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>I got into nuclear technology because of ITER back in the early 2000s. Worked on it continuously (mostly in advanced fission) ever since. What is your opinion
by anonuser123456 7y ago
>I got into nuclear technology because of ITER back in the early 2000s. Worked on it continuously (mostly in advanced fission) ever since.
What is your opinion on SPARC and tokamak energy?
- acidburnNSA 7y agoHigh temperature superconductors are absolutely an interesting pathway to make magnetic confinement fusion significantly easier than the big tokamaks like ITER. I have friends working at Commonwealth Fusion who are good people and I wish them much success. That said there are still a lot of phases to go through, from physical viability at stage 1 to scaled commercial fleet at stage 7, and that pathway is impossible to predict without getting on the ground and going through the stages. I certainly think it's worth running through the stages.
- njarboe 7y agoI really hope that fusion power can become a major power source in the future and humanity really needs it to expand off planet, but like you said above, nuclear fission power got to stage 7 and then stalled. I think the nuclear fusion community should drop the word nuclear completely from their vocabulary or they are likely to end up with the same fate, if they ever get to stage 7.
- smolder 7y agoIf we can figure out fusion as a power source, maybe we can also figure out how to improve the quality of people's information exposure too, leading to a smarter population. Currently we try to hide the best information behind paywalls or in private knowledgebases, we neglect schools or profiteer through them (US in particular), and we inundate people with stupefying advertisements and misinformation.
- njarboe 7y agoAlthough both things are very difficult, the knowledge needed to create a commercial fusion reactor is very different to educating a whole populous not to be so afraid of radiation (which is natural and found everywhere all the time).
- freeopinion 7y agoHow about "Smart Plant"©™?
- petre 7y agoFusion will do just fine.
- ncmncm 7y agoThere is no actual expectation of ever getting useful power generation from magnetic confinement fusion (ITER, Tokamak): it has always been, instead, a jobs program for high-neutron flux physicists, to maintain a population to draw on for weapons work. p-boron fusion is interesting as a possibly practical energy source. The hurdles are a matter of engineering and finance, not fundamental design flaws. But it's useless as a jobs program for weapon experts, so must rely on commercial investment.
- anonuser123456 7y agoSPARC is not ITER. It's seems bizarre to ignore the impact HTS tape would have on the plausible operation of MCF.
- pfdietz 7y agoARC's power density is only 40 times worse than a PWR, rather than 400 times worse like ITER.
- philipkglass 7y agoI think that you have that backwards. It's the laser driven inertial confinement fusion approach that is useful for weapons insights. The very low density and slow kinetics of fusion in a tokamak are much less like weapon fusion reactions. Lawrence Livermore -- a nuclear weapons lab -- has studied inertial confinement fusion for decades. They don't have a tokamak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility
- ncmncm 7y agoIt's all about the neutrons.