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Starting Up the German "Sun"

posted by cmn32480 on Monday November 02 2015, @09:26PM   
from the fusion-is-still-only-10-years-away dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

From Yahoo Finance:

Germany is about to start up a monster machine that could revolutionize the way we use energy.
For more than 60 years, scientists have dreamed of a clean, inexhaustible energy source in the form of nuclear fusion.

And they're still dreaming.

But thanks to the efforts of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, experts hope that might soon change.

Last year, after 1.1 million construction hours, the institute completed the world's largest nuclear-fusion machine of its kind, called a stellarator.

The machine, which has a diameter of 52 feet, is called the W7-X.
[...]
Check out this awesome time-lapse video of the construction of W7-X on Youtube.

Additional information can be found at this referenced article from Science .

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Original Submission

• Re:A billion euros (Score: 2) by iamjacksusername on Tuesday November 03 2015, @02:52PM

  by iamjacksusername (1479) on Tuesday November 03 2015, @02:52PM (#257947)

  I always thought building fast breeders at existing reactor locations would make a lot of sense. Yucca Mountain is no longer viable; most reactor waste is stored in concrete pods at the reactor sites. Focusing new reactor construction on existing reactor sites would solve two major political and environmental barriers to new reactor construction.

  1. By building breeders at existing locations, the "waste" fuel from existing reactors would have a short trip to the breeder location, reducing potential transport security (proliferation) and accidental contamination... e.g., a train full of waste de-railing in a populated area.

  2. Selecting new nuclear sites is a political non-starter. Re-using existing sites would make it much more likely to see construction in my lifetime.

  Parent

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