Germany's Fusion Reactor Creates Hydrogen Plasma In World First

[Agnosticsherbet]

Germany's Fusion Reactor Creates Hydrogen Plasma In World First
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany have successfully conducted a revolutionary nuclear fusion experiment. Using their experimental reactor, the Wendelstein 7-X (W7X) stellarator, they have managed to sustain a hydrogen plasma – a key step on the path to creating workable nuclear fusion. The German chancellor Angela Merkel, who herself has a doctorate in physics, switched on the device at 2:35 p.m. GMT (9:35 a.m. EST).

As a clean, near-limitless source of energy, it’s no understatement to say that controlled nuclear fusion (replicating the process that powers the Sun) would change the world, and several nations are striving to make breakthroughs in this field. Germany is undoubtedly the frontrunner in one respect: This is the second time that it’s successfully fired up its experimental fusion reactor.

Last December, the team managed to suspend a helium plasma for the first time in history, and they’ve now achieved the same feat with hydrogen. Generating a hydrogen plasma is considerably more difficult than producing a helium one, so by producing and sustaining one in today’s experiment, even for just a few milliseconds, these researchers have achieved something truly remarkable.

As a power source, hydrogen fusion releases far more energy than helium fusion, which is why sustaining a superheated hydrogen plasma represents such a huge step for nuclear fusion research.

This is great news.

[hedda_foil]

1. Amazing.

[GliderGuider]

2. Humans with unlimited energy at their disposal is my deepest nightmare.

We are not even close to being mature enough to keep from using it.

[The2ndWheel]

5. But it's clean, and that's all that matters

If you don't take into account the kinds of ways we changed the environment before oil and coal.

We keep telling ourselves we live on a finite planet, but we keep trying to find ways around limits. That's what we do. That's all human progress is.

I don't even know if it's about being mature enough to not use it. We can't help but use it. If it's available, we'll find a way. We'll force ourselves to use it. We'll come up with new ways to use it, ways that wouldn't exist without it. Then because of our ideal of universal fairness, nobody should be without access to it.

That's the biggest trick in the hat. Everyone should have their fair share, but in a finite reality, who gets what, and who gets to decide who gets what? That's the basic argument in all of human history, and we're not very good at answering that question. Why? We can't account for everything. Just with this, we're talking only about human beings. There's the rest of life on the planet that shares the finite reality with us, but they're a little lower on the list. Which makes total sense, because we created the list.

[Yo_Mama]

6. What would be the harm?

That's the real question to be asked and answered. Would we be better off using a clean source?

I think it is a purely speculative question. We have not really made any advances in fusion that get us closer to making it a practical power source. So we have time.

[NNadir]

3. I regularly attend lectures at PPPL, many of which are on the subject of fusion.

Every winter, they have "Science on Saturday" lectures, and I usually attend them. Many of the speakers are their own scientists.

It's not clear to me that they have much of an idea about heat transfer, which is the ultimate materials science problem, particularly where neutrons are concerned.

A fusion neutron has an energy of about 13 MeV, a factor of ten higher than fission neutrons.

I asked about this at one lecture, and a fellow stopped by, afterwards, to tell me that they had identified a material that could withstand 120 dpa (displacements per atom) if I remember his figure correctly, and I promised to send him some literature on "MAX phases", although I misplaced his card after leaving the lecture. (I couldn't stay for the tour of the fusion facility after as I had my high school age son and his friend with me.)

They're reluctant to use zirconium based heat shields because they don't want bad press from anti-nukes - an intellectually silly group but one, to the detriment of humanity still retains considerable media and thus political power - about the accumulation of Zr-93. This came up in the context of a brief discussion of heat shields. It appears that as a result, they will have a hafnium problem. The supply of hafnium on the planet is limited, it's a "critical element."

(I wrote about the subject of "critical elements" elsewhere: Sustaining the Wind, Indium and Beyond)

They have made good progress around the world on magnetic confinement, but neutrons cannot be so confined, as they have no charge. This is a huge problem, particularly given that managing neutrons is fundamental to any approach to heat transfer.

The joke about fusion energy is that for half a century it has remained thirty years away from commercialization. I think this will hold for the next half a century, and though I'll be dead, I'll hazard a guess that should humanity survive its ignorance, we'll be seeing something close to 500 (or more) ppm of dangerous fossil fuel waste in the atmosphere.

It's more of an exercise in basic research than in practical engineering.

As for Chancellor Merkel, she is one of the most cowardly politicians in the world when it comes to making wise energy decisions. She surely knows better than the policies her government employs but does nothing, this for political reasons. As things stand they will forever be dependent on dangerous fossil fuels, since every dime wasted on so called "renewable energy" is spitting, literally, into the wind.

The so called "renewable energy" policy that her country (and other countries) have endorsed have soaked up trillions of dollars in the last decade, with the result that 2015 was the worst year ever observed observed for increases in the concentration of dangerous fossil fuel waste in the atmosphere. It will get worse while, like Godot, we await the fusion miracle and the "renewable energy" miracle.

Neither will happen in the lifetime of anyone now living.

[Agnosticsherbet]

4. Thanks, knowlede may be slow to accumulate,

but eventually we get enough to do something with it.