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A local affiliate of CBS reports:
General Atomics is scheduled on Friday to unveil a 1,000-ton superconducting electromagnet to be used in a 35-nation fusion energy study. According to General Atomics, the Poway-built device that's powerful enough to lift an aircraft carrier out of the water will be showcased at a news conference in Poway.
The electromagnet will be used in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor experiments in France, in which scientists will try to create a burning plasma that demonstrates the feasibility of fusion energy. Clean fusion energy has been a holy grail for researchers looking for alternatives to standard nuclear energy and carbon-based fuels. Scientists say fusion energy does not create long-term waste products or meltdown risks.
General Atomics is more well-known for their Predator and Reaper military drones. As much negativity is swirling around these parts about the military industrial complex, there could be much potential benefit from the technological progress General Atomics and others are making. What do you all think?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday April 13 2015, @01:43PM
Does this electromagnet indicate some kind of milestone for the accomplishment of a useful fusion process?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_scaling#Dimensionless_parameters_in_tokamaks.5Bcitation_needed.5D [wikipedia.org]
Its got that SJW "citation needed" sophistry but its got nothing to do with politics.
Or slightly off topic but in the same theme:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawson_criterion [wikipedia.org]
I can't find a good link to the engineering model where the production of a reactor scales with the (some big exponent) of magnetic field strength, all else being equal. Its probably a diffeq anyway not a simple polynomial, depending on all the other parameters.
There are also economic models that scale with field strength. I remember some 1950s design of a dirt simple mirror machine that economically "worked" once it was longer than the state of Texas using 1950 electromagnet technology. Still too big even with superconductors.
Yeah its a big deal. Like the reactor equivalent of Isp for rocket engines.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 13 2015, @02:00PM
So what you say is that this electromagnet is powerful enough to accomplish net power output from a fusion process?
Perhaps even net economic output too?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 13 2015, @03:21PM
donno but "worlds most powerful" would imply that if the output varies by the second power of magnet strength then its 4 times more output that something half the strength all other things being equal.
The space shuttle's main engines had the highest shipping / used Isp characteristic of any shipping/operating engine at one time (maybe still holds record, don't know) although thats very helpful for a Hubble telescope repair mission its not the only requirement for overall mission success.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 13 2015, @05:18PM
So this electromagnet will put the nuclear process above the threshold of net power output?
Many fusion processes seems to be dependent on reaction size big large enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @03:51AM
Well, plasmas are not very friendly, it turns out that having too high of a magnetic field will also lead to instability. So the answer is, it depends.