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Germany is turning on its monster stellarator
- prodmerc 11y ago"Designed in Hell" - really? Goddamn, I hate modern media outlets...
- creshal 11y agoHell, CA; Hell, MI; Hell, AZ; Hell, Norway; or Hell, Netherlands?
- prodmerc 11y agoHell, the Devil's playground... because it looks strange. What kind of association does that make in people's minds, they already think nuclear = death...
- Kequc 11y agoThey meant to say north east Germany, it's a minor typo.
- scrumper 11y agoWorth pointing out that this phrase was the title of a linked 3rd party YouTube video, not from Business Insider Malaysia who did a reasonably decent job on the article.
- prodmerc 11y agoYeah, nothing against the article, actually, but the video is from Science Mag - you'd think they'd be more professional...
- lucaspiller 11y agoAssuming these experiments work as desired and this reactor can produce more energy than it takes in, how long will it be (roughly) until a power plant becomes operational (i.e. connected to the grid) that uses this technology? Years, a decade, many decades?
- illumen 11y agoConsidering that this is 9 years late on the build phase... I have no idea. By that fact alone I'd guess decades. But who knows where resources will flow, and what genius lies around the corner! Personally, I'd bet on other technologies being more cost effective for power generation in the next 20 years.
- saalweachter 11y ago5-10 years is the classic naive/huckster estimate. 30-50 years is the respectable man's "I have no idea" estimate for anything.
- creshal 11y agoIt's not yet designed to produce net energy – it can't handle the necessary (radioactive) tritium fuel. Assuming it works as intended, the next step would be a research reactor that can, that would be a pilot project to generate net energy which could be connected to the grid (probably more for symbolic reasons at that point…) and breed tritium for further reactors. Then we can start to plan building actual power plants. So, few decades, as always.
- rbanffy 11y agoI guess we can still say it will be the most important energy source over the next millennium...
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- adrianN 11y agoGood to see that there is enough money to pursue stellarators while simultaneously working on tokamak designs like ITER.
- exar0815 11y agoWell, whichever nation builds the first working Fusion power plant wont know where to put all the money.
- mtgx 11y agoHow long until NSA and China steal those designs, though? Two...maybe three months? I guess whoever builds it will also have the expertise advantage in dealing with those designs, though, which should give them at least a few years of competitive advantage. Also, my guess is neither of these "traditional" approaches will work to create actual fusion power. My guess is someone else's out of left field approach that will totally shock the scientific community will be the winner.
- orbifold 11y agoTo realize a complex design like a Stellator they actually also needed to develop a lot of manufacturing expertise, had to build custom machines for making tools and components etc., I doubt anyone would be able to copy that without significant effort.
- lordnacho 11y agoIt's not like stealing a cookie recipe. Pretty much anything that has even a little bit of complexity can't be "stolen" just by having a blueprint.
- hahainternet 11y agoI was chatting about this with a friend and there are something like 5 different in production technologies which produce or cause nuclear fusion. Only three I think are aimed at sustainable power generation, but it's still pretty cool.
- csvan 11y agoThis is one of the greatest events in the history of energy research. Really, really hoping that the upcoming results of the machine will at least meet expectations.
- InclinedPlane 11y agoThis is likely to be more important, for much less expenditure, than ITER. Edit: to add some additional context, the main problem with fusion reactors is confinement time and plasma stability. The general idea of a fusion power plant using magnetic confinement is that a gas is turned into plasma, confined magnetically, and heated until it can undergo significant fusion reactions. There are two core problems to creating fusion plasmas that could potentially produce power. One is pumping the plasma up to conditions that enable self-sustaining fusion by maintaining a high enough temperature from balancing the heat losses in the plasma against the heat gains from fusion reactions. The other is producing more energy from fusion reactions than was put into heating and containing the plasma. The longer the fusion plasma is contained the longer it has to continue fusion reactions and producing energy. Tokamaks are easy to build but have a fatal flaw in that they have high plasma current, which makes them difficult to control with very unstable plasmas. Stellarators are vastly more difficult to build but they don't rely on currents in the plasma itself, which offers the potential for vastly longer confinement times.
- baq 11y agothe key difference is ITER is designed to be net-energy-positive, while this will generate precisely 0 W of energy, if it works (which I hope it does!)
- nabla9 11y agoThis is wrong comparison. Wendelstein 7-X is small early experimental reactor for testing stellator geometry for reactor. Research questions are similar to where JET (the largest working tokamak today) was 30 years ago. Stellator is more complex design but promises inherently stable containment. ITER is solving different questions. ITER solves engineering problems for full-scale electricity-producing reactor that would be practical to build and operate. JET studied containment in Tokamaks. ITER is the last step before first industrial fusion reactor design DEMO (Demonstration Power Plant). There is also lots of technical overlap of course. Vacuum vessels, cooling, magnets, breeder blankets, etc. ITER is developing these for industrial-scale reactor, even for stellator.
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- jlebrech 11y agoI'm still waiting on LFTR.
- DennisP 11y agoUranium-fueled molten salt reactors will probably happen first; they'd have the same safety advantages but without the huge extension of fuel supply that you'd get from thorium breeding. Some designs would be more proliferation-resistant than LFTRs. Startups attempting it include Terrestrial Energy, Transatomic, ThorCon, Moltex, and Seaborg.
- ps4fanboy 11y ago"Designed in hell" low class.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- frooxie 11y agoI'm glad that Germany now has the option of stellarating the monsters they capture. EDIT: On reading further, it turns out I may have misinterpreted the article.
- raverbashing 11y agoEven better if they make a portable version and call it Mr. Fusion
- understand17 11y agook!
- jakeogh 11y agoWendelstein 7-X - from concept to reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyqt6u5_sHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyqt6u5_sHA Im Zeitraffer: Zusammenbau von Wendelstein 7-X: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJpSrqitSMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJpSrqitSMQ (best @ 0.56x) Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10437075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10437075 More: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAx243-m51RI-k_4lsAqidA/feed https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAx243-m51RI-k_4lsAqidA/fee...
- adrianN 11y agoI find watching the assembly of these ultra-high tech machines to be super inspiring. It gives me all kinds of warm fuzzies to see what we're able to do if we put our mind to it.
- balabaster 11y agoMostly it's inspiring because most people sit back and say "It can't be done, it's impossible" or "wow, they must have had a shit ton of luck to get this out of the door" instead of looking for solutions or ways to circumvent or exploit the million little problems along the way that seek to obstruct the endgame. Kudos to these guys for sticking at it long enough and persevering to achieve their vision.
- understand17 11y agobla bla
- nerdy 11y agoMy inspiration from massive science projects is more like: "With that in mind, debugging this 1500-line function is nothing!"
- balabaster 11y agoDude... refactor that shit. There is no place in today's development world that a 1500 line function is okay :P
- lnkmails 11y agoIt doesn't say how many watts of power this machine would produce and what is the cost to produce per watt? It would be interesting to compare numbers and see if this machine would ever see mass production in next few decades.
- InclinedPlane 11y agoIt's a research reactor, it doesn't have power extraction systems, it's all about studying burning plasmas as well as plasma confinement.
- legulere 11y agoProbably because it's not a power plant but a research reactor and is not producing electricity.
- ju-st 11y agoZero watt. It's a research reactor. And they don't want to use tritium (which is apparently needed for power generation) because it would cause radiation. And radiation is bad when you want to do research on the reactor. Source: German wikipedia
- creshal 11y ago> And radiation is bad when you want to do research on the reactor. As in, you want to partially disassemble and tweak the reactor regularly. Neutron activated metals will be radioactive enough after a while, no need to make things worse by adding tritium to the mix.
- Frenchgeek 11y agoAccording to wikipedia : "The purpose of Wendelstein 7-X is to evaluate the main components of a future fusion reactor built using stellarator technology" So I'm guessing it can't produce power as it is.
- furyg3 11y agoMy understanding is that this reactor is just a test to see if this can contain plasma for longer periods of time (from the current 6.5 minutes to a potential 30 minutes). It will not show a net-gain in energy, as it is not designed to produce energy, just a proof of concept.
- insulanian 11y agoThat's how Germans do it - they keep quiet and just do it. Respect!
- flexie 11y agoSometimes they keep it very quiet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal No, seriously. All these statements about German character or German mentality should stop. If the last few months haven't taught us anything else, at least it should have taught us that. First, Germans and the German government were praised as reliable in connection with the Grexit (as opposed to the Greeks), then a few months later, a German government owned car producers is caught in what might be the biggest corporate fraud ever. I wonder if mentality and national traits even exist.
- nanofortnight 11y agoThey do, but they're merely tendencies: You get a wide range of things in any country, unfortunately the world isn't black and white.
- kuschku 11y agoAnd how did VW handle it? CEO resigned, 10 board members suspended, all non-management employees (engineers, programmers, etc) have full immunity, even if they worked on the defeat device. That’s the most honorable reaction one could expect, and it allows to get rid of the issue.
- archon 11y ago> all non-board employees have full immunity, even if they worked on the defeat device I'm not trying to pick a fight, but how is that in any way honorable?
- kuschku 11y agoBecause this defeat device is nothing you should blame on a single engineer, it is clearly a systematic issue, and normal engineers should not be held accountable for actions that the CEO and board forced them to do.
- sheraz 11y agoWow - it looks like very Steampunk with all those valves and ports.
- stargazer-3 11y agoLooks more like modern art to me.
- ck2 11y agoEvery week I learn something new to admire about Germany. Or at least its responsible investment behavior by its government. USA would not build such a thing in today's political climate of nonsense unless it had weapons research possibilities.
- kuschku 11y agoActually, the US invested in both the National Ignition Facility for H-Bomb and Fusion research, and in ITER. Just because the US invests rarely in civilian research doesn’t mean they never do (compared to military research; compared to other countries they still invest a lot in civilian research)
- ck2 11y agoNIF is weapons research, hence my point. Congress won't fund a civilian space shuttle anymore but we spend billions for the military to have their own. Like I said, if it's not about killing people, destroying things and spying on the world (including our own people) we pretty much won't spend money on it anymore here. Germany did the investment beyond war.
- ThePhysicist 11y agoI once did an internship at the MPI in Garching and had the opportunity to visit the Stellarator. Although it looks much less spectacular with all the coils hidden in their housing it is still an incredibly impressive machine with an audacious design. Today the numerical effort required for realizing it might seem not very impressive given the technological capabilities that we have, but you have to take into account that the first version (Wendelstein 7-AS) was built in the 1980s already. That said I really hope that the experiment confirms the viability of this design and its (potential) superiority compared to the classical Tokamak fusion chamber.
- zamalek 11y agoI have no doubt that a design that goes with the physics (instead of going against it like Tokamaks do) is going to yield great results, however I hope something comes out if it that will also allow for viable Tokamaks. Stellarators are hellishly complex and expensive.
- drjesusphd 11y agoCan you explain what you mean by tokamaks "going against the physics"?
- kuschku 11y agoTokamaks need, to contain the plasma, a continuously changing magnetic field. To create a continuously changing magnetic field, you need to continuously increase or decrease the current. The issue is that you can not turn up the current more than a maximum level, and you have to keep the direction the same (so you can’t switch between turning off and on). Stellerators instead solve this with complex geometry and the plasma creating its own continously changing magnetic field.
- drjesusphd 11y ago> Tokamaks need, to contain the plasma, a continuously changing magnetic field Do you have a citation for this claim?
- Aardwolf 11y agoThat machine looks absolutely beautiful to me, I love the design. It would also be perfect for in movies and computer games :)
- penetrarthur 11y agoWhen exactly is it turned on?
- deweller 11y agoThat was not reported. This is what was reported on Oct. 23rd by sciencemag.org: "Approval to go ahead is expected from Germany's nuclear regulators by the end of this month"
- mdellabitta 11y ago> The key to a successful nuclear reactor of any kind is to generate, confine, and control a blob of super-heated matter, called a plasma — a gas that has reached temperatures of more than 180 million degrees Fahrenheit. Um, what? I'm about to pass a nuclear fission plant on my way to work, and I surely hope there are no plasmas in that. AKA, they mean fusion reactor.
- XorNot 11y agoNucleons are reacting. It's most definitely a nuclear reactor of some type.
- kohanz 11y agonuclear reactor of any kind They're not disputing the nuclear term, but fission vs. fusion.
- mdellabitta 11y agoDing ding ding. Also, hello from Indian Point, Buchanan, NY! I can see a containment dome as I write this. Next up on my Snake Plisskin-esque commute is literally going through Sing Sing prison: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.1506265,-73.8700067,613m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/@41.1506265,-73.8700067,613m/dat... (those train tracks are the Metro North Hudson line, among other things)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- kuschku 11y agoActually, the "someone comes in from the right" is already there, the right-national has almost 14% of the population behind it now, with more people being able to "imagine voting for them". And with them saying things like "Yes, there is a problem with the refugees from Syria, sadly, the concentration camps are currently closed" it’s getting a bit scary.
- illumen 11y agoThe AfD [0] has gotten votes mostly from the CDU. But they're still below 7.5% in latest polls from about 3.8% in 2014. The green party even has more than them. It does seem much of that is a protest against the policies of CDU. These people would rather immigrants freeze it seems. If an election was called now, then a left coalition would probably get in, since CDU and AfD are unlikely to team up. [0] http://pollytix.eu/pollytix-german-election-trend http://pollytix.eu/pollytix-german-election-trend
- lzr_io 11y agoSeriously? One guy (who is not even affiliated with a political party nor has a political office) makes a tasteless comment and suddenly the whole of Germany is supposed to be on the verge of turning fascist again? And even if 25% percent were going far right - there would still be 75% holding other political views. Trust me, Germany is far from going extremist any time soon.
- kuschku 11y agoI am not saying we are turning into a fascist country again. Definitely not. But the right wing terror is getting scary, with dozens of asylum homes being burnt down just this year.
- kriro 11y agoPretty strange line of reasoning. I'd guess a clean and healthy economy are not exactly typical preconditions for "a round three".
- chasingtheflow 11y agoSource article: http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/10/feature-bizarre-reactor-might-save-nuclear-fusion http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/10/feature-bizarre-r...
- dgudkov 11y agoA naive question - if this kind of reactors start producing more energy than consuming, what kind of fuel would they need? AFAIK the Sun slowly burns hydrogen into helium. Does it mean that stellarators would only need hydrogen to operate? That would be basically free energy.
- aqme28 11y agoFusion reactors typically use some combination of Deuterium (heavy Hydrogen) and Tritium (super heavy Hydrogen), though sometimes also use Helium-3, Lithium or Boron.
- sounds 11y agoDifferent isotopes of hydrogen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Process
- Tuna-Fish 11y agoFusion reactors can use different fuels based on how good they are at containing plasma. Right now, almost all research is directed towards the easiest possible fuel that requires least powerful containment, that is, Tritium (H3) and Deuterium (H2). Deuterium can be separated from water, and Tritium can be bred from Lithium using waste neutrons. T+D is inexhaustible, but also quite expensive as both separation and neutron breeding are relatively expensive. However, as a fusion reactor consumes tiny amounts of fuel per unit of energy, a T+D reactor could potentially still run profitably. If we get better at containing plasma, other fuel choices become available. Most important being Boron + Hydrogen, which would be inexhaustible, cheap, and produces minimal neutrons during fusion, making it easier on the equipment. However, free fuel doesn't mean free energy. The cost of all nuclear power, including current fission power, is utterly dominated by the capital cost of equipment.
- semiquaver 11y agoBetter article: http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21676752-research-fusion-has-gone-down-blind-alley-means-escape-may-now-be http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2167675...
- jedberg 11y agoThanks! The diagram at the top of that one made more sense than the entire OP article.
- frandroid 11y agoTell me that doesn't look like it came straight out of Akira... :)
- dang 11y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10437075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10437075
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]