Posted on 11/20/2018 5:19:10 PM PST by BenLurkin
Currently, the two most popular methods for producing fusion power are the inertial confinement approach, and the tokamak reactor. In the former case, lasers are used to fuse pellets of deuterium (H², or “heavy hydrogen”) to create a fusion reaction. In the latter, the process involves a torus-shaped confinement chamber that uses magnetic fields and an internal current to confine high-energy plasma.
Whereas other tokamak reactors rely on magnetic coils to keep a plasma torus stable, the Chinese EAST reactor relies on the magnetic fields produced by the moving plasma itself to keep the torus in check. This makes it less stable, but allows physicists to increase heat levels.
EAST science team was able to integrate four types of heating power in order to reach a new temperature record. These included lower hybrid wave heating, electron cyclotron wave heating, ion cyclotron resonance heating and neutral beam ion heating. Through these combined methods, the plasma current density profile was optimized.
Once the science team managed to optimize the coupling of the four different heating techniques, they were able to create a cloud of charged particles that contained electrons heated to more than 100 million °C. They also exceeded a power injection level of 10 MegaWatts (MW), and boosted the plasma stored energy to 300 kilojoules (kJ).
…
With this latest experiment, the EAST team not only doubled the temperature of the plasma torus (setting a new record), they also managed to resolve a number of issues that are crucial to achieving steady state operations. For instance, they resolved the confinement of particle and power exhaust, the timing of which has to be just right in order to maintain a sustained fusion reaction.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
To me the problem to work out is; how do you harvest heat energy without extinguishing your plasma?
Have they figured that out?
Temperatures that extreme are necessary for reasons that don't directly have anything to do with raising steam.
Temperature (of a gas) is a measure of the energy per gas particle, whether molecules, atoms, or (in this case) a plasma of ions: bare, unattached protons and electrons (with some neutrons mixed in if they are using deuterium or tritium in conjunction with hydrogen).
To achieve fusion, the particles must be moving so fast that two protons can collide and fuse into one helium atom; in order to accomplish this, the protons have to have enough kinetic energy (speed, or momentum) to smash through the intense electric field that surrounds each one. Recall that protons carry a positive charge, and like charges repel. To make magnetic confinement fusion work, you need to create a cloud of plasma (protons and some neutrons) where most or all of the particles are moving fast enough, on the average, to overcome the repulsive force of this electric field (the "coulomb force").
One plan is to use heat released by the fusion of hydrogen into helium to raise steam, but that heating would be done by capturing neutrons in a jacket of circulating molten light metal, such as lithium; that liquid metal would transfer the liberated heat to water, which would boil and turn a generator.
A more sophisticated way of using the power of fusion is to make the plasma function as the secondary of a transformer; nuclear fusion would cause this transformer to "kick" more electricity back into the primary (which would be the massive coils that confine and compress the plasma) than was put in, thereby obtaining energy gain and an economically viable fusion power plant.
This goal always seems to be twenty years away. It has been since the mid 1950s, and still is today.
The moving plasma heats, and having het, moves on...
Thanks BenLurkin.
The Strange History of Fusion
and the Science of Wishful Thinking
by Charles Seife
Very impressive. Isn’t that as hot as Professor Algore said the center of the earth is?
Wouldn’t that be hotter than the hottest regions of the Sun? How on earth do they contain something like that?
Fascinating.
My historical studies of communist governments and their disregard for something called a "safety margin" gives me a decided unease as well.
CC
Yes, really “HOT” Chinese carry-out.
With 100M Degrees plus, you get two egg rolls.
That’s been the ongoing problem with sustained fusion. We can make the fusion no problem, but we haven’t a thing that can take the temperatures. They use powerful electromagnets now, but it isn’t perfect, and adds to the power deficit.
It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.
With a 100 million degree thermometer.
With a 100 million degree thermometer.
LOL!!!
By measuring the wavelength/electron volts of the emitted x-rays.
Fascinating.:
It's all the more fascinating considering a youtube video I watched about 10,000,000 degrees. That video said that if you heated 1 table spoon (or was it a gram?) of matter to 10,000,000 degrees and sustained it, it would kill everyone in a 1000 miles.
Unfortunately it didn't say how they would die but I have to assume it is the x-rays.
You owe me a new laptop, LOL!
With aHow exactly can one measure a 100 million degree temperature?
...it is shown that the ordinary, collisionless trapped-electron mode is stable in large parts of parameter space in stellarators that have been designed so that the parallel adiabatic invariant decreases with radius. Also, the first global, electromagnetic, gyrokinetic stability calculations performed for Wendelstein 7-X suggest that kinetic ballooning modes are more stable than in a typical tokamak.
Tokamak (Soviet) vs Stellarator (American) has been a continuing competition (costing hundreds of billions) since the early 50's & 60's...
Thanks for the lesson!!!
What will be the possible consequences of China getting commercially viable nuclear fusion before we do?
Thank you.
With help from Al Gore, that’s how.
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