Chitchat 'Star in a Jar' Fusion Reactor Works and Promises Infinite Energy

[cuckoldoolittle]

By Glenn McDonald, Seeker | December 9, 2016 07:00am ET

For several decades now, scientists from around the world have been pursuing a ridiculously ambitious goal:
They hope to develop a nuclear fusion reactor that would generate energy in the same manner as the sun
and other stars, but down here on Earth.

Incorporated into terrestrial power plants, this "star in a jar" technology would essentially provide Earth with
limitless clean energy, forever. And according to new reports out of Europe this week, we just took another
big step toward making it happen.

In a study published in the latest edition of the journal Nature Communications, researchers confirmed that
Germany's Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) fusion energy device is on track and working as planned. The space-age
system, known as a stellerator, generated its first batch of hydrogen plasma when it was first fired up earlier
this year. The new tests basically give scientists the green light to proceed to the next stage of the process.

It works like this: Unlike a traditional fission reactor, which splits atoms of heavy elements to generate energy,
a fusion reactor works by fusing the nuclei of lighter atoms into heavier atoms. The process releases massive
amounts of energy and produces no radioactive waste. The "fuel" used in a fusion reactor is simple hydrogen,
which can be extracted from water.

However, to achieve fusion, scientists must generate enormously high temperatures to heat the hydrogen into a
plasma state. The plasma is so hot, in fact, that it would instantly burn material used to contain it. That's where the
stellerator design comes in. The W7-X device confines the plasma within magnetic fields generated by superconducting
coils cooled down to near absolute zero. The plasma — at temperatures upwards of 80 million degrees Celsius —
never comes into contact with the walls of the containment chamber. Neat trick, that.

The W7-X is the world's largest and most sophisticated stellerator and is currently operated by Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany.
But development of the W7-X has been an ongoing, international effort. The latest tests were conducted in collaboration
with scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).

David Gates, principal research physicist for the advanced projects division of PPPL, leads the agency's collaborative
efforts in regard to the W7-X project. In an email exchange from his offices at Princeton, Gates said the latest tests
verify that the W7-X magnetic "cage" is working as planned.

"This lays the groundwork for the exciting high-performance plasma operations expected in the near future," Gates said

In terms of the big-picture goal, Gates said that nuclear fusion reactors, if properly developed and deployed,
would provide the planet with safe, clean and virtually inexhaustible energy.

"The fuel source is found in seawater in quantities sufficient to last tens of thousands of years," he said.
"The waste product is helium, an inert gas. A viable fusion reactor would provide a secure, plentiful and environmentally
benign energy resource to all nations."

That last part is critical. Gates said he's encouraged by fact that the W7-X project, and nuclear fusion research in general,
is the result of close collaboration among scientists from around the world.

'Fusion is a problem best solved by the peoples of all nations working together, since the entire world will benefit from it."

Wendelstein 7-X


Wendelstein 7-X at the Greifswald branch of IPP is a large stellarator with modular superconducting coils which enable steady
state plasma operation in order to explore the reactor relevance of this concept.




Wendelstein 7-X is the world’s largest fusion device of the stellarator type. Its objective is to investigate the suitability of this type
for a power plant. It will test an optimised magnetic field for confining the plasma, which will be produced by a system of 50 non-planar
and superconducting magnet coils, this being the technical core piece of the device.

The structure composed of single coils allows the magnetic field to be shaped in detail. A great deal of theory and computation effort
was invested to optimise the magnetic field for Wendelstein 7-X so as to overcome the disadvantages of previous classical stellarators.
Its predecessor, Wendelstein 7-AS (1988 - 2002), the first device of this new generation of Advanced Stellarators, had already
subjected elements of the concept to first experimental testing.

The further developed successor, Wendelstein 7-X, is now to investigate the new stellarator’s suitability for a power plant. It is expected
that plasma equilibrium and confinement will be of a quality comparable to that of a tokamak of the same size. But it will avoid the
disadvantages of a large current flowing in a tokamak plasma: With plasma discharges lasting up to 30 minutes, Wendelstein 7-X is to
demonstrate the essential stellarator property, viz. continuous operation.

The main assembly of Wendelstein 7-X was concluded in 2014. Once all technical systems had been checked step by step the first plasma
was produced on 10th December 2015.

 

[Bigfuck]

Prepare for a mini blackhole to suck us all in

 

[cuckoldoolittle]

Prepare for a mini blackhole to suck us all in

Or

Prepare to live in a pollution-free World.

 

[cuckoldoolittle]

China's nuclear fusion machine just smashed Germany's hydrogen plasma record

Game on.
BEC CREW
8 FEB 2016

Just last week, we reported that Germany’s revolutionary nuclear fusion machine managed to heat hydrogen gas to 80 million degrees Celsius,
and sustain a cloud of hydrogen plasma for a quarter of a second. This was a huge milestone in the decades-long pursuit of controlled nuclear fusion,
because if we can produce and hold onto hydrogen plasma for a certain period, we can harness the clean, practically limitless energy that fuels our Sun.


Now physicists in China have announced that their own nuclear fusion machine, called the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST),
has produced hydrogen plasma at 49.999 million degrees Celsius, and held onto it for an impressive 102 seconds.


While this is nowhere near the hottest temperature that’s been produced by an experiment - that honour goes to the Large Hadron Collider, which hit a
whopping 4 trillion degrees Celsius (250,000 times hotter than the centre of the Sun) back in 2012 - the team from China’s Institute of Physical Science in Hefei
managed to recreate solar conditions for well over a minute.


Sustaining these incredibly high temperatures for long enough to harness the energy produced by the reaction is key to achieving controlled nuclear fusion,
as it allows for more stable alignment of the magnetic fields that are used to manoeuvre the plasma away from the walls of the machine, and the collection of
high-energy particles and heat energy that are produced as part of the reaction.





Nuclear fission, which is what our current nuclear facilities achieve, generates energy by splitting the nucleus of an atom into smaller neutrons and nuclei.
While fission is super efficient - the amount of energy it releases is millions of times more efficient per mass than that of coal - management of dangerous
radioactive byproducts is incredibly expensive.



That’s what makes nuclear fusion so desirable: it involves producing huge amounts of energy when atoms are fused together at incredibly high temperatures,
but produces no radioactive waste or other unwanted byproducts.



The problem is it requires far higher temperatures. While nuclear fission requires things to be heated to just a few hundred degrees Celsius, nuclear fusion machines
have to recreate conditions on the Sun, which means we’re talking several million degrees.

In fact, because our machines are essentially starting their reactions from scratch, we actually need to achieve temperatures far hotter than those estimated
to exist in the centre of the Sun - the team behind Germany’s US$1 billion stellarator nuclear fusion machine says the ideal temperature is 100 million degrees Celsius.


Nuclear fission, which is what our current nuclear facilities achieve, generates energy by splitting the nucleus of an atom into smaller neutrons and nuclei.
While fission is super efficient - the amount of energy it releases is millions of times more efficient per mass than that of coal - management of dangerous
radioactive byproducts is incredibly expensive.

That’s what makes nuclear fusion so desirable: it involves producing huge amounts of energy when atoms are fused together at incredibly high temperatures,
but produces no radioactive waste or other unwanted byproducts.

This is what China’s team was hoping to hit last week, but had to settle for close to 50 million degrees, Stephen Chen from the South China Morning Post reports.
Their ultimate goal is to hit 100 million degrees Celsius, and sustain the resulting hydrogen plasma for over 1,000 seconds, or 17 minutes.
Meanwhile, the German team says it could conceivably sustain its plasma for as long as 30 minutes, now that their 'proof of concept' experiment is out of the way.


Now, we must make it clear that the results coming out of China are based on a statement by the Hefei Institute of Physical Science, and until we see a
peer-reviewed paper detailing how they achieved these temperatures and times, we have to remain skeptical. But if everything checks out,
we really do have a bonafide "Battle of the doughnut-shaped nuclear fusion machines" on our hands, with the Germans needing to work on their time,
and the Chinese needing to work on their temperatures.

We're still likely decades away from actually harnessing nuclear fusion to solve humanity's energy problems (if - and that's a big "if" - we figure out how to do it at all),
but scientists are making some amazing progress. And we love a bit of healthy competition.

 

[The_Hypocrite]

Prepare for a mini blackhole to suck us all in

That is good..don't have to worry about retirement n the 1% will end up with the rest of us.

 

[failpsle]

Where is vamjok our resident scientist?

 

[cuckoldoolittle]

That is good..don't have to worry about retirement n the 1% will end up with the rest of us.

Matthew 6:25-27 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body,
what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor
reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being
anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

Matthew 6:34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Matthew 19:24 "And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."


Namo Amitabha Buddha

AND FUCK THE PAP
AND FUCK AssLOONG AND FUCK AssHO

Alhamdulillah

 

[Asterix]

Matthew 19:24 "And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Asterix 28:28 - And therefore I say unto thee, what if there is no heaven and God is but a figment of man's collective imagination. Thou better to spend your effort looking for good times and noodle salad then being pissed off with others for having it good. Heaven is a lousy consolation prize if it does not exist in the first place.

[video=youtube;Jly4dXapR9c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jly4dXapR9c[/video]