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posted by Snow on Tuesday December 06 2016, @11:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the pocket-full-of-sunshine dept.

At the end of last year, Germany switched on a new type of massive nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, and it was successfully able to contain a scorching hot blob of helium plasma.

But since then, there's been a big question - is the device working the way it's supposed to? That's pretty crucial when you're talking about a machine that could potentially maintain controlled nuclear fusion reactions one day, and thankfully, the answer is yes.

A team of researchers from the US and Germany have now confirmed that the Wendelstein 7-X (W 7-X) stellerator is producing the super-strong, twisty, 3D magnetic fields that its design predicted, with "unprecedented accuracy". The researchers found an error rate less than one in 100,000.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @12:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @12:16PM (#438296)

    Well for every 100,000 seconds the thing runs, you can expect it to fail catastrophically. Such accuracy.

  • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday December 07 2016, @01:23PM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday December 07 2016, @01:23PM (#438314) Journal

    No, it means you can only ever build 99,999 of them. The next one you build will go "pop" in a spectacular fashion.