how does it NOT melt everything around it?
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 ...
ping
Cool.
Oh...I mean hot. Really really hot.
How does this square with global warming? Will backers of the green new deal push for a declaration of war on South Korea?
I’ve been looking for a portable space heater......
how does it NOT melt everything around it?
The plasma is kept constrained in a small space by strong electro magnets. So it is not inside a container made of material.
And then destroy the Earth?
Prediction: Humanity will run LFTRs for a hundred years before fusion becomes the primary source of power.
The particles are confined by powerful magnetic field lines around which they spiral in tight helical paths. Also, the pressure of the plasma is low; it exists in what is essentially a very good vacuum. Recent K-Star literature gives the peak density as about 7x1019 particles per cubic meter, which sounds like a lot until you realize that the density of air at normal atmospheric pressure is about 2.6x1025 particles per cubic meter.
Thus, the density of the 100-million-degree plasma is roughly one-millionth of that of the air we breathe. In other words, there isn't much of it there.
A gas at 100 million degrees does radiate some pretty high-energy photons, hard X-rays, actually close to gamma rays in their energy content. Those pose the real danger, along with neutrons generated by any nuclear fusion events that occur.
If this were not shielded and contained, is this another weapon of mass destruction?
Norway may be interested in that artificial sun thing.
There are months in their part of the globe where it remains very dark with no day break.
Pretty sure if we turn the earth into a sun, that global warming will increase significantly.
Silly me. I thought KSTAR made audio tapes of Korean pop hits.
Singing “Hot, Hot, Hot” and “It’s a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”. In Korean, of course.
A Korean named Sun.
Kinda figures.
There could be a home on Pluto if that artificial sun thing really gets going.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_Makers
The Sweeney on the sun and a lady named Iris-
“The world does not revolve around your body. This bloke Galileo proved it, it goes around the sun.” (Night Out)
I assume this was North Korea, right? I mean only a socialist country could make this kind of scientific progress.
i dint know magnetism could contain heat... and the tokamak containing the mag-field is metal
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.