The Department of Energy plans to announce Tuesday that scientists have been able for the first time to produce a fusion reaction that creates a net energy gain — a major milestone in the decades-long, multibillion-dollar quest to develop a technology that provides unlimited, cheap, clean power.
Fusion power has been "a few decades away" for a half-century. I have little doubt that an operational fusion power reactor will be put into service, but I also have little doubt that most people who are reading this post on the day that I upload it will live long enough to see it. In that way, fusion power is the technological equivalent of building a cathedral.
When I think of the accidents that happened with the early nuke tech, such as "what is that green light from?", I can really wait on Fusion tech. We have not yet begun to screw that up, and I don't want to see the mess left when they do.
ReplyDeletew3ski
Agreed: I remember in the late 60s hearing that nuclear fusion was 50 years away ... and that 50 years just keeps retreating.
ReplyDeleteHere's my favorite science communicator, physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, pointing out that even if its feasible, economically it would be a loser.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY
I think we should skip ahead to anti-matter/matter generators, which is what we need for warp drive technology anyway. What could POSSIBLY go wRonK?
ReplyDeleteIt didn't take long for the stellarator to catch the tokamak.
ReplyDeleteIf the 16-meter-wide device, called a stellarator, can match or outperform similar-size tokamaks, it could cause fusion scientists to rethink the future of their field. Stellarators have several key advantages, including a natural ability to keep the roiling superhot gases they contain stable enough to fuse nuclei and release energy. Even more crucial for a future fusion power plant, they can theoretically just run and run, whereas tokamaks must stop periodically to reset their magnet coils.
https://www.science.org/content/article/twisty-device-explores-alternative-path-fusion
Plasma physics is studied at Princeton, Wisconsin and Illinois in the US. Princeton had a math breakthru earlier this year.
Overseeing Paul’s Princeton work is PPPL physicist Amitava Bhattacharjee, a Princeton professor of astrophysical sciences who also oversees the “Hidden Symmetries and Fusion Energy” project sponsored by the Simons Foundation in New York that funded the PRL paper. “Matt’s and Elizabeth’s work makes adroit use of the mathematical and computational tools developed in recent years on stellarator optimization, and establishes beyond doubt that we can design quasisymmetric stellarator magnetic fields with an unprecedented level of accuracy. It is a triumph of computational design.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/943560
The HSX stellarator is one of three major magnetic fusion experiments at UW–Madison, which is world-renowned for its plasma and fusion research program.
https://news.wisc.edu/as-miss-wisconsin-engineering-student-promotes-nuclear-energy-on-a-big-stage/
That is some quality technobabble.
ReplyDelete(I have no idea what most of that means.)
Stars have massive gravity. Humans don't. Can magnets and slick engineering make this work in my lifetime? Can humanity save itself from the dystopian future it is creating?
ReplyDeleteMy physics roomie in school is playing with lasers these days
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennis-mccal-2a7239/
It will never be small enough to fit in your basement ...
ReplyDeleteComrade, allow me to translate.
ReplyDeleteIf not careful, it go BOOM!!
Dale
Ten Bears, much as there would never be demand for more than 10 computers in the United States?
ReplyDeleteJones, Jon Jones, thanks for that data, it’s actually pretty understandable, for advanced physics.
Comrade, IDK, seems pretty promising, but much has started on that trail…
And here, a day later, is Randall Munroe -- "xkcd" -- snarkily making the same point, more energy goes in than comes out, but parodying it as a hydroelectric dam instead.
ReplyDeletehttps://xkcd.com/2710/
Gordon Bell Scott, Geothermal Engineer
ReplyDeleteGeothermal energy tis nae rocket science, man,
it’s mostly digging a wee bit below your feet.
I'm going to believe it in a year or two when it gets replicated. Because I've seen this headline before. Four or five months later there's a tiny little "oops, we goofed on our math!" published in tiny print in the back of some journal somewhere, and it goes nowhere.
ReplyDelete