Fusion Power

[Stewy]

(12-13-2022, 10:57 AM)GMDino Wrote: I just watched a video on this last night.  I wouldn't even begin to say I understand any of it, but my question is about the containment part. I assume that that part is safe also.

But it's a fascinating leap!

My understanding based upon following this is that , unlike fission where lack of containment means meltdown, when a Fusion reaction breaks down that means it's lost it's magnetic fields that contain the reaction, and when the fields drop, the reaction stops.

The magnetic fields support and contain the reaction within the ball of plasma.  The magnetic fields create the "container", thus the more efficient the magnetic fields, the more efficient the reaction.  A LOT of progress has been made on magnetic fields over the last 5 years (magnets are getting smaller, stronger, more efficient, cheaper).  You hear tell of the plasma being heated to more than 10x the surface of the sun, and I believe the reason for that being needed is because we can't simulate the pressures in the core of the Sun, so we use elevated pressure for Fusion instead.

Finally, the comment above was made about the reaction ONLY generating enough heat to boil 10 kettles of water.  It takes ALOT of energy to boil 10 kettles of water and it was energy generated in only 5 seconds, which was the length of the reaction.

So moving forward they will be working on scaling up the process, efficiency and most importantly SUSTAINABILITY.