3 ms·
The Navy did fund electrostatic fusion designs for a few decades. Considering any plasma physicist could have told you it was a fool's errand 60 years ago I'm
by willis936 5y ago
The Navy did fund electrostatic fusion designs for a few decades. Considering any plasma physicist could have told you it was a fool's errand 60 years ago I'm not sure I would trust the military's judgment on what future energy sources warrant research.
Also, some tips on making convincing arguments: making baseless and unfounded speculations on alternate histories with not even a whiff of empiricism is not going to convince anyone. Additionally, saying "something won't work" without articulating why it won't work isn't helpful.
I've heard the power density arguments. It's a 40 year old argument that does not hold up in a world with HTS magnets and optimized stellarators.
- pfdietz 5y agoHTS or stellarators don't have a damned thing to do with those power density limits of DT fusion reactors. Those limits come from power/area on the walls, and they'd still exist even with much higher magnetic fields and plasma beta.
- willis936 5y agoOptimized stellarators have exceeded the Greenwald limit so tokamak empirical scaling laws don't apply. If you increase the power in the same vessel is that not increasing the power density?
- pfdietz 5y agoYes, you can increase power density with sufficiently neat plasma physics. But no, the fundamental limit on power density in DT fusion doesn't come from plasma physics, it comes from engineering (specifically, limits on power/area on the first wall, coupled with minimum reactor size set by the cross section of neutrons w. blanket materials). You might have a sufficiently sucky design that can't even reach that limit, but once you reach it all the improvement in plasma physics or magnetic fields you can imagine doesn't help.