The Strange History of Fusion
and the Science of Wishful Thinking
by Charles Seife
Posted on 12/24/2020 8:31:59 PM PST by BenLurkin
The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research(KSTAR), a superconducting fusion device also known as the Korean artificial sun, set the new world record as it succeeded in maintaining the high temperature plasma for 20 seconds with an ion temperature over 100 million degrees.
To re-create fusion reactions that occur in the sun on Earth, hydrogen isotopes must be placed inside a fusion device like KSTAR to create a plasma state where ions and electrons are separated, and ions must be heated and maintained at high temperatures.
So far, there have been other fusion devices that have briefly managed plasma at temperatures of 100 million degrees or higher. None of them broke the barrier of maintaining the operation for 10 seconds or longer. It is the operational limit of normal-conducting device and it was difficult maintain a stable plasma state in the fusion device at such high temperatures for a long time.
In its 2020 experiment, the KSTAR improved the performance of the Internal Transport Barrier(ITB) mode, one of the next generation plasma operation modes developed last year and succeeded in maintaining the plasma state for a long period of time, overcoming the existing limits of the ultra-high-temperature plasma operation.
The KSTAR began operating the device last August and plans to continue its plasma generation experiment until December 10, conducting a total of 110 plasma experiments that include high-performance plasma operation and plasma disruption mitigation experiments, which are joint research experiments with domestic and overseas research organizations.
In addition to the success in high temperature plasma operation, the KSTAR Research Center conducts experiments on a variety of topics, including ITER researches, designed to solve complex problems in fusion research during the remainder of the experiment period.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
thank you
how does it NOT melt everything around it?
Most likely confined by a powerful magnetic field.
how does it NOT melt everything around it?
Most likely confined by a powerful magnetic field.
but how does magnetism contain heat?
Inquisitive minds would like to know
Plasma confinement refers to the containment of a plasma by various forces at the extreme conditions necessary for thermonuclear fusion reactions. These conditions exist naturally in stars, where they are sustained by the force of gravity. In the laboratory, researchers use strong magnetic fields to confine plasma.
It is an interesting subject and since you appear to have a computer you may want to read up on it. Take are
yet stars still seem to emit heat
I am no scientist but worked at a research lab and that was the explanation given to me. May be the metal enclosure is farther away from the hot plasma and separated by some fluidic insulation layers. IDK.
prolly true, but i think Steely Tom’s answer(post10) that there really isn’t that much there is the explanation
They’ll need a really big SPF number.
China turns on nuclear-powered ‘artificial sun’, TEN TIMES hotter than the real thing
https://www.rt.com | 4 Dec, 2020 14:47 | Staff
Posted on 12/4/2020, 2:00:31 PM by Red Badger
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3912293/posts
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