from the insert-tab-τ317.25α2'-into-slot-σ902.44β9' dept.
Scientists Start Assembling the World's Largest Nuclear Fusion Experiment:
Fourteen years after receiving the official go-ahead, scientists on Tuesday began assembling a giant machine in southern France designed to demonstrate that nuclear fusion, the process which powers the Sun, can be a safe and viable energy source on Earth.
The groundbreaking multinational experiment, known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), has seen components arrive in the tiny commune of Saint-Paul-les-Durance from production sites worldwide in recent months.
They will now be painstakingly put together to complete what is described by ITER as the "world's largest puzzle".
The experimental plant's goal is to demonstrate that fusion power can be generated sustainably, and safely, on a commercial scale, with initial experiments set to begin in December 2025.
[...] Some 2,300 people are at work on site to put the massive machine together.
"Constructing the machine piece by piece will be like assembling a three-dimensional puzzle on an intricate timeline," said ITER's director general Bernard Bigot.
"Every aspect of project management, systems engineering, risk management and logistics of the machine assembly must perform together with the precision of a Swiss watch," he said, adding: "We have a complicated script to follow over the next few years."
[...] It could reach full power by 2035, but as an experimental project, it is not designed to produce electricity.
If the technology proves feasible, future fusion reactors would be capable of powering two million homes each at an operational cost comparable to those of conventional nuclear reactors, Bigot said.
[...] The ITER project is running five years behind schedule and has seen its initial budget triple to some 20 billion euros (US$23.4 billion).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @09:03AM
https://web.archive.org/web/20200714053546/https://asiatimes.com/2020/07/focus-fusion-is-the-hottest-idea-in-nuclear-energy/ [archive.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @09:12AM (10 children)
The problem is all the scientists are basically clones of each other (relatively speaking), we need more input from non-human persons trained in science. Dolphins, elephants, chimps, gorillas, parrots, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @09:25AM (1 child)
Dolphins, elephants, chimps, gorillas, parrots, etc... are all laughing at us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @01:37PM
only until we take away their fish, peanuts, bananas, fruit, and nuts... then we are the ones laughing!
(Score: 4, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 29 2020, @01:10PM (7 children)
I hate to break this to you but the dolphins are gone. You didn't get a fishbowl from them?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @06:23PM (6 children)
Hydroxychloroquin + zinc ( & vitamin D3 also imo, which is a HELL of a LOT STRONGER & BETTER than yours for sure now) works vs. the COVID/CORONA/WUHAN kung-fu FLU dumbo https://www.brighteon.com/3571f9ae-ec43-4254-8a56-1a931c250888 [brighteon.com]
* I see you devil above & NOW everyone can see the REAL you here too https://redeeminggod.com/sermons/luke/luke_7_36-50/#comment-269796 [redeeminggod.com]
(Running roughshod ALL OVER YOU, easily)
APK
P.S.=> See subject & see TONS of actual DOCTORS (not pill pushing pharma pimps like YOU demon) shitting ALL over you, lol - that's just to PUBLICLY BLOW YOUR EVIL ASS AWAY, easily from not TOO long ago on this site, here https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=37033&page=1&cid=984746#984746 [soylentnews.org] you FOOL, now YOU live with it, lmao (you did this to YOURSELF, not I) ... apk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @07:11PM
lol what
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @08:00PM
Thank you for sharing that with us Comrade.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday July 30 2020, @01:06AM (2 children)
Why do you assume that you finding discussion threads on other sites with me in them will scare me?
Haven't you noticed I'm completely consistent everywhere I go? :) That drives people like you fucking *nuts,* I know, because the idea of someone just being themselves, 100%, everywhere they go, is alien to someone whose mind is as fragmented as yours. And if you think the light burns now, just wait till you die...!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:36AM (1 child)
Are you one of them demons that I've been hearing about lately that come and have sex with me while I'm sleeping? Or do you bring me hydroxychloroquine while I'm sleeping? Shit, I can't remember what that doctor said!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday July 31 2020, @12:37AM
I'm already taken, so no to the first. As to the second...do you have rheumatoid arthritis or another condition for which a doctor has prescribed HCQ, do you have one or more refills left on said prescription, are you signed up for delivery in my chain's area of operations, and do you sleep during the day? If so, that section may be a yes. =P
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @09:03AM
So says the moron who posted this [soylentnews.org] about 50 times over the weekend and also this [soylentnews.org]. Don't you have something better to do than shitposting and spamming your bullshit all over this site?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by crahman on Wednesday July 29 2020, @11:11AM (2 children)
Usually, even as late in the production process as a working prototype, one wants flexibility and adaptability instead of tightly constrained and expensive finality.
It seems peculiar to spend this much on a difficult to adapt and cumbersome experiment that does not address major problems such as the capture of the released energy.
Quoting from the Wikipedia entry, "The objectives of the ITER project are not limited to creating the nuclear fusion device but much broader, including building necessary technical, organizational and logistical capabilities, skills, tools, supply chains and culture enabling management of such megaprojects among participating countries, bootstrapping their local nuclear fusion industries."
In my experience, some of those objectives are likely to make the project's success incidental. In combination with other project characteristics such as size and expense, the project's success seems unlikely, at least if success is defined even as obliquely as "developing a working design for a fusion reactor."
To the project's credit, no matter what happens it will be less expensive and more useful than another absurd and pointless war.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday July 29 2020, @11:34AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday July 29 2020, @03:59PM
> not address major problems such as the capture of the released energy.
I disagree. The main point of prototyping is to resolve technical risks. At the moment, the main technical risk is (still) in containment of the plasma. That is where one invests in prototyping.
Nb: Why do you say that ITER is not flexible? Presumably they can adjust the containment field and beam current within a reasonable parameter range.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @11:36AM (3 children)
Several years ago i heard Jon Stewart comment that the last thing we hear before the destruction of the world is a scientist saying "It works!"
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday July 29 2020, @12:29PM (1 child)
Is that meant to imply that the scientist's success leads to our doom? Or that in a twist of fate, the solution to our problems arrives only at the last second by which time we have already irrevocably screwed the pooch?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @03:56PM
Yes.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 29 2020, @04:48PM
I heard a variation of that joke.
Scientist says, I've found a way to fix all our problems! Now all I have to do is push this button . . .
(A scientist doing this at least had good intentions. Otherwise replace the word Scientist with Terrorist.)
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @12:34PM (4 children)
Hook those 2300 people up to treadmill-powered generators which will actually make usable power within our lifetime, then take the multi-billion dollar savings and buy everyone in the world a subscription to Pornhub.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @04:59PM (3 children)
Who pays for porn?
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday July 29 2020, @06:48PM
The porn hosting companies and porn studios. Who pays to watch porn? no fscking clue.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 29 2020, @07:39PM (1 child)
Ssshh don't let him know he's subsidizing all of us!
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @07:40PM
He's not subsidizing me.
I don't visit Pornhub.
https://motherless.com [motherless.com] [NSFW] FTW!
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @01:27PM
more free neutrons... sheesh!
it is laudable that they are creating a "fusion industry" from scratch but i do hope that along the way they will put up a big red sign that says something like:
"notice! here we are making technical and design decisions for neutronic fusion for simplistic reasons.
please revisit this fork in the development branch once neutronic fusion works and strongly consider the real goal to be a-neutronic fusion!"
else it's a glorified bomb material breader ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @01:48PM (2 children)
We could have built 5 stadiums for that price, well maybe 4, better fit them all with AC for global warming/s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_stadiums [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 29 2020, @07:06PM
Okay, except for the part where this is a scientific experiment and professional sports really contribute little-to-nothing in the way of value to humanity...
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:54AM
The US, at least, has only dumped a fraction (hundreds of millions) into that project compared to the 1-point-whatever billion given to the Trump supporter to build walls, just like the one he built WHICH HAS ALREADY FALLEN DOWN [texastribune.org]! Let's see, over a billion dollars to build a fucking wall, whose necessary technical breakthroughs were overcome thousands of years ago, vs a fraction of that for this? Shit, I could easily only take $100M from the Orange Buffoon and I can build a wall that will fall down within a year. I'd do it and demand I get recognized for saving over a billion dollars doing it!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @02:10PM (5 children)
It's 5 years behind schedule.
It's already at triple it's original budget.
We won't see results for 15 years (if the plan stays on track, which it hasn't so far)
And when completed it's not commercially viable - it will take more time to build something that produces commercial power.
How far in the future? And will those future reactors have anything in common with this experiment? I really wonder.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by nostyle on Wednesday July 29 2020, @03:49PM
Welcome to R&D.
All the quick, cheap and easy attempts at controlled fusion were done fifty years ago, and none of them indicated that a commercial reactor design was viable. Ever since we have been trying to bootstrap advances in material science, superconductivity, directed energy heating and plasma containment to see if a viable design is even possible. The enticing part is that (in theory) we lack only a few "break-through" discoveries to succeed.
ITER is perhaps the most ambitious endeavor ever undertaken by humanity, akin to the Apollo moonshot program or the construction of the Large Hadron Collider. Due to the enormous cost, nations must pool their efforts. Due to the enormous complexity, the best scientist in the field must continually come to consensus. Due to the novelty of the technology, everything involved must be custom-built from scratch.
If and when it succeeds, and a viable reactor design is determined, commercial clones of it will be cranked out much more cheaply and alot quicker. Then the fusion age will begin. Meanwhile, it may appear to be a boondoggle, but nothing ventured guarantees nothing gained.
OBTW, I am a plasma physicist, but abandoned the field when I realized that my entire future consisted of begging for funding for experiments that had no certain outcome. I salute all those who have had the fortitude and tenacity to pursue that path into the unknown.
(Score: 1) by shellsterdude on Wednesday July 29 2020, @03:50PM
So, what you are saying is that we are still only about 20 years away from viable Fusion Reactor technology!
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday July 29 2020, @03:56PM
> And will those future reactors have anything in common with this experiment?
I know there are lots of "what if" type ideas proposed (inertial confined fusion, spherical tokamak, etc). But at the moment they have big technical/feasibility issues that have not been resolved. Looks like ITER is the best bet so far.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 29 2020, @04:54PM (1 child)
Up to this point, I thought you could be talking about SLS.
But then . . .
It became clear.
I might even ask, isn't it premature to think we know how much power we can get from a fusion plant? What is the efficiency of a practical model? Not a theoretical model that doesn't exist, and isn't even planned yet.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @07:55PM
>> future fusion reactors would be capable of powering two million homes each
Current fusion reactors are already capable of powering two million homes... unfortunately, the homes belong to the Aka Pygmies who have no appliances.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @04:17PM (10 children)
If you're interested in interstellar travel, you've probably heard about the idea of a "wait calculation". The idea is that you shouldn't start an interstellar journey while you know that propulsion systems are in rapid development, because there's a strong chance that a ship launched years after yours would pass you.
You paradoxically get there sooner by starting later, and this has nothing to do with the weirdness of time dilation.
I think this notion might apply to fusion research. We keep building elaborate hardware that isn't even going to generate net return. That's just silly. What should we be waiting on?
We should be working on reliable simulations. We have enough data from old reactors. We should find a way to harness the existing and ever-expanding power of supercomputers (which are already useful for other things) to model fusion reactors. It just doesn't seem to make sense to keep building reactor after failed reactor.
Iterating hardware made sense in the days of steam engines and early cars. Each engine or car was cheap enough for a small company or even one man to build. There was no other option. Today we have options, and it appears that physical hardware is always going to require a huge investment unless some AI turns us on to a system that doesn't--but the focus of fusion research isn't in simulation. It's in meat space, it has been for decades, and it keeps producing the same result. What's that definition of insanity again?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 29 2020, @05:01PM (4 children)
You seem to suggest something like skipping iteration and jumping right to a hash table where the answer just pops out?
Why use a hash table when it is simpler to iterate until you find the answer you want?
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(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 29 2020, @07:01PM (3 children)
Because hashes are O(1) instead of O(n)? [wikipedia.org]
The counterargument to parent's post isn't to say "okay, according to your own analogy you're wrong"; it's pointing out that their analogy is flawed.
Iteration may be "simpler", but when you're talking about millions of rows, hashes are a hell of a lot faster.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 29 2020, @07:18PM (2 children)
(I thought the joke would go without saying that I understand the difference, but I guess not.)
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 29 2020, @08:28PM (1 child)
Oh right, you're that poster who somebody else told me "assume everything he says is sarcasm", aren't you.
This is exactly why Poe's Law is a thing.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by DannyB on Wednesday July 29 2020, @09:45PM
You don't get the title of Senior Software Developer unless you know what you're doing.*
10 WRITE CODE
20 GOSUB 10
30 PROFIT
*depending on how your company picks this title, which I had no part in selecting. I just noticed it one day.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @05:18PM
You're a genius! I wonder why no one else has *ever* even considered that?
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-supercomputer-fusion-energy-international-device.html [phys.org]
https://www.hpcwire.com/2019/08/07/supercomputer-powered-ai-tackles-a-key-fusion-energy-challenge/ [hpcwire.com]
https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/researchers-accelerate-plasma-turbulence-simulations-on-oak-ridge-supercomputers-to-improve-fusion-design-models/ [hpcwire.com]
https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/06/27/cracking-nuclear-fusion-with-supercomputers-and-smart-code/ [nextplatform.com]
https://www.iter.org/of-interest/810 [iter.org]
https://cas.lehigh.edu/sites/cas.cas2.lehigh.edu/files/Halperine_poster.pdf [lehigh.edu]
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10519990500058552?scroll=top&needAccess=true& [tandfonline.com]
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0029-5515/53/1/013007 [iop.org]
https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/36/115/36115667.pdf [iaea.org]
https://www.comsol.com/blogs/analyzing-a-component-of-the-iter-tokamak-with-simulation/ [comsol.com]
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2931037 [scitation.org]
Sigh.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @06:37PM (1 child)
Experimenting inside a simulation would only work if the following both hold true:
1. You know exactly the laws to encode in the simulation.
2. You have enough computational power to run the simulation at sufficient detail and accuracy and to run it as many times as you need to iterate and find a design that works.
Remember that we're talking about a hugely complex machine with many electrical and mechanical components with at its heart a magnetic field containing a highly compressed and energetic blob of plasma consisting of an incomprehensibly large number of fundamental particles, many of which behave in ways we still do not fully(!) understand.
Since we do not have a perfect theory on how the laws in our universe work together, any simulation we create will by neccesity be an imperfect model of reality. Of course such models can still be useful, depending how accurately they can approximate reality. One reason to do real physical experiments is exactly to get data on how plasma behaves under various conditions, so that it can be integrated in future models.
Another reason for physical experiments is that supporting technologies such as superconductors and metallurgy also need to be developed in tandem. A model showing you the perfect fusion reactor design is not much use if nobody knows how to make the parts for it.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday July 29 2020, @06:40PM
Not really. Plasma physics, at the microscopic level, is understood very well. Numerical integration can be performed with sufficient accuracy.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday July 29 2020, @06:38PM
> We should be working on reliable simulations.
The codes exist to simulate this stuff reasonably well, and indeed one can simulate to annihilation - I am sure they already have. Hardware teaches us all of the hard lessons about magnet alignment, management of forces, tuning the containment field, managing instabilities, etc.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 29 2020, @06:56PM
That only works if you *know* there is going to be a breakthrough soon...which such sort of prognostication always sounds dubious, but let's for the sake of argument say it's possible.
Haven't people been working on fusion research saying it's "five years away" for the last several decades? Sounds like we need to keep doing the research, because if everybody else stops, we end up 20 years down the road and those guys who were "just about to invent it" come back and say "oops, I guess that idea we spent all that time on doesn't actually work."
Then you've just taken 20 years off for no reason. Let people continue researching various approaches. There are dumber ways to spend the money anyway.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Wednesday July 29 2020, @06:28PM (2 children)
somebody makes a breakthrough in Low Energy Nuclear Reactions [newatlas.com] and all this money was, mostly, a waste. (they are learning a lot about high energy plasma)
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @06:56PM
You need to understand basic physics to understand why fusion (strong force process) will not be upstaged by A process relying on the weak nuclear force
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU6y1XIADdg [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday July 30 2020, @12:43AM
At some point you have to give up on hoping for [whatever hypothetical black magic] and build something. The article basically says "we have some model, which we don't really have much evidence for, and it might do something". Great, maybe it will work some day. It isn't exactly 5 sigma though is it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @08:22PM
Once it start working steadly, they can recover the investment mining bitcoin with the generated energy.