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The article misses to mention that Germany is actually quite active in fusion reactor research (eg. Wendelstein 7x the world's largest stellerator was just open

The article misses to mention that Germany is actually quite active in fusion reactor research (eg. Wendelstein 7x the world's largest stellerator was just opened a few years ago). Its yet to be seen if fusion power will ever reach production level. But stating that Germany cut itself off of nuclear energy research is not exactly right.

magduf 7y ago
That's pretty irrelevant. Fission and fusion are two totally separate processes. Fission is a process used in nuclear power plants to provide many gigawatts of power to electric grids. Fusion is something that's only used for science experiments and cannot generate useful power. Maybe it can in the future, and maybe in the future we'll also have holodecks and warp drive, but that isn't useful today.
alexgmcm 7y ago
Nuclear Fusion should be treated completely differently though. It shares nuclear in the name and the similarities pretty much end there (the 'waste' from neutron activation of plasma facing components is negligible). Fusion seems to be doing well these days with good progress on ITER, nice results from MAST and the approval of STEP. I remember Chen liked the idea of the Stellarator as it removed the need for the plasma current so perhaps we can expect good results from W7x as well. The last thing I want is for fusion to have political issues due to being linked with fission power just because of the name.
melling 7y ago
Yes, and we will solve that nuclear fusion problem sometime over the next 50 to 150 years! In the meantime, the decades long train wreck of climate change could easily have been slowed if we’d had simply moved off of coal earlier.
mitchty 7y ago
In common parlance nuclear tends to mean nuclear fission, not nuclear fusion. Though the "technically correct" aspect is that they're both nuclear reactions. I'd say its important to say that they're not cutting themselves off of nuclear fusion research.
yourapostasy 7y ago
Matthew J Moynihan's response to a Quora question [1] points out there are general fusion physics and engineering problems regardless of the reactor design that remain open questions starved for data points. If anything going by his response, it isn't the type of reactor that matters now as much as getting more research data. We don't have a spare trillion to throw into fusion research, but we certainly do have enough tens of trillions to prop up all the central banks in the world [2]. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-merits-and-drawbacks-of-the-Polywell-fusion-reactor-design https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-merits-and-drawbacks-of-t... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrich/2016/09/12/the-18-trillion-central-bank-experiment-in-five-charts/#29c816d26027 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrich/2016/09/12/the-18-tri...

magduf 7y ago

That's pretty irrelevant. Fission and fusion are two totally separate processes. Fission is a process used in nuclear power plants to provide many gigawatts of power to electric grids. Fusion is something that's only used for science experiments and cannot generate useful power. Maybe it can in the future, and maybe in the future we'll also have holodecks and warp drive, but that isn't useful today.

alexgmcm 7y ago

Nuclear Fusion should be treated completely differently though. It shares nuclear in the name and the similarities pretty much end there (the 'waste' from neutron activation of plasma facing components is negligible). Fusion seems to be doing well these days with good progress on ITER, nice results from MAST and the approval of STEP. I remember Chen liked the idea of the Stellarator as it removed the need for the plasma current so perhaps we can expect good results from W7x as well. The last thing I want is for fusion to have political issues due to being linked with fission power just because of the name.

melling 7y ago

Yes, and we will solve that nuclear fusion problem sometime over the next 50 to 150 years! In the meantime, the decades long train wreck of climate change could easily have been slowed if we’d had simply moved off of coal earlier.

mitchty 7y ago

In common parlance nuclear tends to mean nuclear fission, not nuclear fusion. Though the "technically correct" aspect is that they're both nuclear reactions. I'd say its important to say that they're not cutting themselves off of nuclear fusion research.

yourapostasy 7y ago

Matthew J Moynihan's response to a Quora question [1] points out there are general fusion physics and engineering problems regardless of the reactor design that remain open questions starved for data points. If anything going by his response, it isn't the type of reactor that matters now as much as getting more research data. We don't have a spare trillion to throw into fusion research, but we certainly do have enough tens of trillions to prop up all the central banks in the world [2]. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-merits-and-drawbacks-of-the-Polywell-fusion-reactor-design https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-merits-and-drawbacks-of-t... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrich/2016/09/12/the-18-trillion-central-bank-experiment-in-five-charts/#29c816d26027 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrich/2016/09/12/the-18-tri...