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I don't quite understand what is the purpose of ITER. What is it trying to achieve? Just demonstrating Q>1 won't be useful. If it's improvements in plasma mod
by killerstorm 2y ago
I don't quite understand what is the purpose of ITER. What is it trying to achieve?
Just demonstrating Q>1 won't be useful.
If it's improvements in plasma modeling and material science, won't it be possible do achieve that in smaller scale experiments?
Like it's very hard for me to believe that the only way to improve knowledge of plasma and stuff is to spend $20+B on ITER.
Especially as ITER goals were set in 1980s. Computing capabilities are now many orders of magnitude better and are going to grow further in 2030s. Isn't there a possibility that by 2040 they'd just be able to do high-precision simulation of ITER?
And if you have a choice to spend $20+B on building the thing or $20+B to simulate it, the later is probably much more preferable as then you can simulate millions of alternative designs without actually building them.
- ianburrell 2y agoIgnition, the part the hasn’t been done before, requires a large reactor. We don’t know how to generate self-powering reaction or run for long periods. ITER scale is only way to do that. Plasma is hard to simulate because it is chaotic and includes fluid mechanics and self-generated magnetic fields. There have been effects that have been discovered that weren’t predicted by theory. Simulation can’t be done at finest enough level. We also don’t know the parameters for ignition.