The first plasma: the Wendelstein 7-X fusion

[toast]

On 10th December 2015 the first helium plasma was produced in the Wendelstein 7-X fusion device at the

Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald. After more than a year of technical preparations

and tests, experimental operation has now commenced according to plan. Wendelstein 7-X, the world’s largest stellarator-type fusion device, will investigate the suitability of this type of device for a power station.

Following nine years of construction work and more than a million assembly hours, the main assembly of the Wendelstein 7-X was completed in April 2014. The operational preparations have been under way ever since.

Each technical system was tested in turn, the vacuum in the vessels, the cooling system, the superconducting

coils and the magnetic field they produce, the control system, as well as the heating devices and measuring instruments. On 10th December, the day had arrived: the operating team in the control room started up the

magnetic field and initiated the computer-operated experiment control system.

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[Dark_Grey]

I don't know much about fusion as an energy source. What are the risks compared to nuclear?

[sepulchrave]

I don't know much about fusion as an energy source. What are the risks compared to nuclear?

The risks from nuclear fusion are negligible.

The risks from a well-designed nuclear fission reactor are also very low - try finding how many people died from radiation exposure in Fukushima (zero, I think) compared to how many died during the actual tsunami.

However nuclear fission is always inherently risky because you are generating power from radioactive material (energy comes from splitting very heavy and volatile atoms), and if containment is ever breached the radioactive material may spread everywhere.

Nuclear fusion is much safer because you are generating power by merging very light atoms to form heavier ones. Neither the initial fuel nor the final products are radioactive, so if containment is breached you just have a broken reactor; the environment does not get poisoned.

During the fusion process their may be some dangerous radiation, but that is due to high-energy collisions, not the atoms themselves. Just make sure the reactor is lined with lead and concrete and there is nothing to worry about.

(Just like the doctor's X-ray machine - it produces a lot of radiation that would be dangerous if you exposed yourself for too long, but when it is turned off the radiation disappears.)

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

Strictly speaking a fusion reactor does contain radioactive material, namely tritium. But since the tritium is made by the reactor itself and fed back into it, there will only be minuscule amounts of it at any given time. The main radioactivity problem is with the structure of the reactor which will become radioactive due to neutron activation, but the amount and longivity of the radioacive waste is much less than from a fisson plant, and it is not usable for nuclear weapons manufacture so there is no prolifiration risk.

As soon as a fusion reactor looses power it will immediately stop working, because conditions for fusion will cease to exists,so there is no risk of a meltdown. The amount of material in the reactor at any given time is measured in grams, so even if it should explode (which it won't !) the result would be quite feeble.

The main problem with fusion power is the inconvenient fact that we don't quite know how to do it yet. There is a saying that "fusion power has been just a decade away for the last 50 years" !

But thanks to experiments like this and ITER we are taking some serious steps towards amking it a reality. https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines

[toast]

February 03, 2016

The Wendelstein 7-X fusion device at Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald produced its first

hydrogen plasma on 3 February 2016. This marks the start of scientific operation. Wendelstein 7-X, the world’s largest

fusion device of the stellarator type, is to investigate this configuration’s suitability for use in a power plant.

Full story

Edited February 3, 2016 by toast

[clare256]

It's been my understanding that fusion is currently possible, it just takes more energy to create the fusion, than the energy that is produced by said fusion. Correct?

[Harte]

You mean controlled fusion.

Fusion itself has been possible since the invention of the H Bomb.

Harte

[Calibeliever]

Impressive work!

One step closer to

[Merc14]

We're always ten years away from a fusion power.

[Nzo]

So much for leaps and bounds in scientific knowledge. Before we had few geniuses but HUGE advancements, now we have millions of eggheads and advancements are literally measured in nanoseconds. The most important technological breakthrough needed by man and every country, university is dragging their feet for the last 70 years. It's incredibly disturbing.

[Merc14]

So much for leaps and bounds in scientific knowledge. Before we had few geniuses but HUGE advancements, now we have millions of eggheads and advancements are literally measured in nanoseconds. The most important technological breakthrough needed by man and every country, university is dragging their feet for the last 70 years. It's incredibly disturbing.

You don't know what you are talking about. Billions are being spent trying to develop a controlled fusion reactor in labs and universities all over the world. Maybe go and educate yourself on the difficulties of fusion power before commenting and becoming "incredibly disturbed".

[ShadowSot]

So much for leaps and bounds in scientific knowledge. Before we had few geniuses but HUGE advancements, now we have millions of eggheads and advancements are literally measured in nanoseconds. The most important technological breakthrough needed by man and every country, university is dragging their feet for the last 70 years. It's incredibly disturbing.

That isn't how it worked at all. Sure there are big names and big ideas from the position we sit on the time scale now, but they required years and decades of research before anything developed from them.

If you lived at the time you wouldn't have much noticed, just as most haven't really noticed the incredible leaps in computer technology or medical technologies over the last twenty years.

[Harte]

So much for leaps and bounds in scientific knowledge. Before we had few geniuses but HUGE advancements, now we have millions of eggheads and advancements are literally measured in nanoseconds. The most important technological breakthrough needed by man and every country, university is dragging their feet for the last 70 years. It's incredibly disturbing.

Quantum Mechanics first fully developed - in the 1920's by many of those big name geniuses.

First application of Quantum Mechanics - 1947.

First commercial manufacturing of a product based on QM - 1951.

Harte

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

So much for leaps and bounds in scientific knowledge. Before we had few geniuses but HUGE advancements, now we have millions of eggheads and advancements are literally measured in nanoseconds. The most important technological breakthrough needed by man and every country, university is dragging their feet for the last 70 years. It's incredibly disturbing.

Yeah nothing has happened in since 1946. That whole spaceflight thing and the computer revolution is just small potatoes. Same thing about the development of the standard model of physics and the whole host of medical advances. Damn those scientists dragging their feet for 70 years.

(I might have used some sarcasm in this post )

And now responding to an actual intelligent question:

It's been my understanding that fusion is currently possible, it just takes more energy to create the fusion, than the energy that is produced by said fusion. Correct?

Correct.

We have been able to do fusion for quite a few years, but with no net energy output. Strictly speaking the European research reactor JET did manage to make more energy than it consumed back in 1997, but it was only for a few seconds and there was no way to extract the energy anyway. (its purely a research reactor).

ITER (link in post #4) will be able to generate about 10 times more energy than it consumes (500 megawatts vs. 50 Megawatts), but it will not be able to do it long enough to be a practical energy source. Some work is also being done on other methods of fusion energy, but so far magnetic confinement fusion, like Wendelstein 7-X and ITER, looks like the most promising solution.

As Harte wrote in post #7 we have been able to do fusion since the first thermonuclear bombs were tested in the early 50's, but they have some pretty obvious shortcommings if you want to make clean and controllable energy.

Edited February 4, 2016 by Noteverythingisaconspiracy

[toast]

At least one egghead outed himself within the last 5 posts.

[Deleted]

How is it possible to create more energy out if energy, doesnt energy equal energy (As far as I remember from school) where does the aditional energy come from.

[Harte]

leftover mass from when the atoms fuse.

Mass = energy.

Harte

[Uncle Sam]

leftover mass from when the atoms fuse.

Mass = energy.

Harte

Humanity has yet to fully tap into the full nuclear energy output. Matter the size of a pen could out several city blocks if exploded with 100% matter conversion to energy. I think a combination of nuclear fission and fusion would actually give us unlimited amount of energy. One breaking apart atoms and the other forcing them together.

[DONTEATUS]

We are Indeed near a Real Break through ~ If we can control ourselfs long enough for this to play out We might in the Next twenty years Have Free Energy ! Or Really Close to Free ! Please mankind ! Do this For Us !

[Harte]

Humanity has yet to fully tap into the full nuclear energy output. Matter the size of a pen could out several city blocks if exploded with 100% matter conversion to energy. I think a combination of nuclear fission and fusion would actually give us unlimited amount of energy. One breaking apart atoms and the other forcing them together.

You couldn't use the same atoms. Also, the 100% conversion you're talking about involves antimatter.

It costs way too much to produce antimatter.

All of the antiprotons created at Fermilab’s Tevatron particle accelerator add up to only 15 nanograms. Those made at CERN amount to about 1 nanogram. At DESY in Germany, approximately 2 nanograms of positrons have been produced to date.

If all the antimatter ever made by humans were annihilated at once, the energy produced wouldn’t even be enough to boil a cup of tea.

Source.

Harte

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

Humanity has yet to fully tap into the full nuclear energy output. Matter the size of a pen could out several city blocks if exploded with 100% matter conversion to energy.

I think you are thinking of anti-matter here and we have been able to make that for decades, but it takes a lot more energy to make the anti-matter that will ever get out of it. Even with the best avilable technologies you will have to expend millions of times more energy to make anti-matter than the energy contained in the anti-matter.

On top of that anti-matter have the slight disadvantage that it explosively converts back into pure enegy when it contacts matter, any matter. So good luck trying to store it !

I think a combination of nuclear fission and fusion would actually give us unlimited amount of energy. One breaking apart atoms and the other forcing them together.

Once you have mastered fusion, why would you bother with fission any more ?

The only reason I could see fission being used instead of fusion would be for applications that require a very compact powerplant, such as a submarine, because fusion plants are likely to be quite large.

Only a few elements are useful for fusion or fission and they are completely different. Lighter elements are "easy" to fuse, while heavier elements are easier to split, they are not interchangable.

Edit: Foiled by Harte again. I have to get better at typing quickly.

Edited February 5, 2016 by Noteverythingisaconspiracy

[Merc14]

I think you are thinking of anti-matter here and we have been able to make that for decades, but it takes a lot more energy to make the anti-matter that will ever get out of it. Even with the best avilable technologies you will have to expend millions of times more energy to make anti-matter than the energy contained in the anti-matter.

On top of that anti-matter have the slight disadvantage that it explosively converts back into pure enegy when it contacts matter, any matter. So good luck trying to store it !

Once you have mastered fusion, why would you bother with fission any more ?

The only reason I could see fission being used instead of fusion would be for applications that require a very compact powerplant, such as a submarine, because fusion plants are likely to be quite large.

Only a few elements are useful for fusion or fission and they are completely different. Lighter elements are "easy" to fuse, while heavier elements are easier to split, they are not interchangable.

Edit: Foiled by Harte again. I have to get better at typing quickly.

Have you heard anything about that Lockheed Martin project that was a big deal the middle of last year?

[joonmoon999]

Scary.

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

Scary.

Why ?

Have you heard anything about that Lockheed Martin project that was a big deal the middle of last year?

Unfortunately not.

I wouldn't be surprised if it have hit some unexpected snag in development, afterall virtually every fusion project have. They often start out making great progress in the research phase, only to run into problems when they try to make it a working powerplant, hence the ond saying "fusion have been just a decade away for the last 50 years". Another very appropriate saying could be "So close, yet so far away".

On the other hand I wish them, and every other fusion project, the best of luck. The more people who are working on it the greater the chance of someone making that all important breakthrough that they are all looking for.

Edited February 7, 2016 by Noteverythingisaconspiracy