Really, 20 seconds ! What is the putative path, configuration and timeline to fusion power on the "Grid within 15 years". I would be thrilled to be mostly Nuclear by then.

Remarkable result but there is no value for the plasma density. The Lawson criterion states that the product of the plasma density, that is the number of ions in a volume unit, times the time of containment must be greater than a given value, which depends on the type of reaction (deuterium-tritium or deuterium-deuterium). No figure is given in the article.
Tullio

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"Nature" writes that the Joint European Torus at Culham, Oxfordshire, UK , still in action despite Brexit will try in June to start a Deuterium-Tritium reaction to get data for ITER in construction in France. The D-T reaction produces many more neutrons than a D-D reaction and therefore stresses the structure of the Tokamak and rends radioactive the first wall. Good luck!
Tullio

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An MIT spinoff company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, is proposing to build a new Tokamak called SPARC, based on the previous researches on the Alcator-C tokamak designed by Bruno Coppi. It should be financed also by private investors, costing from 5 to 6 billion dollars and producing 50 MW of electric power.
Tullio

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I would like to see the design layout of this project.

I found the news in a Twitter blog, but since I don't have a Twitter account I cannot find it again. The firm is called Commonwealth Fusion Systems and the tokamak is called SPARC.
Tullio

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Yes but I think that that is not the plant that will produce megawatts of power. SPARC may produce more energy than was put in.

See this excellent recent talk:


Putting the sun in a bottle: the path to delivering sustainable fusion power | The Royal Society


Takes a short while to get going hence the introduction skip.

We have a way to go but there is a huge impetus to get something going ASAP.


All on our only one planet!
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

It looks like that Jeff Bezos is going to finance a fusion device in Culham, Oxfordshire, which already hosts the Joint European Torus, a project sponsored by the European Community. But will it survive the Brexit?
Tullio

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Brief details are given here:

Bezos-backed startup to build nuclear fusion demonstration plant in UK


Sounds like it is mechanical pulsed compression fusion rather than the 'Holy Grail' of continuous operation magnetic confinement.

Still interesting and potentially something that can be quickly put together.


Way to go?!

Keep searchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Calfornia 192 laser beams focused on a deuterium-tritium pellet and produced a fusion reaction giving 1.3 million joules, about 70% of the energy necessary to the laser beams. This is a major result but we are still far away from any electricity production reaction.
Tullio

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ENI, the Italian state oil firm, has joined forces with Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an MIT spinoff, to build a Tokamak based on superconducting magnets reaching 20 Tesla. It should give its first plasma in 2025, same as ITER. The idea of using high magnetic fields goes back to Alcator, Alto Campo Torus, designed and built by Bruno Coppi at MIT. The technology of super conducting materials has greatly advanced since Alcator was built.
Tullio

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A 350 tons superconducting magnet has been lowered in the ITER pit at Cadarache. I think it is one of the poloidal magnets.
Tullio

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The Joint European Torus at Culham, UK, has produced 59 Megajoules of energy in a 5 second pulse, breaking its own record of 1997. It uses tritium as fuel. It is owned by UK but managed by an European consortium called Eurofusion.
Tullio

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Thanks for that.

And that 5 second pulse is a really big deal-maker:


Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy
wrote:

... The experiments produced 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds (11 megawatts of power). This is more than double what was achieved in similar tests [in that same chamber] back in 1997.

It's not a massive energy output - only enough to boil about 60 kettles' worth of water. But the significance is that it validates design choices that have been made for an even bigger fusion reactor [ITER] now being constructed in France.

"The [UK] JET experiments put us a [big] step closer to fusion power,"...

... "This was high stakes and the fact that we achieved what we did was down to the brilliance of people and their trust in the scientific endeavour,"...

... The Joint European Torus (JET), sited at Culham in Oxfordshire, has been pioneering this fusion approach for nearly 40 years. And for the past 10 years, it has been configured to replicate the anticipated ITER set-up...

... For its record-breaking experiments in 1997, JET had used carbon, but carbon absorbs tritium, which is radioactive. So for the latest tests, new walls for the vessel were constructed out of the metals beryllium and tungsten. These are 10 times less absorbent. The JET science team then had to tune their plasma to work effectively in this new environment.

"This is a stunning result because they managed to demonstrate the greatest amount of energy output from the fusion reactions of any device in history," ... "It's a landmark because they demonstrated stability of the plasma over five seconds. That doesn't sound very long, but on a nuclear timescale, it's a very, very long time indeed. And it's very easy then to go from five seconds to five minutes, or five hours, or even longer."

JET can't actually run any longer because its copper electromagnets get too hot. For ITER, internally cooled superconducting magnets will be used...

... being worked on by the Eurofusion consortium, which comprises some 5,000 science and engineering experts from across the EU, Switzerland and Ukraine...

... JET is likely to be decommissioned after 2023 with ITER beginning plasma experiments in 2025, or soon after.

Fantastic spectacular stuff!

Side note: The carbon lining to tungsten and beryllium conversion was accomplished entirely by some very long snake-like robot hands.

Note also that beryllium is toxic to humans... A dedicated beryllium contaminated area had to be set aside that became a no-go zone to humans.


Here's hoping the totally unrelated current on-going politics do not get to spoil the show!


Keep searchin',
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

ITER runs into another problem.

Regulators have halted assembly of the huge ITER tokamak facility.

This Compact Tokamak Is on the Verge of Commercial Energy Production.

Cheers.

Could scale of size be the problem?

Most fusion experiments take place in giant doughnut-shaped reactors. Physicists want to test a smaller peanut-like one instead.

For decades, if you asked a fusion scientist to picture a fusion reactor, they’d probably tell you about a tokamak. It’s a chamber about the size of a large room, shaped like a hollow doughnut. Physicists fill its insides with a not-so-tasty jam of superheated plasma. Then they surround it with magnets in the hopes of crushing atoms together to create energy, just as the sun does.

But experts think you can make tokamaks in other shapes. Some believe that making tokamaks smaller and leaner could make them better at handling plasma. If the fusion scientists proposing it are right, then it could be a long-awaited upgrade for nuclear energy. Thanks to recent research and a newly proposed reactor project, the field is seriously thinking about generating electricity with a “spherical tokamak.”..

Cheers.