At least it won't be boring.
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?
Eh! Details.
2. What happens when there is a fault and the magnet shuts off and releases a 100 million degree C plasma ball?
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Good question. There had better be one hell of a fail safe mechanism to contain that kind of fireball.
there was this scene in MIB that covers that.
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?
The “plasma ball” is a very high vacuum phenomenon. It’s density is like one millionth that of the atmosphere.
It’s temperature is high but its energy density is low.
It’s kind of like asking “what if the induced draft fans on a coal-fired boiler failed? Wouldn’t the burning gases inside get out and incinerate the surrounding county?”
Ah, no. And for a fusion plasma, the actual amount of heated material is far, far less.
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.
At least it won't be boring.