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Nuclear Fusion Power Without Regular Tokamaks Or Stellarators:
When it comes to nuclear fusion, the most well-known reactor type today is no doubt the tokamak, due to its relatively straight-forward concept of plasma containment. That's not to say that there aren't other ways to accomplish nuclear fusion in a way that could conceivably be used in a commercial power plant in the near future.
As we covered previously, another fairly well-known type of fusion reactor is the stellarator, which much like the tokamak, has been around since the 1950s. There are other reactor types from that era, like the Z-pinch, but they seem to have all fallen into obscurity. That is not to say that research on Z-pinch reactors has ceased, or that other reactor concepts — some involving massive lasers — haven't been investigated or even built since then.
In this article we'll take a look at a range of nuclear fusion reactor types that definitely deserve a bit more time in the limelight.
[...] Inertial Confinement Fusion
[...] Magnetic Confinement Fusion
[...] All the Other Designs
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday February 18 2020, @05:52PM (3 children)
Someone actually worked out how long the sun could shine if it were coal or by the heat of compression of the sun it's - compression won, but only topped out at 2 million years.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @06:03PM (1 child)
We've used up only about 0.3% of that 2 million since God created the world. I really doubt that we need the remaining coal before the end times, but maybe that's it. Maybe the 2 million is exactly the amount of time needed, so that is what God gave us.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday February 18 2020, @11:08PM
That depends on which of the many gods you choose.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday February 18 2020, @08:59PM
The clean coal was put there as a challenge for us to strip mine the sun.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.