Nuclear Fusion - So, how we doing?

NeilF

NeilF

NeilF

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Anyone have upto date info on how the various attempts are going at getting it working?

I believe there's at least two different approaches being tried, with one in California based on using high powered lasers which would be proved to work or not first?
 
AFAIK there is the laser approach in USA, JET in Japan, ITER in Europe (to be built). I believe problems include reaching the 100million degrees to sustain a reaction and/or putting more energy in than it creates
 
There are loads of little experiments and test reactors all over the world. the main work is going on in the ITER project, which is a coalition of scientists from the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, and the USA. The main centre of research for this project is the Tokamak reactor built in France. Although experiements are ongoing, I suspect it will be at least another 40-50 years before we see any real commerical results.
 
Going well here. I've discovered the curvature of the toilet bowl makes for the perfect magnetic acceleration chamber.

As a result though people need to use the sink..... tis for the science!!
 
There was a TV programme on a couple of months ago that went to various places around the world and interviewed some scientists. It might have been Horizon. I think they said it would take about 30-50 years if there is a load of money chucked at it to get a usable process.
 
monkeygremlin said:
There was a TV programme on a couple of months ago that went to various places around the world and interviewed some scientists. It might have been Horizon. I think they said it would take about 30-50 years if there is a load of money chucked at it to get a usable process.
Click to expand...

Yes, but I believe the various approaches are reaching milestones that will in suggest if they will even work or not? The laser based on in California I believed was the closest to this... ie: If it's shown unlikely to work, then it would appear we really only have one other avenue to try to get it to work?

In reality we need it to work! We do not want to be relying on fossil fuels by the middle of this century!
 
We have 2 fusion reactors at our university (EPFL), just little baby reactors that are very expensive to run. Know a few pst grads and post docs working in Fusion. They all seem fairly optimistic that ITER will work well enogh to eventually be commerially viable but only after sinking hundred of billions in research. Acheiving commerically viable results may happen with 20 years, 30 years at most. But there are a lot more smaller issues to resolve so perhaps it will take 50 years before a proper commercial fusion reactor is built wiht the aims to make money. Maybe 70-80 before the process is really widespread and optimized.
 
It's a matter of when not if now. The next 10-20 years are going to be very exciting. My former nuclear physics lecturers are very optimistic.

Project ITER is probably the one worth watching. After the International Space Station, it's the biggest and best funded collaborative scientific effort on the planet.
 
The tokamak (magnetic confinement system) for the fusion reactor is going to quite a beast:

UL9wHi1.jpg
 
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