Posted on 09/28/2022 5:43:18 PM PDT by BenLurkin
....the source of the sudden and puzzling collapse of heat that precedes disruptions that can damage doughnut-shaped tokamak fusion facilities.
Researchers traced the collapse to the 3D disordering of the strong magnetic fields that bottle up the hot, charged plasma gas that fuels the reactions.
The strong magnetic fields substitute in fusion facilities for the immense gravity that holds fusion reactions in place in celestial bodies. But when disordered by plasma instability in laboratory experiments the field lines allow the superhot plasma heat to rapidly escape confinement. Such million-degree heat crushes plasma particles together to release fusion energy and can strike and damage fusion facility walls when released from confinement.
What hadn't previously been known was the 3D shape, or topology, of the disarrayed field lines caused by turbulent instability. The topology forms tiny hills and valleys, Yoo explains, leaving some particles trapped in valleys and unable to escape confinement while others roll down the hills and impact the walls of the facility.
PPPL researchers unraveled the interaction using the Laboratory's GTS code, which simulates the effect of turbulent instability on particle movement. The code revealed that the electric field produced in facilities acts to kick particles among spaghetti-like stochastic magnetic field lines and then facilitates the motion of trapped particles along the field lines that gives rise to the thermal quench.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
ping
I thought the stellarators were created to solve this problem.
In just 5 to 10 years from now fusion will be commercially viable ... no this time it’s different, really, we know so much more than we did the last time we predicted fusion would be ready, which was 10 years ago, or the 10 before that .... but this time we are right.
Meanwhile the cheap, safe molten-salt/thorium reactor technology which is well understood, to the point that prototypes were tested OVER TEN YEARS AGO, is ignored.
Based on this important new research, fusion is now only 20 years away.
These are the ones that can’t go critical.
Fusion power has been “closer to reality on Earth” for at least four decades. I guess it will continue to be closer to reality.
I thught there is a heat problem with molten salt thorium reactors, no?
I vaguely remember a cool fusion movie back in 1997
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saint_(1997_film)
only reason I watched it is because I liked Vincent Price, and later Roger Moore in the TV series
We are always just a decade away from fusion, someone wake me when something actually changes… yawn
Until we find a way to make electrical energy
DIRECTLY from a nuclear reaction, we are just
using the power of the atom to boil water...
to make steam...
to turn a turbine...
to generate electrical energy.
Maybe Tesla was on to something?
Commercial fusion power is just 10 years away and will always be ten years away as long as scientists and engineers can suck money out of the rest of us to keep the project going.
And all they need is a few more trillion tax dollars for their labs.
That is especially true if Putin overreacts.
No - Biden brings CONfusion.
It’s still only 25 years away.
The author is biased against Ed Teller, btw. I read the book in 2008 or so, and have been listening to the unabridged audiobook in the car.
Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking - Charles Seife (2008)
https://publicism.info/science/sun/index.html
https://publicism.info/science/sun/5.html
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