4 ms·
Are you aware of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X? It is well on its way to produce sustained plasma
by MauranKilom 6y ago
Are you aware of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X? It is well on its way to produce sustained plasma discharges of multiple minutes. The stellarator design has some decisive advantages over Tokamaks.
- pfdietz 6y agoIt does not avoid the generic problem of DT fusion reactors, which is lousy power density. The magnets are also famously complex and expensive.
- MauranKilom 6y agoThat sounds like engineering and scaling challenges, not inherent limitations... I mean, they clearly have the magnets figured out and so far there doesn't seem to have been a lot in the way of unforeseen roadblocks.
- pfdietz 6y agoThat sounds like the dismissive attitude a plasma physicist, for whom mere engineering issues are trivial and of lesser importance. But engineering issues are perfectly capable of ruining the prospects for a technology. Fission, for example, faces nothing BUT engineering issues (where cost is considered a part of engineering.) The equivalent of breakeven and ignition was achieved for fission in 1942. DT fusion faces fundamental engineering obstacles, obstacles that are not solvable by tweaking the confinement scheme. Scaling up makes the main problem, power density, worse, not better (see a later comment by me on this issue.)
- m4rtink 6y agoI like how the chamber and magnet design looks like something made by Cthulhu in cooperation with Salvador Dali himself. Even just due to that it should work. :)