The World's Largest Nuclear Fusion Reactor
Added 2023-11-21 23:31:36 +0000 UTCI went to ITER, the largest nuclear fusion reactor in the world! Hope you enjoy the tour :)
Comments
I'm still so jealous that you got to go there! It's one of my favorite international collaborations
Nick McKay
2024-04-10 03:32:25 +0000 UTCMany people know that our sun shines, like all stars, as a thermonuclear furnace somehow fusing Hydrogen and reacting like a ferocious Hydrogen bomb. In the fifties, parents of the Atomic Age knew that Hydrogen bombs were more destructive than the Uranium bombs being developed in multiple countries and creating a tense Cold War whose ice could shatter with the launch of a nuclear tipped missile. Although we knew that the sun had something to do with nuclear fusion, we would be at a loss to explain why our sun does not suddenly blow up! The answer lies in the mass of our sun, a full gravity of 333,030 earth-masses that confines the sun's fusion and keeps its engine purring for billions of years. The gravitational controls built into a star cannot be replicated using artificial fields and machines that weigh almost nothing compared to the mass of a star. Although gravity can be modeled using field equations, we have no machine for turning a single component of a gravity field on or off without introducing or moving real masses. If one were to attempt to do fusion on Earth at an industrial level, even if one achieves ignition, the insurmountable challenge becomes that of containing a plasma without the help of gravity. Fusion, as displayed by Avogadro's number of stars, works well on astronomical scales. Large stars can become supernovae or blackholes ~~ either extreme and everything in between. Fusion on celestial and cosmological scales leads to the incredible richness we see with Webb and all of our seeing and listening devices. When we probe the sub-atomic realms and behold the work of creation and annihilation operators, we get a glimpse of fusion and fission compacting and expanding matter as naturally as though it were breathing. The Webb telescope has shown evidence for fusion occurring on colossal scales in the dawn of the big bang in massive stars that quickly and easily go supernovae ~ in one great inhalation and exhalation. Lugubrious Dark Matter has its hand in things and yet not enough grip or time in the big bang dawn to form long lasting galaxies. Brilliant flashes from short-lived giants quicken the cosmos with a rich array of elements and isotopes. These seeds have ten, eleven, twelve billion years to try out every possibility and form new generations of galaxies with conditions for long lasting slow 'n steady stellar systems like our own. Our celestial engineers train themselves on asteroids and make way for future generations to move precious stones as gravitationally coupled pairs. Long before our sun becomes a Red Giant, our moon tugs us out out to Saturn. She becomes opalescent and goes through 33 stages of atmospheric development, 33 flavors of ice-cream in popular imagination. With toasters, jets and lasers one can jack up the kinetic energy and momentum of particles in a plasma so that the velocity distribution of its particles lies close to the speed of light. This whirling and twirling does not replicate the gravity fields available to stars. One cannot dial in components of the Riemann tensor using machines, not even with a starship trying to do some anti-gravity trick. Real gravity effects, be they dark or from ponderable masses cannot be imitated using artificial fields. Not even the vacuum can be fooled. An engineered form of gravity or anti-gravity would violate the Equivalence Principle at the center of General Relativity. To do a controlled fusion reaction on earth, one has none of the curved-space tools available on the mass scale of stars, except the vacuum energies studied at CERN. Great magnets can control great energies and pull harder than any gravity on earth. The magnetic grip comes at a cost; every conversion of energy increases the entropy and ensures that there will be no free lunches. If and when we have an industrial fusion reaction on earth contained ~ a dragon in a cage ~ there comes the challenge of harnessing a million degree source of power. You don't heat a cup of water with a hydrogen bomb. A more efficient way to heat water would be to start with a flame of a few hundred degrees, a candle or perhaps a specially engineered wood burner, or a coal burner, if you have some anthracite in your backyard or obtainable through your trading desk. On an industrial scale, one needs pumps galore and oceans for cooling ..... Someday (30 years from now) we may tame a dragon and hold a toroid of industrial plasma in a quasi-equilibrium and directly transform its power into a useful transportable high-voltage oscillating current. Presently, we are happy with ratcheting the temperature down for conventional steam powered turbines. The legacy of James Watt continues at ever higher and more dangerous pressures. Rocket scientists have a hard time keeping the devilishly small atoms of Hydrogen from slipping past a gate valve or ball valve. Every conversion of energy causes an increase in entropy and a reduction in efficiency. Every reduction in temperature comes at a cost, like tossing a cup of tea in a sea with no expectation of retrieving it. How many conversions of energy does one need to cook, wash and bathe? If one happens to be living in Iceland, not much, although the source of Earth's internal heat and the gravitational control of radioactive weak interactions opens volumes. If you give organic matter enough time, it can do wonders at room temperature. Slow and steady wins the race.
Scott Ready
2023-11-30 11:48:21 +0000 UTCGreat to see all those details especially what it already took to get where they're now. That's why Richard's comment needs to be heard and taken seriously, even if he might not be speaking for all who are involved. Such world changing inventions don't come to life over night, they need lots of preparations, science and fail checks to ensure the processes are as safe as they can be in the end.
Armin Quast
2023-11-22 09:28:03 +0000 UTCGreat story! I watched this on Nebula. I think of ITER as the ground based version of the International Space Station, but on steroids. It's great to see these countries allowing there scientists and engineers work together for the betterment of all humanity. While sustained fusion reactors have their place there is an approach to fusion that has its own, pulsed fusion reactors. One such company, Helion Energy, has achieved success in getting their technology to work on an experimental scale (1 pulse every 10 minutes versus the something like 1,000 times a second needed for production). They are targeting a 50 MW reactor for Microsoft by the end of the decade. Real Engineering did a spot on Helion about a year ago.
Moose Thompson
2023-11-22 01:06:01 +0000 UTC
