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Fusion (again)

Fusion (again)

Science

s
Fast and Curious

slatington, pa, usa

Joined
28 Dec 04
Moves
53321
Clock
06 Mar 23

@EndLame
ITER is already international and nobody is trying to hog the device.
I was a bit surprised the inertial crew got first breakthrough, producing about 20% more energy than was input. Now the issue is can we get ten times THAT. I guess it would really be more like 100X to be commercial I suspect.

s
Fast and Curious

slatington, pa, usa

Joined
28 Dec 04
Moves
53321
Clock
27 Mar 23

@moonbus
They WISH it had been 50% plus, it was in fact more like TWENTY percent more than the energy pumped in. The surprise for me was the fact that inertial fusion was the winner of the drive to produce more energy than it took to blast that little capsule.
But now there is a growing list of projects that now looks more like engineering issues rather than fundamental physics which is what took decades and decades to figure out.
It might even be the smaller Stellarator or some variation that may finally see more energy generated than consumed but it is still up in the air if it is even possible to make a Tokamak or some such into a commercial power source since they have a long way to go even after going say ten to one as to input V output, the deterioration of the guts are going to be very expensive to replace every month or so when the walls are saturated with ions and radiation and the resultant weakening of the metal in the walls.
My guess is magnetic fusion won't be commercial until MUCH higher strength magnets are developed, maybe a MEGAgauss level or some such.
AND near instantaneous control of the turbulence sucking out the energy created.

When I was 18 and in Palomar College near San Diego, I first heard about Tokamaks and such and it seemed to me then it was a matter of VERY fast feedback networks to control those instabilities and it turns out I was right.

moonbus
Über-Nerd (emeritus)

Joined
31 May 12
Moves
8703
Clock
28 Mar 23

@sonhouse

Thanks for your thoughts,

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