassed deionized water, the water then goes through black pipes held in glassed-in insulated boxes so sunlight is captured to heat the water "it can get hot enough to boil at sea level" the piping then goes to a spray nozzle where the hot water instantly vaporizes the steam then goes to a turbine that drives an electrical generator, after the turbine the steam and any water that condensed in it travel at a downward angle through a pipe with a condensation coil around it to a large vacuum chamber that has heat transfer fins inside this preheats water from a large reservoir tank that then feeds to the starting tank. The constant rapid condensation of the steam combined with a volume of the vacuum chamber being 3x or larger than the volume of steam produce at any given time maintains the vacuum level so the process continues.

[@thierrymartin8378]

I was for the first MJ at JET in 1991 with Tritium . In the control room people was beting about results. So far ITER is 90's technology. Hopefully he will be still working for ITER when the tokamak will reach the breakeven. Because Even Dr Rebut who was in charge as first director of ITER project, but also the first Director to produced Megajoules usefull energy with JET was not so sure about the garantie to get Q=1. what I remember it takes months to get access to the tokamak when Tritium it was used. Each day cost was 500 000 ecu !!!!The plasma fueling technology is still not fully perfect because it's a mechanic process in cryo temperature in order to deliver the mixture in the hotest part of the plasma. Time travel is critical to avoid cooling the plasma too much. Fast pellet launcher is much better but very risky because disruption possibilty. So far as any engine built to produce energy is always the injection makes the difference. The difference is detonation risk. When MJ energy are released in micro second on a small zone can penetre 30mm of the wall on ITER. When it concern neutrons of 14 Mev in MJ scale for minutes , so far the marterial will not last the life of ITER...My opinion is ITER is a political project with a lot of technology challenges, than so far not resolved. And the Tritium is not easy to find to collect inside the vacuum system. Toxic as the berilium the litium the deuterium I 'm not sure the French beer will be adequate as a first medical treatment if someone is contaminated. Its a joke but it was the answer I get at JET when I was working for the first wall division in the Torus hall. Its a lot of money spent like for ISS and we still have populations starving on this planet....

[@kurtilein3]

are you sure about that? At least wendelstein 7-x can reach the temperature required for ignition and maintain the plasma at that temperature for 30 minutes. So i assumed wendelstein would also go for ignition. Anyway, Tokamaks like iter need to induce a current into the plasma, wendelstein 7-x will work with current free plasma, so the two things where wendelstein can outdo iter is the quality and duration of the plasma confinement.

[@tumaru892]

Maybe you guys should get anouther distributed computing project on boinc again. The world community grid is looking for projects that are about the environment and this seems like a long term positive for that.

[@buddhaVSkafka]

Fusion energy generates photons from the mass defect. Basically, the magnetic field of the tokamak aligns the billiard ball like particles inside the torus and helps minimize the mean free path for collision and thus increasing the chance for head on elastic collision. After the particles collide head on, the nucleons tunnel through the Coulomb barrier and break the ?gluons? that keep the nucleons together. This releases heat energy and neutrons that can increase the temperature of something connected to a heat exchanger for spinning a turbine.

[@bazejkaczorowski6213]

This conf story can ba a movie scenario - thanks!

[@espenbgh2540]

Yes it's 11 years ago since this video was shown first time, - maybe there is still 11 years to go before Iter is finished - if we are lucky

[@U5K0]

i only understood somewhere between 40 and 60 % of that but it was amazing!!!!

[@Muonium1]

7X would need to exceed its design parameters by a stupendously large amount in order to reach the ignition regime, especially since the device was engineered to only experiment with deuterium plasma; thus the DT reaction that would allow alpha heating sufficient to investigate the power densities which are relevant to the triple product confinement qualities necessary for ignition are thoroughly forbidden. It will produce useful data on steady state operation for stellarators.

[@tycho_m]

Awesome! The ITER and nuclear fusion are basically my only hope for the human species.

[@ammophila1]

makes me feel proud to be a leaving HUMAN , experimental

[@beastinblack4055]

It is about funding. We could get it done within a decade if there was real political will.

[@Muonium1]

Wendelstein isn't designed to reach breakeven or ignition.

[@aquaticko]

Is it really true that JET is the only reactor that can currently achieve fusion? I was under the impression that we've got about a dozen or so in countries all over the world. Or am I misunderstanding what he means when he says "currently achieve fusion"?

[@SiddharthJaiswal2003]

Great! The next Elon Musk wannabe, Could you replay the video.

[@voicubogdan84]

cool! :)

[@--Valek--]

how exactly is energy captured for use? Is it thermal? Electrons? what?

[@AdolphusOfBlood]

josef williams fast neutrons

[@--Valek--]

can you dumb down how you get electrical energy from slowing down neutrons. I tried googling it, but don't have time lately to figure that out.

[@--Valek--]

yeah pretty much what i asked.....but with some detail as in....is it gonna be radiant heat from the plasma? or like what someone else said something bout neutrons hitting the water

[@--Valek--]

ah cool

[@SiddharthJaiswal2003]

lol the entire presentation, the presenter explain this and you still ask it in comment, could you replay the video?

[@SiddharthJaiswal2003]

Can the Tokomak be sent to space by using fusion as propulsion agent? What % of energy consumption will it support out of 12.3 terawatts.

[@RammsteinFan1100]

Hello i would like to know how you heat plasma when it is in vacuum?

[@geeksqueak7123]

By using extremely powerful electromagnets to compress the flow of electrons and then running an electric current through the plasma.

[@olmen375]

Stan, I suggest you go read a science book or something.

[@kurtilein3]

2027 :/ i mean, i really like ITER, but i still hope Wendelstein 7-X will steal your show by accomplishing some of the milestones ITER wants to accomplish before ITER even finished construction. We need energy solutions right now. Fusion is nice, but too slow: when the first fusion powerplant goes online, we will either already have found other solutions or highly energy-dependent society as we know it today will already be gone. It will also be too late to do something about climate change.

[@beastinblack4055]

I say scrap all social security and dedicate all funds to this. We could have it all online and producing electricity within a decade.

[@yenaurapourtoulmonde]

ITER burnt by plasma instability? Would be a joke if people were not living in the vicinity. In addition ITER will not reach Lawson criterions. Hudge money waste, while Z-machines exceeds the criterion and searchers expectations. Stupid!

[@pivkaaa]

This whole presentation is really being let down by the fact, that the genius dude is using an APPLE notebook:)

[@Ludak021]

So what happens when the fuel starts running out? Will the device go supernova like stars do? Stars are not everlasting and they die pretty violently. I know that all precautions will be taken, as always, but they were also taken in every FB reactor that went "wild", even in Japan. Also, I saw a "10 billion" price tag on this thing. How is this cheap energy? Maybe 10 billion is not a lot for US or UK, but what about smaller countries? This fusion thing sounds like one of the most expensive solutions up to date, with an insanely complicated parts that only a few companies can produce, and we don't even know if it will work and how exactly. On a side note: 10 billion $ really?! Pfffff....Tesla gave us alternating current for free and you guys don't even have a fully working THEORY and you already spent more money than it would ever be needed to bring water, shelter and food to the parts of the world that need it. Why can't you just go with fission and concentrate on solving Thorium breeders? They spend almost no fuel, which is btw abundant, they have a lot of side benefits etc and price tag is way way WAY lower. Yea sure, fusion is cool and all that but...2027 for a prototype at 10 billion $ price tag?

[@ShadowFalcon]

When the fuel runs out? Well the fusion-reaction will stop and the plasma will revert back to a gas state. It'll be just like starving a normal car-engine of petrol.

[@Cologaan]

you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about^^

[@ThunfischXXx]

yea free energy... your education has to be very very low to believe in that stuff

[@Ludak021]

yea, no free energy for sure, not in our lifetimes. USA fought communism to fight anything free and install capitalism and nothing is free in capitalism. But that's a whole different topic. I am looking at this from a perspective of a country that cannot even afford a high breeder let alone a fusion reactor. The way I see it, man made fusion will be the most expensive source of energy for a looong time. And if you think that USA for example is going to ditch high breeders and 100K jobs for fusion reactors, think again.

[@AdolphusOfBlood]

Ludak021 it cheep because it uses the most common element in the universe, now they just need to get the system down pat.

[@AnonCh4r1i]

So the only things holding fusion back are, ... creating self sustaining plasma, harvesting more of the energy you put in, understanding why plasmas rotate solving materials science problems so you it doesn't melt the reactor after 2 hours. hmm good luck with that. waste of money, if scientists don't concretely understand the fundamentals its a huge waste of resources, for example in this lecture it was said that critical gradient is not a function of the size of the reactor and also that the spinning effect of plasmas heats the inside, so smaller experiments with very fast rotating plasmas should be investigated. Also the computer modelling is a waste of time if you don't get the experimentation observations / insights and theory nailed down first.

[@WhySoitanly]

"For $20 billion in cash," Steve Cowley of Culham says, "I could build you a working reactor. It would be big, and maybe not very reliable, but 25 years ago we didn't even know if we'd be able to make fusion work. Now, the only question is whether we'll be able to make it affordable." This statement was made with full knowledge that even the basic premise of virtually limitless controlled fusion power on Earth has never been demonstrated. Giving fusion researchers $20 billion would thus be totally irresponsible. But if by some miracle they succeeded in solving the myriad problems of reactor degradation from radiation, stable confinement, energy conversion to a useful form, etc., finding limitless energy would still be "the moral equivalent of giving a loaded gun to a mentally retarded child."

[@Kalumbatsch]

Are you on drugs? Where do you get this shit?