The Big Boy Fusion Reactor Takes a Big Boy Step
Popular Mechanics,
by
Caroline Delbert
Original Article
Posted By: StormCnter,
6/7/2020 11:08:02 AM
Engineers have installed the first and largest piece of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) fusion project in France. The gigantic assembly begins with this piece, the steel base, which weighs more than 1,200 tons. ITER has been in the works for 30 years. The experimental tokamak fusion reactor—a nuclear fusion plasma reactor where extremely hot, charged plasma spins and generates virtually limitless energy—is one of a handful of extremely costly “miniature suns” around the world.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 6/7/2020 11:47:17 AM (No. 435973)
I don't get a warm fuzzy when reading "mini-sun," "requiring super-precision," and "made in India" all in the same paragraph. India is best known for brass trinkets sold in Pier 1 stores and they've yet to conquer modern sanitation. Clearly France needed this made at lowest possible cost.
It is truly sad however, that the USA has handed over to France the entire Nuclear power generation industry. We've allowed the Eco-Greenie lobbyists to overrule our U.S. National Defense strategy on "critical industries and technologies." This is tantamount to treason.
17 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
coyote 6/7/2020 12:07:01 PM (No. 436018)
The "extremely costly" part might put this technology across the finish line. But the thorium reactor is likely to be better and more likely to work.
9 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
DVC 6/7/2020 12:12:07 PM (No. 436030)
Pop Mech has been a favorite since boyhood, but has gotten more and more "breathless" and "excitable" over the decades.
As to their statement:
"a nuclear fusion plasma reactor where extremely hot, charged plasma spins and generates virtually limitless energy." Yes, this is theoretically what will happen SOME DAY, but so far all man-made fusion reactions have been VERY short, and have taken dramatically MORE energy to start than they put out.
Scientists and engineers have been working on this for many decades. So far, baby, baby steps forward, but no real sustained fusion reaction which creates more power than was put into it. I hope that they are successful, but so far, billions spent, and we are not all that close, really. I hope we make it. The current problem is that even if we get a sustainable fusion reactor with useful power output - the cost to build is so immense that it may remain uneconomic until far simpler designs can be worked out. That may be a long time coming, sadly.
Full disclosure: I am biased in favor of fusion, and I did some small amount of engineering analysis work supporting our national labs on two fusion reactor related "big science" projects, SSC and NIF. Slick Willie canceled SSC, and NIF was a "successful failure", never achieved fusion ignition, but we learned a lot about the whole fusion physics situation, moved the science ahead.
Slick Willie knew there were more votes to be bought with that SSC money....couldn't be 'wasting it' on big science projects, especially ones being built in Texas. I despise the Dems for so many reasons.
21 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
MattMusson 6/7/2020 12:13:51 PM (No. 436034)
We will know it worked when we find a giant ITER crater full of fuzed glass.
4 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
czechlist 6/7/2020 12:14:43 PM (No. 436037)
I doubt ITER would be there but I am still upset that so much research could be happening outside of Waxahachie, TX; but, Clinton and the democrats killed the Super Collider and sent that money overseas to CERN.
And now the dims tout their belief in science?
12 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
snowoutlaw 6/7/2020 12:37:31 PM (No. 436081)
Of course using deuterium (2H) and tritium (3H) releases energy but also a lot of radiation that cause the metal to be damaged and radioactive over time. The actual clean energy future is to use He3 atoms because they release large amounts of energy without causing the surrounding material to become radioactive. Lots of He3 on the moon.
7 people like this.
Or, just capture the output of that big fusion reactor in the sky
3 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
joew9 6/7/2020 1:22:29 PM (No. 436160)
In about 1970 they said fusion power was just 20 years away.
Then by 1990 instead of presenting a working fusion power reactor as predicted they said fusion power was just 20 years away.
But more recently they have sheepishly been estimating a bit longer. Now it's several decades away.
We aren't going to see fusion power until space aliens arrive to show us how it's done.
9 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
DVC 6/7/2020 1:47:25 PM (No. 436199)
#8, much like electric cars. Always "the car of the future", since 1890. And fusion is "the energy source of the future" for at least 60 years, or more.
If we get a Mr. Fusion like Back to the Future Part II, THEN we can have non-hydrocarbon cars, and homes. Until then, making various versions of HCs into H2O and CO2 will be the primary power source for cars, airplanes and electrical power.
4 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Aubreyesque 6/7/2020 3:42:06 PM (No. 436341)
Would helium-3 from the moon help with any of this??
3 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
DVC 6/7/2020 5:20:15 PM (No. 436413)
#2, thorium reactors are kinda overhyped. Not really much advantages over normal uranium reactors, and the primary "problem" with uranium reactors is purely political. There is a mix of Luddites who want us only using "renewables" which means going back to the 1800s or so, effectively, on many things, and there are the leftists which see that controlling power and making it expensive and rare, gives the average person less freedom and the leftist thugs more control. And then there are millions of ignorant useful idiots who can't grasp what the hell all this "Nuk-yu-leer" stuff is all about, so they are against it because, "hey, man that stuff is DANGEROUS".
I don't think thorium reactors will get us any significant progress against this array of political foes, so I don't see it as any more viable. And it really isn't significantly more safe or useful than what we have already.
2 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
DVC 6/7/2020 5:25:51 PM (No. 436417)
#2, a good source on thorium reactors. Good and bad.
https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium.html
3 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
hershey 6/7/2020 9:13:00 PM (No. 436601)
They need to talk to the wacky professor in Back To The Future...he only needed a bannana to power his DeLorean...
1 person likes this.
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