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Nuclear Fusion (Read 4845 times)
juliar
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Nuclear Fusion
Aug 30th, 2019 at 11:01am
 
Sort of makes messing around with thorium look like a waste of time.



World’s Largest Nuclear Fusion Experiment Clears Milestone. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is set to launch operations in 2025
By Nathanial Gronewold, E&E News on July 24, 2019

...
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is under construction in southern France. Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

A multination project to build a fusion reactor cleared a milestone yesterday and is now 6 ½ years away from “First Plasma,” officials announced.

Yesterday, dignitaries attended a components handover ceremony at the construction site of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in southern France. The ITER project is an experiment aimed at reaching the next stage in the evolution of nuclear energy as a means of generating emissions-free electricity.

The section recently installed—the cryostat base and lower cylinder—paves the way for the installation of the tokamak, the technology design chosen to house the powerful magnetic field that will encase the ultra-hot plasma fusion core.

“Manufactured by India, the ITER cryostat is 16,000 cubic meters,” ITER officials said in a release. “Its diameter and height are both almost 30 meters and it weighs 3,850 tons. Because of its bulk, it is being fabricated in four main sections: the base, lower cylinder, upper cylinder, and top lid.”

The entire project is now 65% complete, the officials said.

The world’s first commercial-scale fusion reactor project is on track to officially launch operations at the end of 2025, said spokeswoman Sabina Griffith, but it will take at least a decade to fully power up the facility.

“The date for First Plasma is set; we will push the button in December 2025,” Griffith said. “It will take another 10 years until we reach full deuterium-tritium operations.”

Thirty-five nations are cooperating on the project to bring fusion power to the masses.



Achieving controlled fusion reactions that net more power than they take to generate, and at commercial scale, is seen as a potential answer to climate change. Fusion energy would eliminate the need for fossil fuels and solve the intermittency and reliability concerns inherent with renewable energy sources. The energy would be generated without the dangerous amounts of radiation that raises concerns about fission nuclear energy.

Officials say the ITER nuclear fusion reactor is poised to be the most complicated piece of machinery ever built. It will contain the world’s largest superconducting magnets, needed to generate a magnetic field powerful enough to contain a plasma that will reach temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius, about 10 times hotter than the center of the sun.

Griffith said more milestones will be cleared as soon as construction continues.

“We will see the arrival of the first major Tokamak components like the first PF Coil from China (a European contribution), a Vacuum Vessel sector from Korea and first TF coils (from Europe and Japan) this autumn,” Griffith said in an email. “This will lead us to the official start of assembly in spring next year.”

Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-largest-nuclear-fusion-experim...
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Bobby.
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #1 - Aug 30th, 2019 at 11:04am
 
I hope it works.
meanwhile - we have plenty of Thorium that we know works.
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #2 - Aug 30th, 2019 at 11:48am
 
But Bobby there is no money in it as the uranium horse has already bolted.

Maybe in 200 years when uranium gets scarce and if nuclear fusion still doesn't work and if India hasn't blown itself up.
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #3 - Aug 30th, 2019 at 1:26pm
 
juliar wrote on Aug 30th, 2019 at 11:48am:
But Bobby there is no money in it as the uranium horse has already bolted.

Maybe in 200 years when uranium gets scarce and if nuclear fusion still doesn't work and if India hasn't blown itself up.



Juliar - you need to have faith that engineers and
scientists can solve the problems of Thorium reactors.

Fusion is another matter altogether.
You're talking of a sub-miniature star on earth.
The technical problems are orders of magnitude greater.
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #4 - Aug 30th, 2019 at 3:18pm
 
juliar wrote on Aug 30th, 2019 at 11:48am:
But Bobby there is no money in it as the uranium horse has already bolted.

Maybe in 200 years when uranium gets scarce and if nuclear fusion still doesn't work and if India hasn't blown itself up.


and that is what it is all about isn't socko. No money in it so it's no good. Why don't you hatch up some scam to rip us off on the air we breath since you are doing a good job poisoning it Sad
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In August 2021, Newcastle Coroner Karen Dilks recorded that Lisa Shaw had died “due to complications of an AstraZeneca COVID vaccination”.
 
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #5 - Aug 30th, 2019 at 3:19pm
 
Bobby. wrote on Aug 30th, 2019 at 1:26pm:
juliar wrote on Aug 30th, 2019 at 11:48am:
But Bobby there is no money in it as the uranium horse has already bolted.

Maybe in 200 years when uranium gets scarce and if nuclear fusion still doesn't work and if India hasn't blown itself up.



Juliar - you need to have faith that engineers and
scientists can solve the problems of Thorium reactors.

Fusion is another matter altogether.
You're talking of a sub-miniature star on earth.
The technical problems are orders of magnitude greater.


the only man made fusion generator proven to work only works for a micro second and unleashes devastating forces and radiation Sad
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In August 2021, Newcastle Coroner Karen Dilks recorded that Lisa Shaw had died “due to complications of an AstraZeneca COVID vaccination”.
 
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Bobby.
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #6 - Aug 30th, 2019 at 3:25pm
 
Sir lastnail wrote on Aug 30th, 2019 at 3:19pm:
Bobby. wrote on Aug 30th, 2019 at 1:26pm:
juliar wrote on Aug 30th, 2019 at 11:48am:
But Bobby there is no money in it as the uranium horse has already bolted.

Maybe in 200 years when uranium gets scarce and if nuclear fusion still doesn't work and if India hasn't blown itself up.



Juliar - you need to have faith that engineers and
scientists can solve the problems of Thorium reactors.

Fusion is another matter altogether.
You're talking of a sub-miniature star on earth.
The technical problems are orders of magnitude greater.


the only man made fusion generator proven to work only works for a micro second and unleashes devastating forces and radiation Sad



Hi Nail,
I wish they would have put that fusion money into Thorium reactors.
At least they know that Thorium works.
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #7 - Aug 30th, 2019 at 9:37pm
 
Using a magnetic field to hold the ultra-hot plasma fusion core which will be at 150 million degrees Celsius, about 10 times hotter than the center of the sun.


What could possibly go wrong?

Shocked
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The 2025 election could be a shocker.
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juliar
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #8 - Sep 2nd, 2019 at 1:41pm
 
The dreary Greeny scunge is emitting smelly ignorance pollution in great quantities.
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #9 - Sep 23rd, 2019 at 8:12pm
 
Captain Nemo wrote on Aug 30th, 2019 at 9:37pm:
Using a magnetic field to hold the ultra-hot plasma fusion core which will be at 150 million degrees Celsius, about 10 times hotter than the center of the sun.


What could possibly go wrong?

Shocked


How much actual plasma will be in the magnetic bottle at any one time? e =mc2 remember.
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Get the vaxx! 💉💉

If you don’t like abortions ignore them like you do school shootings.
 
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #10 - Sep 24th, 2019 at 7:43am
 
Now the equally dull dreary boring uninformed Munkee is trotting out prepared Greeny replies. What a flop. A technical section is the last place a non technical body like Munkee should inhabit.
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #11 - Sep 24th, 2019 at 8:25am
 
Now getting away from the irrelevant and back to the TOPIC.


Researchers Just Demonstrated Nuclear Fusion in a Device Small Enough to Keep at Home
MIKE MCRAE17 APR 2019

...

When it comes to the kinds of technology needed to contain a sun, there are currently just two horses in the race. Neither is what you'd call 'petite'. 

An earlier form of fusion technology that barely made it out of the starting blocks has just overcome a serious hurdle. It's got a long way to catch up, but given its potential cost and versatility, a table-sized fusion device like this is worth watching out for.

While many have long given up on an early form of plasma confinement called the Z-pinch as a feasible way to generate power, researchers at the University of Washington in the US have continued to look for a way to overcome its shortcomings.

Fusion power relies on clouds of charged particles you can squeeze the literal daylights out of - it's the reaction that powers that big ball of hot gas we call the Sun.

But containing a buzzing mix of superhot ions is extremely challenging - in the lab, scientists use intense magnetic fields for this task. Tokamaks like China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak reactor swirl their insanely hot plasma in such a way that they generate their own internal magnetic fields, helping contain the flow.

This approach gets the plasma cooking enough for it to release a critical amount of energy. But what it gains in generating heat it loses in long-term stability.

Stellerators like Germany's Wendelstein 7-X, on the other hand, rely more heavily on banks of externally applied magnetic fields. While this makes for better control over the plasma, it also makes it harder to reach the temperatures needed for fusion to occur.


Both are making serious headway in our march towards fusion power. But those doughnuts holding the plasma are at least a few metres (a dozen feet) across, surrounded by complex banks of delicate electronics, making it unlikely we'll see them shrink to a home or mobile version any time soon.

In the early days of fusion research, a somewhat simpler method for squeezing a jet of plasma was to 'pinch' it through a magnetic field.

A relatively small device known as a zeta or 'Z'-pinch uses the specific orientation of a plasma's internal magnetic field to apply what's known as the Lorentz force to the flow of particles, effectively forcing its particles together through a bottleneck.

In some sense, the device isn't unlike a miniature version of its tokamak big brother. As such, it also suffers from similar stability issues that can cause its plasma to jump from the magnetic tracks and crash into the sides of its container.

In fact, iterations of the Z-pinch led to the chunky tokamak technology that superseded it. Given this major limitation, the Z-pinch has all but become a relic of history.


Hope remains that by going back to the roots of fusion, researchers might find a way to generate power without the need for complicated banks of surrounding machinery and magnets.

Now, researchers from the University of Washington have found an alternative approach to stabilising the plasma in a Z-pinch not only works, but it can be used to generate a burst of fusion.


To prevent the distortions in the plasma that cause it to escape the confines of its magnetic cage, the team manages the flow of the particles by applying a bit of fluid dynamics.

Introducing what is known as sheared axial flow to a short column of plasma has previously been studied as a potential way to improve stability in a Z-pinch, to rather limited effect.

Not to be deterred, physicists relied on computer simulations to show the concept was possible.

Using a mix of 20 percent deuterium and 80 percent hydrogen, the team managed to hold stable a 50 centimetre (1.6 foot) long column of plasma enough to achieve fusion, evidenced by a signature generation of neutrons being emitted.

We're only talking 5 microseconds worth of neutrons here, so don't clear space in your basement for your Z-Pinch 3000 Home Fusion Box quite yet. But the stability was 5,000 times longer than you'd expect without such a method being used, showing the principle is ripe for further study.

Generating clean, abundant fusion energy is still a dream we're all holding onto. A new approach to a less complex form of plasma technology could help remove at least some of the obstacles, if not prove to be a cheaper, more compact source of clean power in its own right.

The race towards the horizon of limitless energy production is only just warming up, folks. And it really can't come soon enough.

This research was published in Physical Review Letters.

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-breakthrough-revives-an-old-idea-for-nuclear-fusi...
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #12 - Sep 24th, 2019 at 9:17am
 
Electric cars powered by elexctricity from nuclear fusion. Win Win/
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In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

No evidence whatsoever it can be attributed to George Orwell or Eric Arthur Blair (in fact the same guy)
 
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #13 - Sep 24th, 2019 at 12:07pm
 
juliar wrote on Sep 24th, 2019 at 7:43am:
Now the equally dull dreary boring uninformed Munkee is trotting out prepared Greeny replies. What a flop. A technical section is the last place a non technical body like Munkee should inhabit.


I take it you do not understand the implications of e = mc2

Don’t worry, most here are equally as ignorant as you, don’t feel lonely.
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Get the vaxx! 💉💉

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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Reply #14 - Sep 24th, 2019 at 4:10pm
 
BH is warming to the idea of frankfurts at tea time.

Silly old Munkee is suffering from fusion of the mind. He has not got the remotest clue about the topic. he just wants to make a noise to try to get noticed as he is usually ignored as a waste of space.

But leaving the naysayers in the dust and back to the TOPIC.





Nuclear Fusion Power
(Updated July 2019)

...

Fusion power offers the prospect of an almost inexhaustible source of energy for future generations, but it also presents so far insurmountable engineering challenges.

The fundamental challenge is to achieve a rate of heat emitted by a fusion plasma that exceeds the rate of energy injected into the plasma.

The main hope is centred on tokamak reactors and stellarators which confine a deuterium-tritium plasma magnetically.

Today, many countries take part in fusion research to some extent, led by the European Union, the USA, Russia and Japan, with vigorous programs also underway in China, Brazil, Canada, and Korea.

Initially, fusion research in the USA and USSR was linked to atomic weapons development, and it remained classified until the 1958 Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva.

Following a breakthrough at the Soviet tokamak, fusion research became 'big science' in the 1970s. But the cost and complexity of the devices involved increased to the point where international co-operation was the only way forward.

Fusion powers the Sun and stars as hydrogen atoms fuse together to form helium, and matter is converted into energy.

Hydrogen, heated to very high temperatures changes from a gas to a plasma in which the negatively-charged electrons are separated from the positively-charged atomic nuclei (ions).

Normally, fusion is not possible because the strongly repulsive electrostatic forces between the positively charged nuclei prevent them from getting close enough together to collide and for fusion to occur.

However, if the conditions are such that the nuclei can overcome the electrostatic forces to the extent that they can come within a very close range of each other, then the attractive nuclear force (which binds protons and neutrons together in atomic nuclei) between the nuclei will outweigh the repulsive (electrostatic) force, allowing the nuclei to fuse together.

Such conditions can occur when the temperature increases, causing the ions to move faster and eventually reach speeds high enough to bring the ions close enough together. The nuclei can then fuse, causing a release of energy.

Fusion technology
In the Sun, massive gravitational forces create the right conditions for fusion, but on Earth they are much harder to achieve.

Fusion fuel – different isotopes of hydrogen – must be heated to extreme temperatures of the order of 50 million degrees Celsius, and must be kept stable under intense pressure, hence dense enough and confined for long enough to allow the nuclei to fuse.

The aim of the controlled fusion research program is to achieve 'ignition', which occurs when enough fusion reactions take place for the process to become self-sustaining, with fresh fuel then being added to continue it. Once ignition is achieved, there is net energy yield – about four times as much as with nuclear fission.

According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the amount of power produced increases with the square of the pressure, so doubling the pressure leads to a fourfold increase in energy production.

With current technology, the reaction most readily feasible is between the nuclei of the two heavy forms (isotopes) of hydrogen – deuterium (D) and tritium (T).

Each D-T fusion event releases 17.6 MeV (2.8 x 10-12 joule, compared with 200 MeV for a U-235 fission and 3-4 MeV for D-D fusion).a On a mass basis, the D-T fusion reaction releases over four times as much energy as uranium fission.

Deuterium occurs naturally in seawater (30 grams per cubic metre), which makes it very abundant relative to other energy resources.

Tritium occurs naturally only in trace quantities (produced by cosmic rays) and is radioactive, with a half-life of around 12 years.

Usable quantities can be made in a conventional nuclear reactor, or in the present context, bred in a fusion system from lithium.b Lithium is found in large quantities (30 parts per million) in the Earth's crust and in weaker concentrations in the sea.

In a fusion reactor, the concept is that neutrons generated from the D-T fusion reaction will be absorbed in a blanket containing lithium which surrounds the core.

The lithium is then transformed into tritium (which is used to fuel the reactor) and helium. The blanket must be thick enough (about 1 metre) to slow down the high-energy (14 MeV) neutrons.

Read the full story here

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/...
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