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from the we'll-have-fusion-in-10-years-maybe dept.
The Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) is reporting a successful startup of the experimental Wendelstein 7-X fusion device.
On 10th December, the day had arrived: the operating team in the control room started up the magnetic field and initiated the computer-operated experiment control system. It fed around one milligram of helium gas into the evacuated plasma vessel, switched on the microwave heating for a short 1,3 megawatt pulse – and the first plasma could be observed by the installed cameras and measuring devices.
"We're starting with a plasma produced from the noble gas helium. We're not changing over to the actual investigation object, a hydrogen plasma, until next year," explains project leader Professor Thomas Klinger: "This is because it's easier to achieve the plasma state with helium. In addition, we can clean the surface of the plasma vessel with helium plasmas."
The objective of fusion research is to develop a power source that is friendly to the climate and, similarly to the sun, harvests energy from the fusion of atomic nuclei.
(Score: 2) by dublet on Friday December 11 2015, @05:11PM
Looks like a pretty sweet kind of device but there's no mention of how much energy it needed to produce that 1.3MW. I'll presume a lot more than that.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 5, Informative) by Immerman on Friday December 11 2015, @05:38PM
Why? They fired a short 1.3MW microwave pulse into the gas to create a plasma. Last time I checked microwave generators are fairly mature technology and not terribly inefficient, so I would expect the input energy to be not terribly higher than that.
Note that they're not talking about generating 1.3MW of fusion power - at this point they're not generating any power at all, presumably just testing their ability to generate and contain plasma (at 0.1s of plasma duration they're probably not even testing containment much - just checking for gaping huge holes.). Think of it like flipping on your freshly-built computer to make sure all the components are working. You're not planning to do anything with it just yet, you just want to make sure all the conections have been made properly. It's not until next year that they'll switch over to hydrogen and attempt to generate fusion. And while I'm not terribly familiar with this project, with a $1b Euro price tag I would suspect that this generator is scaled to produce excess power, even if it's not suitable as a commercial reactor.
Overview for those interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 11 2015, @06:14PM
You can't characterize an amount of energy as being "a lot more than [1.3MW]", because megawatts are a unit of power.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday December 11 2015, @09:04PM
You do know that this version of the device is never intended to produce power, or even break even, right?
This is a research project for plasma containment only. So it doesn't matter how much power it took, because
there was never an expectation of return.
TFA:
Wendelstein 7-X, the world's largest stellarator-type fusion device, will not produce energy. Nevertheless, it should demonstrate that stellarators are also suitable as a power plant. Wendelstein 7-X is to put the quality of the plasma equilibrium and confinement on a par with that of a tokamak for the very first time. And with discharges lasting 30 minutes, the stellarator should demonstrate its fundamental advantage – the ability to operate continuously. In contrast, tokamaks can only operate in pulses without auxiliary equipment.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday December 11 2015, @09:17PM
While there never was an expectation of positive return, it DOES matter how much it takes to run it.
OTOH, that 1.x Megawats was over a really short period of time. It was probably supplied by a bank of capacitors. So I doubt that it involved much power.
Still, he's studying design of containment, so his goal is going to be to cheaply contain plasmas..and part of cheap containment is cheap initialization. Not a big concern unles he's planning for some kind of pulsed power system, and that's more of a laser fusion kind of concept.
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