11 ms·
The first plasma: the Wendelstein 7-X fusion device is now in operation
- davesque 11y agoVery exciting.
- drmeister 11y agoThis is absolutely awesome. So many people coming together to design and construct such a complicated experiment. Excellent work and let's hope it teaches us how to do fusion.
- sawwit 11y agoHere is a time lapse video of the 9 year construction, quite fascinating to watch: http://www.ipp.mpg.de/115632/zeitraffer_w7x http://www.ipp.mpg.de/115632/zeitraffer_w7x YouTube mirror: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-fbBRAxJNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-fbBRAxJNk A more technical video explaining how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyqt6u5_sHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyqt6u5_sHA
- smackfu 11y agoVideo title: "Fusion reactor designed in hell makes its debut"
- Someone1234 11y agoThat's related to a quote from this article about how hard the thing was to build: http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/10/feature-bizarre-reactor-might-save-nuclear-fusion http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/10/feature-bizarre-r...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- geuis 11y agoSite got hugged to death. Needs a fusion powered server.
- bemused 11y agocoldfusion!?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- wiz21 11y agoor they could host it on steam (now that's a bad joke)
- DrScump 11y agothe readership base over-reacted.
- duncan_bayne 11y agoMaybe a re-write in ColdFusion? ;)
- PuffinBlue 11y agoSite was down for me so, mirror: Fullpage screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/QIj2NWk.jpg http://i.imgur.com/QIj2NWk.jpg Google Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5oATeaac608J:www.ipp.mpg.de/3985731/w7x_15_2+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5oATeaa...
- x0x0 11y agoWhat's striking about that is the investment costs were €370m. That seems like a tiny expense from the perspective of the EU and US budgets. There doesn't seem to be any sense of urgency in funding fusion research.
- CamperBob2 11y agoThere's been a lot of funding for fusion research over the past half-century, but politicians in charge of funding have grown weary of "Real soon now" promises.
- tpudlik 11y agoThis is just one, relatively small experiment. For comparison, the construction cost of ITER (which is still unfinished) are $14 billion so far. The US Fusion Energy Sciences program is over $400m a year (source: http://science.energy.gov/~/media/budget/pdf/sc-budget-request-to-congress/fy-2016/FY_2016_Office_of_Science-Overview.pdf http://science.energy.gov/~/media/budget/pdf/sc-budget-reque...).
- x0x0 11y agoI know, but even $400m / year in a $13T economy is a pittance. Without even discussing the looming costs to clean up global warming, etc.
- BuildTheRobots 11y agoOut of curiosity, how did you manage the full page screenshot?
- sevensor 11y agoWikipedia link for context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X
- ericHosick 11y agoIt seems like they've done all of this at a surprisingly low cost. 1 million assembly hours at 370 million project cost = 370 Euros/hour (assembly + management overhead costs).
- gnarbarian 11y agoI bet a lot of the work was performed by academic indentured servants.
- Phlarp 11y agoAcademic indentured servants that absolutely knew this would be the case but were no doubt tripping over each other to get a spot on the project.
- Wingman4l7 11y agoThat doesn't make the institutionalized exploitation of their labor any more ethical or palatable.
- detaro 11y agoI think one important price factor is that this is "only" a plasma containment experiment and will only run Helium and Hydrogen, not the Deuterium-Tritium-mixture needed for energy-generating fusion. This means it generates way less neutron radiation, which in turn means less need for shielding and easier working conditions on and close to the machinery, avoids material degradation, ... Also, if I understand German sources correctly the 370 million doesn't include wages of the people working there (maybe external construction contractors, but not the effort by MPI personnel). (EDIT: found a quote of ~1 billion EUR as cost for the entire project since 1995)
- k4l3 11y agoGood call on the actual price. Still 1/13th the current cost of the not-yet-operational ITER... Makes me wonder if the stellerator concept will be more feasible in the long run.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoPretty cool. One of the more interesting things about fusion research is how the expansion of the ability to do complex fluid dynamics has helped design plasma flows. Such designs were computationally infeasible before. The inter-related requirement of computation and understanding on the delivery of viable fusion solutions has been, in my opinion, the unseen anchor of fusion.
- noobermin 11y agoI think people know this, they just don't want to admit it. As someone who works with people who used to work with ICF, I've been told the reason that NIF flunked is that it was designed with 1D simulation codes because back then, that's all they could manage. One of the issues they inevitably ran into were plasma instabilities similar to Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities[0] that one only sees in two (or more) dimensional systems, but not 1D. These instabilities reduce the efficacy of heating and compression needed to achieve ignition, and were an unpleasant surprise when they actually performed the experiments. Even to this day, 2D simulations are fairly common and littered throughout the literature, and their justification (arguments of approximate symmetry) are suspect, at least to me. 3D sims are coming on the scene, but they often have to sacrifice things like spatial resolution that hurt's the simulation's physics in other way. Computational feasibility is one of the things physicists in that field need to admit is holding them back, and may be a little humility in seeking out advice from computer scientists is warranted in my opinion[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh%E2%80%93Taylor_instability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh%E2%80%93Taylor_instab... [1] this statement won't give me much criticism here, but it wouldn't go down well in a room of my peers.
- jessriedel 11y agoHonest question: do you really think talking much with computer scientists would help? My impression is that most of the improvements (besides Moore's law) in the power of simulation of physical systems has come from either new physical insights, or computational insights developed by physicists who were mostly self-taught numerical techniques. It seems very plausible to me that there are honest-to-goodness CS insights that remain unexploited, such as better parallelizing physical simulations, but the track record hasn't been good. Why aren't CS people coming in and showing everyone how it should be done? (For what it's worth, I'm a physicist, but not one who does anything numerical, and I'm happy to admit arrogance by physicists could be a problem here.)
- ChuckMcM 11y agoPretty cool. One of the more interesting things about fusion research is how the expansion of the ability to do complex fluid dynamics has helped design plasma flows. Such designs were computationally infeasible before. The inter-related requirement of computation and understanding on the delivery of viable fusion solutions has been, in my opinion, the unseen anchor of fusion.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoPretty cool. One of the more interesting things about fusion research is how the expansion of the ability to do complex fluid dynamics has helped design plasma flows. Such designs were computationally infeasible before. The inter-related requirement of computation and understanding on the delivery of viable fusion solutions has been, in my opinion, the unseen anchor of fusion.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- humanfromearth 11y agoGreat achievement. Let's hope we see first fusion reactions and then sustained fusion soon.
- mmanfrin 11y agoI feel that rarely does real life look more sci-fi than science fiction, but the design of this device is out there.
- varjag 11y agoEven the name..
- lorenzhs 11y agoIt's named after the eponymous mountain in Bavaria, referencing Princeton's "Project Matterhorn" where early work on fusion was done
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoThat's because the design was procedurally generated by a computer!
- funkyy 11y agoCan anyone explain tl;dr style how this will produce clean energy? I understand the idea, but how fuel is being produced because it sounds they use small quantities of helium which is easily accessible?
- brian-armstrong 11y agoThey're using helium to scale up and test that the various systems work. The actual fusion will likely be done on deuterium and tritium, which are hydrogen atoms with 1 and 2 neutrons respectively. Hydrogen is readily available via electrolysis but you have to get the isotopes of it to serve as fuel. Fusion reactions of this sort are quite clean. The actual reactor will be bombarded by neutrons so parts of it will become radioactive but the effect should be much less than a conventional fission reactor. edit: as for how the actual energy production works, you get deuterium and tritium up to very high temperatures and get the atoms to collide. The kinetic energy in these reactions will be so high that electrostatic repulsion will not be able to prevent the collision (normally, like repels like, but this force can only stop so much energy). once the two collide, the strong nuclear force takes over and forms helium and releases one of the neutrons plus a whole bunch of energy
- funkyy 11y agoGreat, so to produce the fuel you can use energy from reactor, so it is self serving, right? I cannot find any simplified information on how dirty this is, what it takes to produce energy and what is the waste. It just says its clean and revolutionary.
- brian-armstrong 11y agoDeuterium is readily available- you can get it from sea water if you've got the right equipment and enough patience. Tritium is more rare, but you can actually use those released neutrons from the reactor to make some, if I understand correctly. Either way, you only nees just a tiny amount of fuel- fusion reactors leverage e=mc^2 pretty well Unlike fission reactions, there are no leftover radioactive byproducts. There's nothing to bury and there are no carbon emissions (like e.g. coal). The reactor itself does become radioactive but this should be a much easier problem to deal with. Fusion is the transformation that powers the sun. Harnessing nuclear fusion is one of the ultimate acts of power over nature that man can do.
- bhz 11y agoWow. So complex and tightly packed. I wonder if they have any information on how serviceable the unit is, or what its operating life-cycle might be. In any case, a fascinating achievement, this is a historic day certainly.
- hughes 11y agoI understand that this is not meant to ever be a power-generating device. It is meant merely to demonstrate that it's possible to sustain a hydrogen plasma for 30+ minutes. Is there any idea what scale of power generation we'd eventually be able to make with a system of similar size in the future?
- j_h_s 11y agoOn a per mass, or per nucleon basis, fusion wins hands-down: one gram of deuterium results in 10^12 J of energy, or 275 million kcal. Fission gives a comparatively small 20 million kcal per gram of 235U. So fusion is over ten times as potent. Keep in mind that chemical energy like that in fossil fuels is capped around 10 kcal/g. - See more at: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/01/nuclear-fusion/#sthash.2EOUiYSd.dpuf http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/01/nuclear-fusion/#...
- penetrarthur 11y agoCheaper power will make bitcoin mining profitable again.
- borgchick 11y agoWhen I was growing up, this is the sort of stuff I dreamed we, humanity, would be doing in this day and age. This is the stuff Star Trek is made of (probably inspired by). Despite all the madness in the world today, I am glad some others share my childhood dream.
- ccozan 11y agoAFAIK, the Star Trek is using matter-antimatter reaction in the warp core [0]. We are however really far for this technology. Fusion on the other side is reachable. [0] http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Warp_core http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Warp_core
- huuu 11y agoCould this also be used to burn waste? There are already experiments witch plasma gasification but those temperatures are much lower (13000°C). Maybe some day we will all have a Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor in our cars[1] [1] http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion
- zubspace 11y agoThe video says, that the magnetic cage has been optimized by a super-computer. Does someone know, why it looks like it looks? Why is it circular? Why are the path and the surrounding magnets twisted like this? Please ELI5.
- kitd 11y agoI'm no expert, but the stellerator design makes confinement of the plasma much easier and energy-efficient. AIUI, the twists ensure that the particles making up the plasma are evenly affected by the magnetic forces from the coils. Hopefully someone who knows what they're talking about will be along soon ...
- amag 11y agoA bit late to the party but I found this video illuminating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqmoFzbZYEM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqmoFzbZYEM Basically (if I understood correctly) it has to do with confining the plasma within the torus without the need of an electrical magnetic field (which is what the Tokamak uses).
- datashovel 11y agoDoes anyone here know the theoretical (usable) energy output they can expect to get from this device?
- gjm11 11y agoZero. The Wendelstein stellerator is not intended to be energy-generating; I don't think they even intend any fusion ever to happen in it.
- tlmde 11y agoThey certainly intend fusion to occur. Otherwise it's a scientific device; not a power plant.
- gjm11 11y agoIt is a scientific device. See http://www.ipp.mpg.de/16931/einfuehrung http://www.ipp.mpg.de/16931/einfuehrung which, although it's ambiguous as to whether any fusion at all is intended to happen, makes it clear that actually producing energy is not a goal. http://www.ipp.mpg.de/17064/strahlenschutz http://www.ipp.mpg.de/17064/strahlenschutz does call it a "fusion device" and suggests that after a few years of operation they'll be putting deuterium in and doing something that produces neutrons, so I guess there must be a plan to do some actual fusion. But, still, intended energy output: zero.
- detaro 11y agoThey do not intend fusion of the type you'd run in a power plant to occur. There will be some fusion processes happening, but as far as I understand the sources that's an unavoidable side effect of running Deuterium plasma. It is a plasma containment experiment, not a reactor test.