Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Germany has activated its new Wendelstein 7-X Stellarator reactor for the first time, briefly testing its ability to heat and contain a Helium plasma. The German Stellarator is the first nuclear fusion reactor ever built which has a chance of hitting break even – or at the very least, of maintaining a sustained nuclear fusion reaction for up to half an hour at a time.
According to World Nuclear News;
After more than a year of technical preparations and tests, the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator has produced its first helium plasma.
…
On 10 December, the operating team in the control room started up the magnetic field and initiated the computer-operated experiment control system. It fed around one milligram of helium gas into the evacuated plasma vessel and switched on the microwave heating for a short 1.3 MW pulse. The first plasma could be observed by the installed cameras and measuring devices.
The first plasma in the machine had a duration of one-tenth of a second and achieved a temperature of around one million degrees Celsius.
The next task will be to extend the duration of the plasma discharges and to investigate the best method of producing and heating helium plasmas using microwaves.
Project leader Thomas Klinger said, “We’re starting with a plasma produced from the noble gas helium. We’re not changing over to the actual investigation object, a hydrogen plasma, until next year.” He added, “This is because it’s easier to achieve the plasma state with helium. In addition, we can clean the surface of the plasma vessel with helium plasmas.”
Read more: World Nuclear News
A Stellarator differs from a Tokamac by flattening and twisting the Fusion plasma, rather than attempt to hold it in a simple donut shaped magnetic bottle. This twisted configuration diminishes geometric defects in the containment field, reducing the tendency of the plasma to escape magnetic confinement.
Obviously these are early days, but if the German fusion reactor fulfils the research team’s expectations, within the next year or two the German team may demonstrate the first ever completely stable artificial nuclear fusion reaction.
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It should be noted that the tokomak configuration is being eclipsed by the stellerator configuration, dense plasma focus, and several other non-tokomak designs that are showing so much progress in a short time , largely on a budgetary shoe-string.
Unlike this, the mammoth ITER project is a decade away from an initial test firing. And ITER is not aneutronic, so it will present some waste issues.
After sending all the “science” the West developed to manufacturing sites in developing countries, it is interesting we will be able to buy something truly useful back:
http://fortune.com/2015/02/02/doe-china-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor/
My bitch is that Carter screwed all this up when the DOE failed in it’s main goal of reducing dependency on outside sources of energy. As a trained nuclear engineer Mr. Peace should have seen the value in Weinberg’s work. Who will win? Canada, India, China? I hope they don’t charge us too much to solve the energy problem. You can see the failure of the “efficient market” concept in that we are wasting more money on foolish things like the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy project. I thing we could have has a practical MSR running commercially for less than the Greens have forced us to spend on subsidies..
Carter screwed up more than that. Ruined our entire nuclear fuel cycle plan by demanding spent fuel be buried rather than reprocessed (as India, France, China, etc. do).
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/smarter-use-of-nuclear-waste/
Why fusion, backradiation heating energy from CO2 has more energy than sun, according to NASA 🙂
“may demonstrate the first ever completely stable artificial nuclear fusion reaction.”
At huge cost and likely not enough energy production to make it worth while, in my opinion. A huge waste of money for no reason to do it that just for the sake of doing it. We could get much better value for the money using existing technology.
After another 60 years development work, Nuclear Fusion may be made to work, or may not. Stars work because they are very big and have enormous gravity. Nuclear Fusion Reactors will be very small by comparison and constantly close to instability. They may also work but have no useful output, like solar panels and wind turbines.
“Obviously these are early days, but if the German fusion reactor fulfils the research team’s expectations, within the next year or two the German team may demonstrate the first ever completely stable artificial nuclear fusion reaction.”
Actually, there are others – I believe a Farnsworth Fusor would fit that category. They may be the first to achieve breakeven, though.
A Stellarator differs from a Tokamac by flattening and twisting the Fusion plasma, rather than attempt to hold it in a simple donut shaped magnetic bottle. This twisted configuration diminishes geometric defects in the containment field, reducing the tendency of the plasma to escape magnetic confinement.
This is the point in the show where Geordi yells, “Coolant leak! Everybody out!”
Then after rolling under the slowly closing blast door, he calls the bridge to say, “We have a warp core breach in progress. I’ve lost magnetic confinement. It’s going to blow!”
Did he try reversing the polarity?
As long as they don’t cross the beams.
“… may demonstrate the first ever completely stable artificial nuclear fusion reaction.” This particular stellarator will not produce fusion; it has not been designed to do so. As I understand it, they won’t be feeding it tritium because it would be too expensive to deal with. Their project is also relying on ITER (!) to solve a lot of engineering problems (e.g. lithium to tritium).
I note that many people’s concept of Fusion is based on the large, rather expensive “tokomak” type of project and therefore unlikely to be commercially viable. But small scale much much cheaper fusion ideas are extremely abundant and also very close to break even. One or more of these are much more likely to reach break even in the near future than the larger tokomak style.
The most promising (that I can get information about) is the Focus Fusion Project:
http://lppfusion.com/
This project is going straight to aneutronic fusion (Boron + Hydrogen) and is of such a simple and small design that it could easily be produced commercially and be extremely economic once the design is finalised. Broadly speaking, they use what amounts to a cathode placed within an atmosphere of the fuel to run an extremely high voltage along it where the plasma folds over onto itself into a “plasmoid”, which then collapses to create the conditions required for fusion. The energy is inducted back into the cathode where it collected by capacitors that produce the next shot and anything left over can be draw as usable energy.
I like this approach because the energy is actually collected by the fusor itself. Some of it’s problems simply relate to specialised materials needed to protect the tungsten cathode. Fascinatingly, they think the process mimics a large scale galactic event known as quasars.
Another interesting point – the amount of fusion you get from one reaction is very small – about the calorific content of a pistachio. But it happens very fast, so you can run it 100s of times a second. That adds up to a lot of pistachios.
Then of course there is Polywell:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
Both the Polywell device and the Focus Fusion device would effectively be about the size and have roughly the same output as a jet engine.
The of course Skunk Works have a device in development they think they have made breakthroughs with:
http://www.lockheedmartin.co.uk/us/products/compact-fusion.html
There are many others but this post is long enough. Roughly speaking Fusion has been following “Moores Law”:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mzFHD0B3i98/Uy6PWFKJspI/AAAAAAAAuew/Ec1iH4XngXo/s1600/gf-fusion-vs-moores-law.jpg
So there are many projects that are in the mature stage of development where proof have principle is moving over to breakeven or net producing prototypes. IMO, while thorium MS is very promising, and there may still be a place for it, and while there are still non-trivial engineering challenges for small scale fusion, its likely that fusion may supercede TMS or next generation fission before it really has a chance to get started.
So the little maroon dots are Fusion performance, and the baby blue dots are Moore’s law.
So fusion started ahead of Moore, circa 1968 and has grown by 10,000 X since then.
Given that there has been NO (controlled) fusion whatsoever, just how has that 10,000 X fusion multiplication manifested itself; other than maybe in dollars wasted chasing Scottish mist ??
g
Where “new” means they built it when I was a kid; now I am an old man and they have finally switched it on…
1. It is Tokamak, not “Tokamac”.
2. Tokamak will never be a useful reactor, because it is a pulsed device. ITER is a typical EU-fraud.
3. Stellarator is the only realistic way towards fusion power, because it can work in a continuous regime.
Good luck, Wendelstein. You seem to be the very last hope for fusion!
“The German Stellarator is the first nuclear fusion reactor ever built which has a chance of hitting break even…”
Then why has the US pumped billions into its fusion power research programs knowing full well that the designs are hopeless?
Fusion is a Big Idea. A Big Idea is something that once someone thinks it up, someone feels compelled to do it, with no other justification than “because it’s there”. It worked for Everest; but did climbing Everest do anything for the rest of us? Did putting a man on the moon do anything for the rest of us, other than spin-offs and side effects? Building the first atomic bomb was a Big Idea; that one didn’t work out so well.
Fusion might work, eventually, but even if it does, it may never be a practical energy source. Like getting to the moon, if we reach that point we can declare victory and give up, or say “now what?”. Did finding a Higgs boson change life for the better? If you need a pyramid building project, go for it.
Nice to see this progress, but still no attempt described to even try to extract some of the million degreeC heat energy produced, even for a tenth of a second. Until this is done, we’re just playing with expensive toys!
More promising is LFTR activity. Here’s a compilation of Thorium progress. The BIG mistake is that their proponents called the devices LFTR for Liquid Floride Thorium Reactor, instead of LIFG for Liquid Floride Thorium Generator. They have yet to figure it out, and thus continue to scare people away from it. Here’s the Thoriumnergyreport update:
http://www.thoriumenergyreport.org
It should be “Fluoride”
My French spellchecker messed it up! Sorry!