ITER - Fusion
- Thread starter MadGinga
- Start date
Piacular
In Cryo Sleep
Lucky bloody France.
I wonder which country didn't want it built here
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What about the old TOKAMAK that was making plasma reactions for ages, surely they mean self sustaining.
What a bunch of plebs, if it works it'll save their precious environment. Silly environmentalist, always complaining.
Everyone loves sea water!
I wonder which country didn't want it built here
.Beeb Image said:
What about the old TOKAMAK that was making plasma reactions for ages, surely they mean self sustaining
.Beeb said:
What a bunch of plebs, if it works it'll save their precious environment. Silly environmentalist, always complaining
.Everyone loves sea water!
Pestcontrol
In Cryo Sleep
Heh, iirc France, the UK, Canada, Japan and Russia (or was it Spain.. ) all wanted the project at some point, the final race was between France and Japan, France won because it already has a concentration of good scientific facilities. The squabble delayed ITER by a number of years. Eventually the US supported France i believe.
Sustained fusion means the energy released in the process is enough to keep the process going. It is the break even point they hope ITER will finally surpass. Up until now tokamak fusion could be initiated but only in short bursts as they quickly died out again.
Fusion is a nice technology and definitely worth researching, but not an immediate solution to the world's energy problem.
Sustained fusion means the energy released in the process is enough to keep the process going. It is the break even point they hope ITER will finally surpass. Up until now tokamak fusion could be initiated but only in short bursts as they quickly died out again.
Fusion is a nice technology and definitely worth researching, but not an immediate solution to the world's energy problem.
MadGinga
In Cryo Sleep
No. France won the "race" because they promised Japan a large proportion of the contracts for the support technologies, so in the long run Japan will be ahead and not out of pocket as much as the rest of the ITER group. see here The fact that France hosted the Tokamak project is largely irrelevant, as there is so much money being pumped into the project, a little more for a new facility isnt gonna make much difference, in fact using an existing site, might end up costing more as they will need to convert and strengthen the exisitng site.Pestcontrol said:
Yes and no, sustained fusion means that a fraction of the energy produced goes into maintaining the process through powering the magnetic fields that shape and contain the plasma, and hence stopping a rather large crater being the end product.Pestcontrol said:
The Tokamak project that preceded ITER was only conducted in short bursts as more power was needed to contain/control the reaction than was generated by the fusion. This is because they were only fusing a very small amount of fuel, and that it was only a test bed to see if they could contain/control a fusion reaction, which they did successfully. Now that they have proved that the containment method works, the second phase, ITER, was put into motion. This will involve using a decent amount of fuel and trying to as you put it Pestcontrol, "Break-Even".
It may not be an immediate solution to the world's energy problems, but its a good place to start. Renewable energy is all well and good, but wind power is ugly and requires large open spaces with constant wind, as energy storage capabilities aren't able to store the necessary power; solar power is a good idea, but the efficiency is very low, hence why its really only used on space craft where there is an uninterrupted supply of sunlight; wave/tidal power is and excellent idea, especially for costal countries like the UK, but the technology is nowhere near robust enough or advanced to generate the power necessary. Yes we could turn to nuclear power or burn more fossil fuels, but they are both only a short term solution as they both leave us with problems in the long term, fossil fuels emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, whereas nuclear power leaves us with a nice glowing heap of crud that has to be contained for 1000's of years.Pestcontrol said:
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elDiablo
Guest
No! You're both wrong! France won the race, as if it all goes down the toilet and blows up, no one will miss France
Na, seriously, glad to see we are finally looking for other ways of making electricity. I heard a while back that 3% of America's farm land could be converted to wind farms, and that they could power 98% of the country with electricity!!! Now, if thats not a good idea, I don't know what is...
Na, seriously, glad to see we are finally looking for other ways of making electricity. I heard a while back that 3% of America's farm land could be converted to wind farms, and that they could power 98% of the country with electricity!!! Now, if thats not a good idea, I don't know what is...
MadGinga
In Cryo Sleep
elDiablo said:No! You're both wrong! France won the race, as if it all goes down the toilet and blows up, no one will miss France
lol
elDiablo said:
Hmmm, that sounds feasible, but imagine what that would do to migration patterns of birds (oh how the environmentalists would moan), and how the locals might feel living the middle of the biggest wind farm in the world! Also, dont forget that producing the power is the easy bit, transporting it to where its needed is the bugger. Technically if you covered the Sahara desert with solar cells, you could produce enough power for the whole world, but you couldnt get it to the whole world, as they'd be too much loss in the transmission process.
Pestcontrol
In Cryo Sleep
I've seen a number of articles on the matter now. Let's agree it's a complicated game of power politics and trying to get the best out of it. Japan, by offering a location and insisting on it even if you know that it is not the best choice will mean you can get a good deal out of it as compensation when it is decided the reactor is built somewhere else.MadGinga said:
Q > 1. ITER aims for a Q of 5 iirc, that is, 5 times more energy generated than used. Including inefficiencies that should be more than enough to sustain the reaction and deliver power to the grid. ITER won't do that yet though, excess power will just be dissipated.MadGinga said:
Also i'm not sure if there'd be a crater otherwise, if the magnetic field would falter the plasma would immediately decompress, inflate, and as a result cool down, stopping the reaction. The containment vessel may be damaged but it is by no means a self sustaining reaction that can get out of control like nuclear power plants have.
True, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't build wind turbines or invest in other forms of green power at all. All these technologies, especially turbines are perfectly able to supply a limited percentage of total power without expensive power storage facilities. All bits help as every watt of green power means less coal burned and less CO2 in the air. That's the final goal, the fact that we run out of fossil fuels is only secondary. The world's supplies of oil and natural gas may not last that long but the coal reserves are huge still. Fusion power likely won't be cheap enough fast enough to solve this problem, which is why i support one more generation of nuclear power.MadGinga said:
Solar power also sees a lot of use outside spacecraft. It's strength is simplicity, you have a simple weather resistant panel that produces power when light falls on it no matter where you are. It may not be a lot of power, but when you're offgrid and in the middle of nowhere it's something you can depend on to charge your batteries, power your radio, perhaps a small light, etc, whilst being quite affordable at these levels. Not very suitable for large scale power generation but very a very important and commonly used technology nevertheless.
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elDiablo
Guest
You need one of THESE or THESE! Thanks to Mr Nikola Tesla. And yes, the second one is the Tesla Coil from the C&C games, but it was designed to "send and receive information and power without interconnecting wires".
Or just use this to make your electricity
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Or just use this to make your electricity
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MadGinga
In Cryo Sleep
First. elD, you're crazy!
Second.
Right. Plasma = very very hot ionized gas, in the case of ITER the plasma will be at 100 million degrees, if this were to touch on of the magnets, which would be the case if the magnetic field failed then as the magnets are superconducting (as they are cooled by supercritical helium) that's gonna make one rather large bang, and one helluva mess. Ever heated a stone and poured cold water on it? Same effect, but larger, and with more energy.
I never said we shouldn't invest in wind, solar, wave and other "green" power sources, I was just trying to say that they aren't at the stage where they're truly viable for power production on the scale that is necessary, although wind is the closest, but is the one receiving most resistance as its an eye-sore.
Solar power is the most direct way of acquiring energy, as its derived directly from the Sun, every other power source has an intermediary, but is ultimately due to the energy from the Sun.
I do agree that solar power is very useful for communities off the national grid, but it is very expensive, and so the people who need it the most can't afford it.
Second.
Pestcontrol said:
Right. Plasma = very very hot ionized gas, in the case of ITER the plasma will be at 100 million degrees, if this were to touch on of the magnets, which would be the case if the magnetic field failed then as the magnets are superconducting (as they are cooled by supercritical helium) that's gonna make one rather large bang, and one helluva mess. Ever heated a stone and poured cold water on it? Same effect, but larger, and with more energy.
Pestcontrol said:
I never said we shouldn't invest in wind, solar, wave and other "green" power sources, I was just trying to say that they aren't at the stage where they're truly viable for power production on the scale that is necessary, although wind is the closest, but is the one receiving most resistance as its an eye-sore.
Solar power is the most direct way of acquiring energy, as its derived directly from the Sun, every other power source has an intermediary, but is ultimately due to the energy from the Sun.
I do agree that solar power is very useful for communities off the national grid, but it is very expensive, and so the people who need it the most can't afford it.
Pestcontrol
In Cryo Sleep
The reactor is already made to cope with an energy output five times larger than the energy needed to heat and contain the plasma. Obviously the containment vessel itself and the 500MW capacity cooling system will shield the magnets. It's also quite a small amount of not very high density gas that is contained, and not all of it may actually be at that temperature. A stone heated to 100,000,000 degrees would indeed be a problem.
The specific heat capacity of granite is 750 J/kg/K. Assuming a 2kg stone could be heated to such a temperature that gives it an energy of 150GJ, in terms of explosive power, that's about 36 tons of TNT. A rather large bang but hardly a nuclear explosion like some environmentalists like to claim. Putting stones in a fusion reactor however is not recommended. (getting off topic here, not directed at you MadGinga)
It would take the 100MW energy input of ITER 25 minutes to heat a stone to that temperature. As fusion reactions are started and stopped in fractions of a second, it's easy to see the actual amount of plasma and thus the heat energy contained in it is rather a lot smaller, in fact, it's less than two grams. That means all the heat energy contained in it at such a temperature (actually its only 92.6 million degrees), can be dissipated by ITER in, hold on to your seat, 0.4 seconds. Probably less if there is any margin in the design. Additionally if the reaction would by some work of magic continue, there'd only be enough fuel for about a minute. Also given the surface area of the reactor that's about half a joule per square centimetre. My thumb has survived worse things. Not that i'd stick it in there, though.
Fusion 3 - Nuclear 0.
After all, how else does the reaction end in current experiments?
BTW - please don't make me dig into ITER design docs again.
The specific heat capacity of granite is 750 J/kg/K. Assuming a 2kg stone could be heated to such a temperature that gives it an energy of 150GJ, in terms of explosive power, that's about 36 tons of TNT. A rather large bang but hardly a nuclear explosion like some environmentalists like to claim. Putting stones in a fusion reactor however is not recommended. (getting off topic here, not directed at you MadGinga
)It would take the 100MW energy input of ITER 25 minutes to heat a stone to that temperature. As fusion reactions are started and stopped in fractions of a second, it's easy to see the actual amount of plasma and thus the heat energy contained in it is rather a lot smaller, in fact, it's less than two grams. That means all the heat energy contained in it at such a temperature (actually its only 92.6 million degrees), can be dissipated by ITER in, hold on to your seat, 0.4 seconds. Probably less if there is any margin in the design.
Additionally if the reaction would by some work of magic continue, there'd only be enough fuel for about a minute. Also given the surface area of the reactor that's about half a joule per square centimetre. My thumb has survived worse things. Not that i'd stick it in there, though.Fusion 3 - Nuclear 0.
After all, how else does the reaction end in current experiments?
BTW - please don't make me dig into ITER design docs again.