Schematic image of permanent magnet stellarator with plasma in yellow. Red and blue indicate permanent magnets with simplified coils surrounding the vessel. Credit: Coaxing Zhu.
Posted on 03/11/2020 8:20:07 PM PDT by BenLurkin
In principle, such magnets can greatly simplify the design and production of twisty fusion facilities called stellarators, according to scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany. PPPL founder Lyman Spitzer Jr. invented the stellarator in the early 1950s.
Most stellarators use a set of complex twisted coils that spiral like stripes on a candy cane to produce magnetic fields that shape and control the plasma that fuels fusion reactions. Refrigerator-like permanent magnets could produce the hard part of these essential fields, the researchers say, allowing simple, non-twisted coils to produce the remaining part in place of the complex coils.
The novel idea for permanent magnets is an offshoot of a science fair project that Jonathan Zarnstorff, the son of PPPL Chief Scientist Michael Zarnstorff, a coauthor of the paper, put together in junior high school. Jonathan wanted to build a rail gun, a device that usually uses high-voltage current to generate a magnetic field that can fire a projectile. But the high-voltage current would be dangerous to use in a classroom.
Permanent magnets are always "on" in sharp contrast to the standard electromagnetic coils that stellarators and tokamaks use. Such coils create magnetic fields when an electric current runs through them—current that requires power supplies that permanent magnets do not need.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Schematic image of permanent magnet stellarator with plasma in yellow. Red and blue indicate permanent magnets with simplified coils surrounding the vessel. Yea, what he said.
In before the Back to the Future reference.
Magnets are the key to warp drive and electrical energy.
I’ve got some stuff fuzing in my refrigerator now.
Only X number of years away.
Dunno. My fridge magnets are pretty powerful. They opened a wormhole the other day but I needed milk and eggs so it was not very helpful.
Doesn’t matter, won’t be needed. We are all going to die from the WooHoo flu.
The secret sauce for doing this died with Coaxing Zhu at Whuhan Polytechnic.
Thank goodness the WooHoo flu.
Was afraid we’d die from the Hoo-Ha Flu.
Nastier than a moose bite, that is.
Now if a stellarator made a 26 year old Stella Stevens appearcthat would really be something.
Same model fridge as Sigourney Weaver’s?
Paging Diet Smith.
I wonder who John Greenwald, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory might be, and if he might know what he is talking about.
He’s one on the PR guys at the lab.
John Greenwald is the Science Editor at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, one of the Energy Department’s 17 National Labs
I have great respect for real scientists. Have know many of them because of some connections made in my life. Real scientists, not political (bought) scientists.
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