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China successfully powers up its "artificial sun" nuclear fusion reactor for the first time
- Thread starter DiipuSurotu
- Start date
- News
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Fusion in general is essentially a holy grail in terms of providing virtually unlimited clean energy more or less for free. Not sure about it burning trash but it would eliminate waste involved with other forms of energy generation.
That's cold fusion btw, meaning fusion that doesn't take enormous amounts of power to generate ridiculously strong magnetic fields and heat.
" Why are they making it so much hotter than the suns core? Seems like a waste and just complicates it. "
Your question is not stupid. But the bolded part is so smug, unnecessary and condescending.
I don't even know why we are arguing. I asked a stupid question and now I know why. Win win.
From a legal point of view, still to be decided. But from the perspective of being good for the Earth, yes. The only fuel it uses is really common and once it is started, it should be self sufficient in energy needs.
It gives us enough time until the next big energy discovery. There's tons of hydrogen on earth.
I'm not arguing, just criticizing on the fact that you're the type of persons that actually thinks himself more intelligent than hundreds of scientists that dedicated their carreer to a problem.
Fusion reactors have been turned "on" before. The trick is keeping them on and keeping them energy positive (getting more energy out from the fuel than you put in).
The main thing to watch for in fusion energy is the ITER project.
In fairness it's not unreasonable to say, "oh great, how can this fuck up?" when the news comes from the same folks who brought us The Four Pests campaign where they killed all of their birds and experienced plagues of insects as a result.
No, I know that. But I recall someone saying that this could help burning trash without emissions, hence the question.
In this particular case it basically gives us hundreds of thousands of years, and at that point...? *shrug*
Tiny shrimp creates temperatures hot as the Sun
Tiny shrimp creates temperatures hot as the Sun
Janine Benyus, founder of the biomimicry institute, explains how a pistol shrimp stuns its prey -- in a most surprising manner.
www.zdnet.com
There is activated waste produced in a fusion reactor, mostly consisting of activated steel. The combination of the deuterium and tritium produces helium yes, but it also produces a fast neutron which has 4/5 of the energy. These neutrons impact the machine structure and create activated material.
There will be quite a large volume of waste, but it will be low and intermediate level waste.
It will need to be stored for approx 100 years (depending on a number of factors). This is why fusion reactors use low-activation steels for in-vessel components.
So after fusion energy gets established would anti matters come next? They could use the same magnetic technology once perfected to control the anti matter but you wouldn't need the huge temperatures to fuse anti matter and matter. The only problem is how the fuck do we make it.
Is this what it's for, replacing current power generation methods? It seems like it's more for theoretical use, no?
Yeah, I'm aware of that. What I meant with"amazing breakthrough" is that China did it. The more successful reactors, the better.
So is this like, the perfect form of energy production? Minimal waste, no chance of a fallout explosion?
These are just to test the theory. But once they figure it out and can make one that works I don't see why the whole world would just switch to this given enough time.
The dream is replacing all current power generation methods by this. It is basically a man-made version of the highest energy producer in the universe.
And extremely efficient.
Yes it is seen as a source of power generation in the future. You most likely won't see a commercial prototype reactor before 2050 though.
The European prototype reactor is aiming to produce ~500 MW of net electrical power. Construction on that is estimated at early 2040s.
Basically fusion is a long term option for zero carbon power generation, but isn't a short term fix for climate change.
Anti matter/matter fusion is even better.
perfection would be antimatter/matter fusion. They literally just need to touch and boom. Unfortunately antimatter is hard to come by or make.
I guess what I'm getting at is, why aren't more countries just pouring tons of resources into this energy? Seems like it's one of the best methods of energy production. Is it just unreliable, as far as energy output goes?
Both the US and the EU have their own tokamak projects, I don't understand why you are bringing up The Four Pests here.
There is a fair amount of money going in as far as government scientific projects go. ITER will cost somewhere between €20-30 billion and the EU-DEMO machine after will likely cost up to double that.
It's a slow moving field of science because the nature of the problem. There are many areas of a reactor that still need physics and engineering solutions.
We haven't gotten it to work for energy production yet. Shit's hard. Only the richest countries have their own reactors, the international effort is the ITER project
ITER - the way to new energy
ITER is the world’s largest fusion experiment. Thirty-five nations are collaborating to build and operate the ITER Tokamak, the most complex machine ever designed, to prove that fusion is a viable source of large-scale, safe, and environmentally friendly energy for the planet.
www.iter.org
Hollywood and technophobia, a match made in heaven.Not that I know the first thing about nuclear fusion reactors
Guys... it's a joke.. the reactor nor the sun are going to turn into black holes on us..
We haven't gotten it to work for energy production yet. Shit's hard. Only the richest countries have their own project, the international effort is the ITER project
ITER - the way to new energy
ITER is the world’s largest fusion experiment. Thirty-five nations are collaborating to build and operate the ITER Tokamak, the most complex machine ever designed, to prove that fusion is a viable source of large-scale, safe, and environmentally friendly energy for the planet.www.iter.org
Thanks for explaining it! I'm woefully undereducated about forms of nuclear energy/what countries are doing to solve the energy crisis.
User Banned (3 Months): Xenophobia, Dismissive Commentary, and Hostility Over Multiple Posts
Yes, they do, but when the the people making it have a less than sterling reputation for giving a damn about consequences it's not unreasonable for people to buzz a headline and say "oh no, what could go wrong" rather than "wow this is a landmark advance and what sort of sci-fi future land will we find ourselves tomorrow?"
The Four Pests was just a top of my head example of China enacting an idea with great indifference to the consequences.
The original comment I replied to was pulling some handwringing bullshit about how if people asked about the possibilities rather than the consequences the world would be better or some nonsense.
[Quote from man sucked in by black hole]
"What are you gonna do, suck me into a black hole?"
Terrifying how uninformed some are in the thread.
Anyway, this is just a research reactor. One of many that China and others have operated for decades.
Don't get why new reporters make such clickbaity headlines or make it seem like it's a new thing in China.
EAST in particular is a pretty good that's been producing good results for years.
Anyway, this is just a research reactor. One of many that China and others have operated for decades.
Don't get why new reporters make such clickbaity headlines or make it seem like it's a new thing in China.
EAST in particular is a pretty good that's been producing good results for years.
Well, by volume (and mass) the sun actually produces very little energy.
You look at the total energy production and think "it's like a million nuclear bombs going off every second" but it's nothing like a nuclear explosion at all. It's just really really really big.
If you could isolate a cubic meter of the sun's core (which would mass 150 metric tons), it would barely be able to power a single PChttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Core said:
We need much higher power density for fusion to actually be useful to us
We can already produce Anti Matter at LHC. It won't be an energy producer though since you will always need more energy put in to make it then you get out.
Perhaps in the far future it could be fuel for spacecraft though.
ITER is in the final steps of its construction, so the next years are going to be very interesting on that front. If all goes well, we'll have sustained fusion this decade and can start drawing up the plans for a prototype commercial reactor.
That's the trillion dollar question. In order to do this, one needs to sustain the reaction for several time and I think the current record is 10 minutes. But to do that we need bigger reactors, better magnets and better reactor designs and it takes a lot of brain juice and money. It has for the last 70 years.
Bruh, again this is the latest in many Tokamaks they've already operated for decades. As well on top of the global research that has been done by others for even longer.
You're getting a bit too close to the racial concern trolling line.
No, there aren't any fusion reactors with a Q>1 as we call it. Q is power out over power in.
ITER is aiming to be Q ~ 10. The closest so far is the European JET reactor in the U.K. which reached Q ~ 0.7.
Pretty sure HL-2M is not a tritium machine so is likely running with deuterium only. Which means it isn't producing much power. It's an experimental machine looking at plasma physics and engineering problems.
That's fine. I'm done here because context of original comment replied to doesn't matter. We're done here and all replies are now on the ignore list. Take care.
The people he is referring are dead and buried but some cannot go past the skin color or the slantness of one eye.
Jfc they were just asking a question out of curiosity as it didn't make sense for them.
Your weird escalation is far more embarrassing.
