3 ms·
Expensive because it's a custom built physics lab, not a commercial power plant. Slow because it's an international project. Not just that, but it also requires
by orbital-decay 5y ago
Expensive because it's a custom built physics lab, not a commercial power plant.
Slow because it's an international project. Not just that, but it also requires lots of infrastructure to be built and entire industries to develop in multiple countries, before it can be useful. ITER is massive, but it's also just a tip of the iceberg.
>It just doesn't strike me as obvious that reducing the major radius by a few meters would have such a huge impact on cost/timelines.
It would, easily. Past a certain size, production costs rise exponentially and require one-off tech.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoIs it massive because it's 6 meters? Like - a 6 meter diamond would be "massive" - but a 6 meter boat isn't that impressive. Or is it massive like the tokamak is a 6 meter engine to a 100 km collider? Like there's a ton of other stuff being built in a massive structure?
- tibyat 5y agoI agree. The responses in this thread are weak. Throw out any statement and claim it supports the known conclusion, how can you be wrong? "Well the volume (of a sphere) is proportional to the cube of its radius, so of course the cost of these physics experiments does as well" -- Why waste our time
- dodobirdlord 5y agoA 6 meter superconducting magnetic containment vessel is massive, as such things go. But ITER is also an entire facility built around the containment vessel.
- lambdatronics 5y agoThe magnets are so large they had to build a factory on-site to put them together. If you can make the magnets small enough to transport from a centralized factory, that's a huge win.
- lumost 5y agoIf production costs rise exponentially with reactor size then the exponential power gain with size isn’t very impressive.