2 ms·

Edit: on Q of ITER. The approximation is reasonable. ITER isn't a power plant. It's being built to study burning plasmas and blanket technologies. It has al

Edit: on Q of ITER. The approximation is reasonable. ITER isn't a power plant. It's being built to study burning plasmas and blanket technologies. It has always been a stepping stone. Is the number not getting large enough fast enough to please the god emperor? Which issue, exactly? She raises several flags then conflates them all. The overarching theme is that scientists are misleading the public. There is no shortage of charlatans using the guise of fusion research to spend public goodwill. She is pushing the idea that even the real scientists are doing the same. They are not. Who are these figments "touting Q"? The pop science articles? Did she sit down and actually talk to a single researcher, ever? In the comments I link above I tear apart her primary sources as they are misrepresented. She seems intent on claiming Qplasma is a bad metric and shouldn't be used. Well she isn't qualified to make that statement, certainly without some scientific basis for the claim. Astonishingly she never mentions triple product or empirical scaling laws, which are the actual metrics that real research machines use. Real machines are not nuclear, so Q is always zero. Does this mean fusion has made zero progress? This highlights her bias in the argument.

belter 5y ago
I am not at all claiming your arguments are not valid but why is ITER claiming this then? "ITER will generate 10 times more heat than used to start the fusion reaction." https://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/iter/ https://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/iter/ Edit: I will half-answer or rephrase my own question so as to make clear, there are no hidden intentions behind it:-) Why did ITER decide to present Qplasma as the core metric without using the metric, most would consider the critical to decide closeness to commercial viability? Would you agree with experts that claim that a minimum Q of 100 is the minimum to target for commercial viability?
- willis936 5y ago
  I do not find that claim misleading or inaccurate in any way. What is the issue? Also, that site belongs to some sort of EU bureaucracy, not a research institution.
  - belter 5y ago
    I just edited my question above to make it more clear.
- willis936 5y ago
  >Why did ITER decide to present Qplasma as the core metric This one is easy: they did not. https://www.iter.org/sci/Goals https://www.iter.org/sci/Goals You'll notice that the goal in question is the power output. Regardless, Qplasma is there because that is the plasma physicist's yardstick. Change it after 50 years because we're closer to ignition? For what purpose? I think the wording towards the end of the first goal could be better. That feels like headline bait, but it isn't why the goal was set. >most would consider the critical to decide closeness to commercial viability The goal of plasma physicists is to straight-line achieve fusion on the grid, not put on a song and dance. The straight-line path has nothing to do with making a number go up, but everything to do with developing plasma models in new regimes, performing materials studies, and just plain old doing it. ITER wasn't conceived as a demonstration power plant.
  - belter 5y ago
    Problem is plasma physicists are being subsidized on their very meritorious endeavors, at the cost of 21 billion dollars. A paragraph like the one below, also from the reference you provided, is going to bite them bitterly: "ITER is designed to produce a ten times return on invested energy: 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of input heating power (Q=10). It will be the first of all fusion experiments in history to produce net energy." As ITER is supposed to start in 2025, and imagining a successful experiment running for 10 years. Adding to this the planning, and procurement process for a possible first device, one with the "real Q" above 1, then its clear it wont be here for at least another 50 years.
    - willis936 5y ago
      It's true there will be a PR reckoning for that wording. I am not under the impression that those that greenlit ITER were deceived about the target performance metrics, which is the implied scandal. The scientists and engineers gave pitches to committees, the committees asked questions, the scientists answered honestly. Not everyone on those committees is clueless about plasma physics, as indicated by their informed questions (see the DoE FES subcommittee transcripts). Is this how we should decide to allocate society's taxed income? I don't know, but I don't think the funding of existentially critical research that requires expensive machines that only produce incremental knowledge should be on the chopping bloc every year. Regardless of whatever "well actually"s come about, the achievements of ITER should not be sidelined. If ITER is successful, it sets a very important bar for mega projects in the 2020s. It would be a valuable yardstick and a blueprint for a nuclear facility that has enormous subsystems for cooling and tritium processing. Thanks to HTS we might not need to make a machine much larger than ITER to hit the necessary performance metrics, but ITER is being made now, not in another two decades. Watch SPARC for now.

belter 5y ago

I am not at all claiming your arguments are not valid but why is ITER claiming this then? "ITER will generate 10 times more heat than used to start the fusion reaction." https://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/iter/ https://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/iter/ Edit: I will half-answer or rephrase my own question so as to make clear, there are no hidden intentions behind it:-) Why did ITER decide to present Qplasma as the core metric without using the metric, most would consider the critical to decide closeness to commercial viability? Would you agree with experts that claim that a minimum Q of 100 is the minimum to target for commercial viability?

willis936 5y ago
I do not find that claim misleading or inaccurate in any way. What is the issue? Also, that site belongs to some sort of EU bureaucracy, not a research institution.
- belter 5y ago
  I just edited my question above to make it more clear.
willis936 5y ago
>Why did ITER decide to present Qplasma as the core metric This one is easy: they did not. https://www.iter.org/sci/Goals https://www.iter.org/sci/Goals You'll notice that the goal in question is the power output. Regardless, Qplasma is there because that is the plasma physicist's yardstick. Change it after 50 years because we're closer to ignition? For what purpose? I think the wording towards the end of the first goal could be better. That feels like headline bait, but it isn't why the goal was set. >most would consider the critical to decide closeness to commercial viability The goal of plasma physicists is to straight-line achieve fusion on the grid, not put on a song and dance. The straight-line path has nothing to do with making a number go up, but everything to do with developing plasma models in new regimes, performing materials studies, and just plain old doing it. ITER wasn't conceived as a demonstration power plant.
- belter 5y ago
  Problem is plasma physicists are being subsidized on their very meritorious endeavors, at the cost of 21 billion dollars. A paragraph like the one below, also from the reference you provided, is going to bite them bitterly: "ITER is designed to produce a ten times return on invested energy: 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of input heating power (Q=10). It will be the first of all fusion experiments in history to produce net energy." As ITER is supposed to start in 2025, and imagining a successful experiment running for 10 years. Adding to this the planning, and procurement process for a possible first device, one with the "real Q" above 1, then its clear it wont be here for at least another 50 years.
  - willis936 5y ago
    It's true there will be a PR reckoning for that wording. I am not under the impression that those that greenlit ITER were deceived about the target performance metrics, which is the implied scandal. The scientists and engineers gave pitches to committees, the committees asked questions, the scientists answered honestly. Not everyone on those committees is clueless about plasma physics, as indicated by their informed questions (see the DoE FES subcommittee transcripts). Is this how we should decide to allocate society's taxed income? I don't know, but I don't think the funding of existentially critical research that requires expensive machines that only produce incremental knowledge should be on the chopping bloc every year. Regardless of whatever "well actually"s come about, the achievements of ITER should not be sidelined. If ITER is successful, it sets a very important bar for mega projects in the 2020s. It would be a valuable yardstick and a blueprint for a nuclear facility that has enormous subsystems for cooling and tritium processing. Thanks to HTS we might not need to make a machine much larger than ITER to hit the necessary performance metrics, but ITER is being made now, not in another two decades. Watch SPARC for now.