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Fusion startup plans reactor with small but powerful superconducting magnets
Science ^ | 3 Mar, 2021 | Daniel Clery

Posted on 03/04/2021 5:34:00 PM PST by MtnClimber

SPARC could be the first fusion reactor to produce net energy—10 years before ITER and in a machine 10 times smaller.

A startup chasing the dream of plentiful, safe, carbon-free electricity from fusion, the energy source of the Sun, has settled on a site, timetable, and key technology for building its compact reactor. Flush with more than $200 million from investors, including Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy, 3-year-old Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced today that later this year it will start to build its first test reactor, dubbed SPARC, in a new facility in Devens, Massachusetts, not far from its current base in Cambridge. The company says the reactor, which would be the first in the world to produce more energy than is needed to run the reaction, could fire up as soon as 2025.

Commonwealth and a rival U.K. company have also chosen the technology they think will let them leap ahead of the giant, publicly funded ITER reactor under construction in France

SNIP

Fusion reactors burn an ionized gas of hydrogen isotopes at more than 100 million degrees Celsius—so hot that the plasma must be contained by a mesh of magnetic fields so it doesn’t melt the reactor walls. At ITER, sufficiently powerful fields are achieved using niobium alloy superconducting wires that can carry huge currents without resistance through magnet coils. But such low-temperature superconductors must be chilled to 4° above absolute zero, which requires bulky and expensive liquid helium cooling. And there’s a limit to the amount of current the niobium wires can carry, forcing ITER to adopt huge magnets with many wire turns to generate the needed fields. ITER’s largest magnets are 24 meters across, contributing to the reactor’s $20 billion price tag.

(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...


TOPICS: Science
KEYWORDS: astronomy; delusions; fission; fusion; physics; pipedream; power; science; stringtheory
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1 posted on 03/04/2021 5:34:00 PM PST by MtnClimber
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To: Red Badger
My questions are:

1. How long will it take to generate enough electricity to recover the $20 billion dollar price?

2. What happens when there is a fault and the magnet shuts off and releases a 100 million degree C plasma ball?

2 posted on 03/04/2021 5:34:33 PM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of Color ado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

3 posted on 03/04/2021 5:39:56 PM PST by ClearCase_guy ("I see you did something -- why you so racist?")
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To: MtnClimber

4 posted on 03/04/2021 5:40:25 PM PST by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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To: ClearCase_guy

J I N X


5 posted on 03/04/2021 5:40:39 PM PST by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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To: MtnClimber; dangerdoc; citizen; Liberty1970; Red Badger; Wonder Warthog; PA Engineer; ...

Maybe there is now a race between high temp fusion and low temp /LENR/Emhanced Coulomb Repulsion/NASA Lattice Contained Fusion.

Cold Fusion Ping List


6 posted on 03/04/2021 5:41:24 PM PST by Kevmo (So America gets what America deserves - - the destruction of its Constitution. ~Leo Donofrio, 6/1/09)
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To: MtnClimber

Why can’t they come up with something simple that converts atmospheric energy into usable electricity? Who is John Galt


7 posted on 03/04/2021 5:49:47 PM PST by eyeamok (founded in cynicism, wrapped in sarcasm)
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To: MtnClimber

I think it can run the latest JVM too ....


8 posted on 03/04/2021 5:59:21 PM PST by SecondAmendment (This just proves my latest theory ... LEFTISTS RUIN EVERYTHING !)
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To: MtnClimber

Why did they name it after Sun Microsystems Scalable Processor Architecture?


9 posted on 03/04/2021 6:05:16 PM PST by IndispensableDestiny
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To: MtnClimber

Eh! Details.


10 posted on 03/04/2021 6:05:56 PM PST by Dusty Road (")
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To: eyeamok

Like a clothes line? Uses the most advanced system of wind and solar.


11 posted on 03/04/2021 6:07:24 PM PST by Dusty Road (")
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To: MtnClimber

2. What happens when there is a fault and the magnet shuts off and releases a 100 million degree C plasma ball?

*************

Good question. There had better be one hell of a fail safe mechanism to contain that kind of fireball.


12 posted on 03/04/2021 6:07:36 PM PST by Starboard
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To: Kevmo

How did that ecat cold fusion reactor that you were so convinced about work out?

Haven’t heard much on it lately...


13 posted on 03/04/2021 6:08:58 PM PST by Triple (Socialism denies people the right to the fruits of their labor, and is as abhorrent as slavery)
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To: MtnClimber

MIT’s page on SPARC

https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc


14 posted on 03/04/2021 6:12:19 PM PST by Lurkina.n.Learnin (The veil of civilization is only 9 meals thick. )
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To: Triple

I posted about the ecat for 2&half MONTHS, and you seagull @$$#0/es hounded me for 2&half YEARS. So it’s time to say get lost. You jerks never ONCE addressed the science.


15 posted on 03/04/2021 6:13:01 PM PST by Kevmo (So America gets what America deserves - - the destruction of its Constitution. ~Leo Donofrio, 6/1/09)
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To: MtnClimber
and releases a 100 million degree C plasma ball?

there was this scene in MIB that covers that.

16 posted on 03/04/2021 6:13:24 PM PST by NonValueAdded (March comes in like an emu and goes out like a tapir. And they don't even know what that means!)
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To: MtnClimber

Same stupid design that still doesn’t work after 30 years.

Pons and Fleischmann were onto something


17 posted on 03/04/2021 6:22:19 PM PST by Mr. K (No consequence of repealing obamacare is worse than obamacare itself)
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To: Kevmo

Don’t let people get you down. I followed your posts back then. I find it interesting. I look at it like those “crazies” and their flying machines back in the day. Wright bros came along and it was a paradigm shift. Lotta swings and misses getting there.


18 posted on 03/04/2021 6:23:17 PM PST by Lurkina.n.Learnin (The veil of civilization is only 9 meals thick. )
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To: Kevmo

Lol...


19 posted on 03/04/2021 6:24:15 PM PST by Triple (Socialism denies people the right to the fruits of their labor, and is as abhorrent as slavery)
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To: MtnClimber
What happens when there is a fault and the magnet shuts off and releases a 100 million degree C plasma ball?

Yeah, that thought occurred to me, too. You're enclosing a ball of plasma at 100 million degrees inside a containment field that will fail if not kept at 270 degrees below zero. What can go wrong with that?

I feel a cheesy SyFy movie coming on - do they still do those?

20 posted on 03/04/2021 6:45:22 PM PST by ZOOKER (Until further notice the /s is implied...)
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