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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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To: TexasGator
What's the total energy release in joules?

I'm assuming you meant to type 1031 nuclei per cubic meter.

41 posted on 03/04/2021 8:34:10 PM PST by Steely Tom ([Voter Fraud] == [Civil War])
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To: TexasGator
Also just a little on-line investigation reveals that the maximum densities they get are about 7x1029 nuclei per cubic meter. Still high, but you overstated the situation by an amount in excess of an order of magnitude.
42 posted on 03/04/2021 8:45:38 PM PST by Steely Tom ([Voter Fraud] == [Civil War])
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To: Steely Tom

Take it up with Garry


43 posted on 03/04/2021 8:58:45 PM PST by TexasGator (Z1z)
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To: Kevmo

Cause it is not science it is a load of bollocks


44 posted on 03/04/2021 10:00:14 PM PST by vmpolesov
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To: vmpolesov; Admin Moderator

That is exactly why we want to hold your feet to the fire.

Either put up your SCIENTIFIC arguments or stfu with all this seagulling. Similar to what happens on the qanon threads, except with science.


45 posted on 03/04/2021 10:17:56 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: TexasGator

LOLA


46 posted on 03/04/2021 10:19:09 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: TexasGator

Let the chips fall where they may.

Either way, you’re basically just a jerk.


47 posted on 03/04/2021 10:20:58 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
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.

Melt is much too kind a description; explode with the violence of a supernova is more accurate. When the containment systems fails, and it will, some of the radioactive reactor core will achieve escape velocity and exit Earth. And you thought meltdowns were bad.

48 posted on 03/04/2021 10:28:05 PM PST by Reeses (A journey of a thousand miles begins with a government pat down.)
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To: TexasGator

So you’re a cyber stalker on top of all the anal holistic “services” that you provide for others.


49 posted on 03/04/2021 10:36:31 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: Kevmo

You don’t even know what a joule or watt is.


50 posted on 03/04/2021 10:51:39 PM PST by vmpolesov
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To: MtnClimber

Fusion power is like the glorious world of next Tuesday. It’s always just a few years away. Then again detecting gravity waves was a pipe dream for almost a century, until they finally did it. (Or did they? You always have to ask when billions of dollars are being paid!)


51 posted on 03/04/2021 10:55:16 PM PST by Nateman (Keep Liberty Alive! Article V)
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To: Steely Tom
I read a post at Free Republic earlier today about a huge (hundreds of miles in diameter) plasma "hurricane" in Earths upper atmosphere.

It was a completely novel discovery. No one had even predicted such a thing.

If I understand correctly, the solar wind transported a huge mass of plasma to our atmosphere. Once it arrived, Earth's magnetic field took over and literally shaped the plasma into a cyclone.

The plasma hurricane survived for eight hours!

52 posted on 03/04/2021 11:19:42 PM PST by zeestephen
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To: Nateman
Re: "You always have to ask when billions of dollars are being paid!"

Good point.

I clearly remember the absence of excitement or passion when the confirmation of the Higgs Boson was announced to an audience of physicists at CERN.

To this day, I wonder if they really found it.

53 posted on 03/04/2021 11:32:50 PM PST by zeestephen
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To: MtnClimber

So, whatever happened to LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions)?


54 posted on 03/04/2021 11:59:01 PM PST by Freedom_Is_Not_Free (America -- July 4, 1776 to November 3, 2020 -- R.I.P.)
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To: MtnClimber
"so hot that the plasma must be contained by a mesh of magnetic fields so it doesn’t melt the reactor walls. ">>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I wonder if they know that they are simply reproducing energy forms that have appeared in geological earth time, energy that scoured the surface of the earth and other planets to create massive scars like the grand canyon, with some form of naturally generated gravity containment field to sustain it.

It is likely that it will be an electric universe scientist who manages to lead a breakthrough into fusion reactor technology.


55 posted on 03/05/2021 2:11:14 AM PST by Candor7 ((Obama Fascism:http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html) )
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To: Fred Nerks
"so hot that the plasma must be contained by a mesh of magnetic fields so it doesn’t melt the reactor walls. ">>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I wonder if they know that they are simply reproducing energy forms that have appeared in geological earth time, energy that scoured the surface of the earth and other planets to create massive scars like the grand canyon, with some form of naturally generated gravity containment field to sustain it.

It is likely that it will be an electric universe scientist who manages to lead a breakthrough into fusion reactor technology.


56 posted on 03/05/2021 2:11:59 AM PST by Candor7 ((Obama Fascism:http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html) )
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To: Candor7

Lightning from Space. Just waiting to be harvested.


57 posted on 03/05/2021 3:42:23 AM PST by Fred Nerks (fair dinkum!)
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To: Freedom_Is_Not_Free

They keep changing the name, desperately fleeing the stigma attached to cold fusion -—>LENR-—>Lattice Contained Fusion -—>Enhanced Coulomb Repulsion.


58 posted on 03/05/2021 4:15:43 AM PST by Kevmo (So America gets what America deserves - - the destruction of its Constitution. ~Leo Donofrio, 6/1/09)
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To: Fred Nerks

Imagine having a plasma vacuum attached to your roof and containing it inside of a fusion storage device, inside of a miniature gravity field,

No more light bill.We all would power our homes and vehicles on miniature suns.


59 posted on 03/05/2021 4:55:33 AM PST by Candor7 ((Obama Fascism:http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html) )
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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?

At least it won't be boring.


60 posted on 03/05/2021 5:04:28 AM PST by Sirius Lee (They intend to murder us. Prep if you want to live and live like you are prepping for eternal life)
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