4 ms·
> “This team is finding that the density confinement is actually a bit lower than traditional operating modes, which is not necessarily a bad thing, because it’
by elihu 4y ago
> “This team is finding that the density confinement is actually a bit lower than traditional operating modes, which is not necessarily a bad thing, because it’s compensated for by higher temperatures in the core,” he says. “It’s definitely exciting, but there’s a big uncertainty about how well our understanding of the physics scales to larger devices. So something like ITER is going to be much bigger than KSTAR”.
This made me wonder when ITER was going to actually be up and running. From wikipedia:
> "The reactor was expected to take 10 years to build and ITER had planned to test its first plasma in 2020 and achieve full fusion by 2023, however the schedule is now to test first plasma in 2025 and full fusion in 2035."
So, it sounds like it'll start doing something within a few years, but it'll probably be a long time before it produces significant scientific results.
By the time ITER is running, maybe some other group will beat them to it (like the MIT ARC or SPARC reactors, which use more recent, better superconductors and don't need to be anywhere near as big).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
- yreg 4y agoSeems (like other contributors) Russia is manufacturing parts for it. Hope the current events won't delay the project.
- Filligree 4y agoOne of the main reasons it's so delayed, is that everyone gets to make some of the parts. Which then have to be put together on-site, despite inevitable mismatches. Reducing the number of countries involved will probably just speed it up.
- ncmncm 4y agoNot noticeably. The longer it takes, the longer the money flows. The moment its real prospects become clear to everybody, the money stops.
- ncmncm 4y agoITER if ever finished will have exactly zero apparatus to extract useful power. They are not even talking about starting on a power plant before 2050, or finishing before 2070. It will of course all be dropped long before then, one way or another. Either we build out renewables fast enough, or civilization collapses before we get there. Either way, no fusion power.
- elihu 4y agoExtracting useful power isn't really the point of ITER; the main thing is to operate the machine long enough to produce useful data that everyone else can use to build reactors that aren't based on technology that's several decades out of date. I don't think ITER would be dropped because of renewables. Even if we had enough energy to power our civilization, there's always other things we could do if we had more. Civilization collapse could put a halt to ITER, but another possibility is the project could be dropped because someone else beats them to it and they don't need to finish this expensive machine just to find out what everyone already knows about magnetic plasma confinement.
- ncmncm 4y agoDropped is dropped is dropped. Continuing to spend up until then diverts money from other things not best dropped. Confining plasma does not suffice to get you power generation.
- dmix 4y agoWas there not a cheaper/faster way to do the ITER R&D? I guess there's also lot of value in getting the private industry expertise in building the magnents and all of the complicated sub-parts. Basically training a whole generation in practical advanced fusion development. Hopefully there will be some real-world application in time for this knowledge and expertise to be transferable.
- pfdietz 4y agoHopefully they'll be a pony in there somewhere?