14 ms·

i’ve been following this project for 10 years. it’s been successful. but how do projects like these move faster? the wendelstein 7x is never going to generate u

i’ve been following this project for 10 years. it’s been successful. but how do projects like these move faster? the wendelstein 7x is never going to generate usable electricity. it’s supposed to be the pre cursor to the producing reactor

ladams 3y ago
Stellarators in particular suffer from very long development cycles. It takes years and years of research to develop the algorithms used to optimize the coil geometries, and then the production of the coils and assembly of the vacuum vessel within the coils is much more challenging than for a tokamak. The coils are hard to produce because they have highly irregular shapes, and tight tolerances. Assembling the vacuum vessel is hard because the coils cover much more of the "toroidal-ish" surface area than in a tokamak. The is a lot of interesting work going on in stellarator design optimization now, but it will likely be many years before that research is realized in another actual reactor.
- fizigura 3y ago
  For a few billion USD you could build a real power plant of this type. Sounds expensive, but consider how much money nuclear fission did cost initially, and how much money we burn on other stuff, then it's not unthinkable to have somebody rich chip in and make it happen. (Germany just gave $10bn subsidies for a domestic Intel factory.)
  - Guvante 3y ago
    They managed to handle what a fission reactor outputs every second in this experiment. I don't think that points to a commercial reactor whenever someone spends a few billions.
    - fizigura 3y ago
      That's how research works. The first fission experiments couldn't power half a small country either. When you listen to the guys from this original article then you'd know that for 10-20bn USD you could likely build a real power plant with this tech within 5 years. It's obviously not without risk, which is why nobody is doing it. But the technical feasibility is there. They also point out that once the first-of-a-kind installation exists, subsequent models will be way cheaper and way better since you'd have learned a lot and streamlined the process. But we choose to use public money for fossil subsidies instead, cause jobs, or something.
      - Guvante 3y ago
        The US has spent (inflation adjusted) $34 billion on fusion as of the end of 2021. Assuming no real change it would be $35 billion as of the end of 2023. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/margraf1/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/margraf1/ Fusion has been "a decade away" since before the turn of the millennium. To say we should just throw $10-20 billion at a power plant and hope something comes out is not a good idea. We should wait until one of the many multi billion dollar research plants is able to get even 10% of a reasonable to target energy output before even thinking about that. Otherwise we would likely just sign the death of fusion in the public eye. Could you imagine the backlash if a $40 billion dollar project couldn't even produce power after two decades? (Going off how public works costs and timelines have been going is the reason for higher values)
barbazoo 3y ago
> the wendelstein 7x is never going to generate usable electricity What's the reason for that?
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  It's a research reactor, not a production reactor. Generating useful electricity was never the design goal. The goal was to learn how to build a reactor that could generate useful electricity.
- KyleBerezin 3y ago
  We are researching fusion technology. It would take a reactor many times larger to get more energy out of the facility than you put in. The technology still needs to mature before a reactor that size would be financially responsible.
  - aeyes 3y ago
    In the German Alternativlos podcast the Wendelstein team (Prof. Dr. Thomas Klinger, Dr. Adrian von Stechow) recently stated that it is already feasible, they estimate a cost of ~€20B and a 5 year construction time for a commercial fusion power plant if we started now. https://alternativlos.org/51/ https://alternativlos.org/51/
    - KyleBerezin 3y ago
      Yea, but compare the financial burden of that compared to a solar farm of the same output. Not to mention the technical risk.
      - fizigura 3y ago
        Solar farms on farmland? That won't scale to the energy needs of 8bn+ people if we still want to keep feeding them. Especially a non-vegetarian diet.
        3y ago
Eji1700 3y ago
Mostly, they don't? There should be more funding in this area, but at some point you've got to build it, and that takes a ton of time. Regulations/bureaucracy could be better but at the end of the day you're not going to cut off a ton of time safely. Once you have a working model iteration gets much much faster, but we've simply been hitting walls for decades.
- hedora 3y ago
  Is there a minimum viable size for a fusion reactor? If it scaled down ennough, they could just launch prototypes into space, and see if they explode.
  - Eji1700 3y ago
    I'm honestly not sure if you're joking but in case you're not, the "minimum viable size" is hardly the largest issue with what you're proposing and it sounds like you're not getting what the key issues are. You're talking about taking a technology that's so finicky we've barely gotten it to work after almost 100 years and rocketing it into space? We're no where near good enough at this to get a test that would work after the extreme violence of an escape velocity launch. Further fusion reactors aren't like fission. "exploding" really isn't a problem . Keeping the reaction going in an efficient manner is. IF exploding was a problem, space is probably the worst place for it? Putting it way underground would be vastly easier and a hell of a lot safer because you won't have material possible falling back to earth/hitting satellites in orbit.
    - sdwr 3y ago
      That was not a real question, it was a subconscious plea for elon musk to take over and make it work. "Shooting it into space" is a reference to how SpaceX disrupted the rocket industry through a "fail fast" mentality, aggressive goals, and sheer force of will.
      - Eji1700 3y ago
        This take is even more baffling to me than the original question.
willis936 3y ago
HSX beat them to the punch by over a decade. Small is easy. Unfortunately no machine worth making (power generator relevant) is small. Practice helps.
atoav 3y ago
In the (German) podcast alternativlos two nerds interview the Wendelstein 7-X people and ask them specifically what stops them from moving faster and their answer was: money.

ladams 3y ago

Stellarators in particular suffer from very long development cycles. It takes years and years of research to develop the algorithms used to optimize the coil geometries, and then the production of the coils and assembly of the vacuum vessel within the coils is much more challenging than for a tokamak. The coils are hard to produce because they have highly irregular shapes, and tight tolerances. Assembling the vacuum vessel is hard because the coils cover much more of the "toroidal-ish" surface area than in a tokamak. The is a lot of interesting work going on in stellarator design optimization now, but it will likely be many years before that research is realized in another actual reactor.

fizigura 3y ago
For a few billion USD you could build a real power plant of this type. Sounds expensive, but consider how much money nuclear fission did cost initially, and how much money we burn on other stuff, then it's not unthinkable to have somebody rich chip in and make it happen. (Germany just gave $10bn subsidies for a domestic Intel factory.)
- Guvante 3y ago
  They managed to handle what a fission reactor outputs every second in this experiment. I don't think that points to a commercial reactor whenever someone spends a few billions.
  - fizigura 3y ago
    That's how research works. The first fission experiments couldn't power half a small country either. When you listen to the guys from this original article then you'd know that for 10-20bn USD you could likely build a real power plant with this tech within 5 years. It's obviously not without risk, which is why nobody is doing it. But the technical feasibility is there. They also point out that once the first-of-a-kind installation exists, subsequent models will be way cheaper and way better since you'd have learned a lot and streamlined the process. But we choose to use public money for fossil subsidies instead, cause jobs, or something.
    - Guvante 3y ago
      The US has spent (inflation adjusted) $34 billion on fusion as of the end of 2021. Assuming no real change it would be $35 billion as of the end of 2023. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/margraf1/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/margraf1/ Fusion has been "a decade away" since before the turn of the millennium. To say we should just throw $10-20 billion at a power plant and hope something comes out is not a good idea. We should wait until one of the many multi billion dollar research plants is able to get even 10% of a reasonable to target energy output before even thinking about that. Otherwise we would likely just sign the death of fusion in the public eye. Could you imagine the backlash if a $40 billion dollar project couldn't even produce power after two decades? (Going off how public works costs and timelines have been going is the reason for higher values)

barbazoo 3y ago

> the wendelstein 7x is never going to generate usable electricity What's the reason for that?

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
It's a research reactor, not a production reactor. Generating useful electricity was never the design goal. The goal was to learn how to build a reactor that could generate useful electricity.
KyleBerezin 3y ago
We are researching fusion technology. It would take a reactor many times larger to get more energy out of the facility than you put in. The technology still needs to mature before a reactor that size would be financially responsible.
- aeyes 3y ago
  In the German Alternativlos podcast the Wendelstein team (Prof. Dr. Thomas Klinger, Dr. Adrian von Stechow) recently stated that it is already feasible, they estimate a cost of ~€20B and a 5 year construction time for a commercial fusion power plant if we started now. https://alternativlos.org/51/ https://alternativlos.org/51/
  - KyleBerezin 3y ago
    Yea, but compare the financial burden of that compared to a solar farm of the same output. Not to mention the technical risk.
    - fizigura 3y ago
      Solar farms on farmland? That won't scale to the energy needs of 8bn+ people if we still want to keep feeding them. Especially a non-vegetarian diet.
      - 3y ago

Eji1700 3y ago

Mostly, they don't? There should be more funding in this area, but at some point you've got to build it, and that takes a ton of time. Regulations/bureaucracy could be better but at the end of the day you're not going to cut off a ton of time safely. Once you have a working model iteration gets much much faster, but we've simply been hitting walls for decades.

hedora 3y ago
Is there a minimum viable size for a fusion reactor? If it scaled down ennough, they could just launch prototypes into space, and see if they explode.
- Eji1700 3y ago
  I'm honestly not sure if you're joking but in case you're not, the "minimum viable size" is hardly the largest issue with what you're proposing and it sounds like you're not getting what the key issues are. You're talking about taking a technology that's so finicky we've barely gotten it to work after almost 100 years and rocketing it into space? We're no where near good enough at this to get a test that would work after the extreme violence of an escape velocity launch. Further fusion reactors aren't like fission. "exploding" really isn't a problem . Keeping the reaction going in an efficient manner is. IF exploding was a problem, space is probably the worst place for it? Putting it way underground would be vastly easier and a hell of a lot safer because you won't have material possible falling back to earth/hitting satellites in orbit.
  - sdwr 3y ago
    That was not a real question, it was a subconscious plea for elon musk to take over and make it work. "Shooting it into space" is a reference to how SpaceX disrupted the rocket industry through a "fail fast" mentality, aggressive goals, and sheer force of will.
    - Eji1700 3y ago
      This take is even more baffling to me than the original question.

willis936 3y ago

HSX beat them to the punch by over a decade. Small is easy. Unfortunately no machine worth making (power generator relevant) is small. Practice helps.

atoav 3y ago

In the (German) podcast alternativlos two nerds interview the Wendelstein 7-X people and ask them specifically what stops them from moving faster and their answer was: money.