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The Anhei tokamak is first in the world to generate 100M degrees Celsius
- tromp 8y ago"EAST's main reactor stands within a concrete structure, with pipes and cables spread outward like spokes that connect to a jumble of censors and other equipment encircling the core." Even reactors are not exempt from censorship!
- logicchains 8y agoMaybe the energy it generates will power the censors?
- mojomark 8y agoI tried building a fusion reactor once, but now I see my main failure was only using one censor. She couldn't possibly catch all of my 'mistakes', so I just removed her, but that didn't help too much. It's clear now that when things aren't working properly, the answer isn't to eliminate censors, it's actually to add an increasing number until things start snapping into place. Next time I'll use a jumble.
- pjc50 8y agoEntertaining typo/correction for "censer", I suppose?
- dmoy 8y agosensor probably? I would assume no incense burning (censer) in there. Yay English! A censer censor sensor is something that detects someone who covers up the existence of incense burning things.
- jbay808 8y agoNot to be confused with a censer sensor censor, who censors the censer sensor's central censer detections.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoTwo comments ago, I knew what all those words mean. Now I'm not sure...
- TotempaaltJ 8y agoSensor, probably :)
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- melling 8y ago“Unlike fission, fusion emits no greenhouse gases” Fission emits greenhouse gases?
- furgooswft13 8y agoFission emits lots of gasses and other sorts of hot air from the Green Lobby.
- the8472 8y agoThey're probably taking the whole fuel lifecycle into account. https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/climate/background/sovacool_nuclear_ghg.pdf https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/climate/background/s...
- ccffph 8y agoWouldnt then our “green renewables” also not be green due to their production lifecycle as well? Plastics, batteries, fiberglass, rare earth metals, cobalt, etc
- the8472 8y agoTo a small extent, yes. It's a matter of degree. Nuclear and renewables still have a much lower footprint than coal. It's just not zero. We don't know the full lifecycle costs of fusion plants, but at least the fuel part won't involve open pit mining, unlike uranium ore, so it hopefully will be better than fission.
- ThomPete 8y agoNuclear have a much lower fooprint than renewables, requires much less space, last longer, is more robust, doesn't require rare earth materials or support from ex coal (like wind and solar often end up doing) as a base component. Solar and wind is not even close to being in competition with nuclear when it comes to what is cleanest.
- iforgotpassword 8y agoI like how they converted the number to Fahrenheit for the American readers - like that helps grasping this in any way. :) the comparison to the sun's core is much more helpful in this regard, but I still just cannot process how we're able to do this in a controlled fashion. If this technology really ever reaches production quality I'll be truly amazed.
- bcatanzaro 8y agoBut they did it wrong. The correct number is 180M degrees Fahrenheit. Sigh.
- furgooswft13 8y agoIf 100C == 212F then 100 million C == 212 million F. DUH. Just like 0 C == 0 F. Simple math, man. High quality article all around here.
- mojomark 8y ago100M C to F => 100M*(9/5)+35 = 180,000,000 + 35 = 180,000,035. ...whoa
- seiferteric 8y agoyou mean 32?
- mojomark 8y agoLol, yup. I just realized furgoo was being sarcastical (I hope)
- deathanatos 8y agoWell, and they did it right, too. In the image caption, > The Anhei tokamak is the first facility in the world to generate 100 million degrees Celsius (212 million Fahrenheit) In article body, > Most recently in November, it became the first facility in the world to generate 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million Fahrenheit)
- jorblumesea 8y ago> But sustaining the high temperatures and other unstable conditions necessary is both extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive—the total cost of ITER is estimated at 20 billion euros ($22.5 billion) Sadly, this maybe 3-5% of the annual US defense budget? Shows where our priorities are that it's considered "prohibitively expensive".
- JudgeWapner 8y agoIf fusion were figured out, it would put a lot of oil and gas, maybe even renewable energy companies out of business.
- Ankaios 8y agoCheck to see if your House rep or either of your senators is on an appropriations committee. If so, tell them how you would like to see the appropriations for the Department of Energy, DoD, and other departments change in Fiscal Year 2020. (The FY 2020 bills could start getting passed in the next couple months.)
- marmaduke 8y agoAre there examples of direct representation actually working this way? I try not to be too cynical, but I havent seen good examples of a Congress member’s constituency being able to significantly influence their behavior outside of their reelection campaign.
- antt 8y agoBang a drum about China over taking the US and making it into a third world country. That's how Nasa got funded.
- maxxxxx 8y agoYeah, it's pretty sad how even the international community combined can't come up with that money while they piss away multiples of that with weapons purchases and subsidies to already filthy rich companies and people
- ksec 8y agoApart from the initial cost construction and maintenance. Are there cost of Fusion in terms of cost/W? Or do we get Free, limitless Energy? Wouldn't the first country achieve this be in huge / leap forward advantage? Especially for a country like China with lots of Production and Exports.
- maxxxxx 8y agoRunning a fusion reactor will still cost significant money. It's a very complex machine.
- bjelkeman-again 8y agoAnd it can’t be built everywhere where energy is needed, due the its complexity.
- amluto 8y agoI assume you mean cost/J or cost/MWh. Construction and maintenance will be most of that. Most credible fusion reactor designs product a lot of neutrons, and neutrons get absorbed by most materials and degrade them. (And turn some materials radioactive — avoiding long term radioactivity is an important design considerations.) There will also be staffing costs, fuel costs (small, but still — deuterium and tritium aren’t free), and even costs associated with obtaining cooling water. The big benefits of fusion over fission, as I see it, are that the fuels are safe and plentiful, the byproducts are harmless (if neutron activation is well managed), and the reactor itself isn’t full of extremely dangerous materials. If you turn a fusion reactor off, it’s off, and there’s no risk that it accidentally keeps reacting.
- jmpman 8y agoDoes it also reduce proliferation concerns?
- mandelken 8y agoYou can not make a bomb with fusion materials alone. Hydronuclear bombs use fission materials (uranium, plutonium) to start the fusion reaction. However, maybe a fusion reactor may be used for fission bomb research, but I'm not sure how.
- bensalem 8y agoIf we can rearrange the vacuum we can get clean, limitless zero-point energy without fuels. Maybe just two spinning donuts (one copper and one semi-conductor), in a vaccum, magnetically floated and pressured together along the spin axis by bookending with magnets. A wire along spin axis carries current. Casimir effect catalyses dragging charges across the disc surfaces.
- stallmanite 8y agoGot any arxiv links?
- chillacy 8y agoI remember that avengers movie too
- jacob019 8y ago"Sometimes called an 'artificial sun' for the sheer heat and power it produces" No, it's because the sun is also a fusion reactor.
- Razengan 8y agoVery dumb but honest question: How are we certain that stars are fusion reactors and not, say, the other ends of black holes?
- moh_maya 8y agoI am not an astrophysicist (or a physicist even) but one piece of evidence that may be useful here: Based on our understanding of the nuclear fusion reactions, starting from hydrogen, we expect to see, for a star of a given light / radiation spectrum (viz. Young stars, old, white dwarfs, super giants, etc ), emit spectra lines indicative of different elements such as H, He, O, C, etc. [1]. Young stars may not have all the "heavier elements", older stars do. Their relative abundance also changes with age. Our models & predictions of stellar nuclear fusion (afaik) correspond very well with the specific emission spectra we detect for different star types. Which also corresponds very well to the size / lifetime of star, etc. So, the data is very very consistent with nuclear fusion happening in stars. Now, it may be possible that they are just the "other ends" of white holes. But if it were so, then the model becomes far mode complex, plus, where are all the black holes? While I do not know if the total number / mass of all extant blackholes is as much as the total stellar mass, I would suspect it's far far lesser. Probably wouldn't add up. This is just the first explanation that came to my mind. I am certain there are others. Again, this is a non-physicist's lay analysis. Take it FWIW. :) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_spectroscopy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_spectroscopy
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- m3kw9 8y agoYou could also ask if fusion is just energy from other ends of black holes. My point is that scientists can’t be there so see it but they have a very high probability that this is what is powering it based on theories and calculations
- rayiner 8y agoThis may be how China wins. While the West has capitulated to the hippies in moving to renewables and conservation, China is investing in increasing energy production capacity through nuclear. (Not just research into fusion, they’ve got 20 fission reactors under construction right now.) More energy means more economic capabilities and more war making capabilities.
- jeandejean 8y agoIf you read the article you'd realize they're still late compared to western nuclear technology. It's great that they invest a lot in the technology but that's both wrong and premature to award them any achievement.
- rayiner 8y agoSure we’re ahead. But we’ve stopped trying, and diverted our resources to dead end technology.
- eloff 8y agoNuclear is dead end tech. Renewables are cheaper than nuclear without the PR problems or risks, and getting cheaper all the time. The future is solar, wind, and hydro with a lot of energy storage and long distance transmission.
- rayiner 8y agoRenewables will, at best, allow us to maintain our current energy expenditures in a more sustainable manner. (If that.) But they are incredibly space inefficient. Nuclear is the only avenue for increasing our energy production by an order of magnitude or more. (Not to mention, there is no such thing is a solar powered attack submarine or aircraft carrier.)
- eloff 8y agoI call bullshit. 12 million acres of solar panels could power the whole of the US. We already lease twice that amount to oil and gas and twice that too just growing corn for ethanol. Solar would actually be a more efficient usage of land than the status quo just in terms of energy production.
- Traminer 8y ago2050 :'(
- IMTDb 8y agoI am always amazed by the (low) price of those projects, compared to the potential benefits $890 million for potentially giving a new clean energy source seems incredibly low. I can't see a reason why we don't have at least 10 of those projects being concurrently funded in the US, Europe and China. This is a fraction of a percent of the annual budget of each region. Whoever gets their hand on that first is going to have a massive economical - and probably military - advantage over the others.
- bufferoverflow 8y agoFor just 10% of its military budget USA could have 71 of these running. (I know, I know, of course, US labor is more costly than the Chinese).
- whatshisface 8y ago>Whoever gets their hand on that first is going to have a massive economical - and probably military - advantage over the others. If you were China, would you rather fight the US military (not going to work), or fight the US grip on world power via oil? Wow, if China switches us all to batteries and fusion, the petro-dollar and Texas economy are done for. That's far more than any military threat could ever hope to achieve.
- darawk 8y agoYa, but if China invents fusion power, it's not like it's going to stay in China. Inventing fusion power will (probably) not be a strategic advantage to the country that invents it. The technology will disseminate rapidly to the other major powers. What will happen is the middle east will stop being such a hot geopolitical issue, and will be relegated to the status of other countries that are important only insofar as their humanitarian crises are a source of guilt for richer countries.
- i_am_proteus 8y agoThis project is part of ITER-- China's contribution to an international effort to make fusion power a reality.
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- ncmncm 8y agoWhat they never mention in these breathless articles is that your multi-billion-dollar tokamak power-generation system will be bathing itself in high-energy neutron flux, essentially destroying itself over only a few years, leaving a multi-hundred-ton radioactive husk to be somehow disposed of, or at least kept the rain from eroding and leaching radioactive slag into the water table. Probably they would need to be built underground to begin with, so they would already be buried when they have been used up. The pB reactor designs that emit mostly charged particles do not suffer from this problem, much, but get overwhelmingly less investment. There is a reason: the main purpose of the tokamak is a jobs creation program for high-neutron-flux physicists, to maintain a population to draw upon for weapons work. There was, and is, no intention ever to actually use tokamaks as an electrical-energy source. Many involved will not agree with this. It is easy to get caught up in the technical challenge and leave worrying about practicalities and true motivations to others.
- orhmeh09 8y agoWhere can I read more about this?
- jpollock 8y agoTerms to search for: 1 Neutron Embrittlement 2 Helium Embrittlement https://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/201610/fusion.cfm https://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/201610/fusion.cfm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_embrittlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_embrittlement https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.5079 https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.5079 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022311594900760 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022311594...
- hyperbovine 8y agoMight as well add proton embrittlement to that list. Bane of hydrogen economies everywhere. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
- wemdyjreichert 8y agoThat's 180M degrees Fahrenheit, for those of us who are American, Liberian, or Burmese.
- m3kw9 8y agoWould a run away reaction turn earth into a sun?
- chadcmulligan 8y agoSeems unlikely - once the magnetic bottle collapses the reaction stops, its very hard to keep it going. Its not like fission where the reaction cascades and causes a melt down. Some localised melting is perhaps possible if things go astray.
- teslaberry 8y agono definitely into a black hole for surezies. only the LHC could have turned earth into a sun. luckily it didn't.
- death_of_hn 8y agoYou fucking suck. Hang yourself with a cheap belt.
- Serill_Lawler 8y agoThat's amazing. the future is now. Viable sustainable fusion energy would change the face of the world as we know it.