Submitted by noelcowardspeaksout t3_y1akde in Futurology
oldcreaker t1_irwlo6i wrote
"We're planning to build and put into production something we haven't even discovered how to do yet."
Developing a working prototype might be a better first step.
anschutz_shooter t1_irwoiy2 wrote
> Developing a working prototype might be a better first step.
This is the working prototype. It'll be a research reactor, producing energy onto the grid on a part-time basis.
They've spent enough time with other fusion projects like JET that they reckon they can get a net-positive design running by 2040, and this will be it. They might fail, but that's the theory.
givemoreHavemore t1_irwytij wrote
If by part-time, you mean seconds then yes. The technology has not yet reached a sustainable reaction. This building prototype will be an empty building without first sustaining the reaction.
anschutz_shooter t1_irzx2gr wrote
> The technology has not yet reached a sustainable reaction.
Well no duh, you need the first prototype to move beyond short research shots and develop long-lived plasma. This is the sort of thinking that kills progress. This reactor is a planned successor to ITER and MAST. Scientists have spent decades poking nuclei, ITER is the one which will go net-positive, and and now "this is (one of) the one(s) which will produce power (on a part-time basis)". This is a DEMO-class reactor, with most ITER partners developing their own DEMO facility.
> If by part-time, you mean seconds then yes.
ITER is designed to achieve Q=1 (actually Q>10), with fusion periods of 400-600seconds and ultimate up to 1000s. So multiple minutes.
ITER First Plasma is planned for 2025. The work that has gone into building ITER and MAST Upgrade will inform the design decisions made for this reactor. Research done between now and 2030 will further inform the build process. It's reasonable to expect that after years of work at ITER (and other parallel projects around the world), reactors such as this will not only achieve sustainable fusion, but for many-minutes-to-hours.
givemoreHavemore t1_is1hfut wrote
It is not reasonable to assume that this technology will catch up to be a viable energy source in the timeframe they target for the reactor install. As you noted, they’ve worked decades to achieve seconds. This tech is exciting and I do love the ambition but don’t down vote/ ridicule for being right about the current viability of the tech.
anschutz_shooter t1_is5elyg wrote
> As you noted, they’ve worked decades to achieve seconds.
Minutes now. Last year, EAST ran sustained reactions over a minute, and a long-period plasma pulse over 17minutes.
> It is not reasonable to assume that this technology will catch up to be a viable energy source in the timeframe they target for the reactor install.
The thing to bear in mind is that certain things are a function of size and dimension. We've learnt that a classic torus tokomak needs to be bigger than JET - in fact we reckon it needs to be about the size of ITER. Now we could have just built a big tokomak in the 90s, but we also knew we needed to do lots of research on materials which could withstand neutron bombardment. And methods of extracting heat and waste materials. And a million other things. Even if JET had found Q=1, it was never any good as a power station. We couldn't have started cookie-cuttering JET reactors around the UK. It was very firmly a research reactor.
All of those bits and pieces could be done on smaller, cheaper reactors with second-long pulses. Rigs that are cheaper to build, tear apart, modify and upgrade (as JET has been, multiple times). You don't test a new rocket engine design for the first time by attaching it to a rocket - you put it in an isolated test cell because it probably won't work first time.
We're bringing together those decades of research into a viable reactor. It's now that we're committing to building "the whole rocket" and trying to launch it. We understand the geometries, the materials and the chemistries.
Consider: Nobody had launched a payload to space until they actually did it. Until that day, it was speculative. It was all a lot of work with no proof it would actually work. It was a lot of piddling around in test cells working out why the last engine blew itself to pieces, or working out why it caught fire on the pad. And then Sputnik happened. And it was both scientific and engineering fact.
There will be more unforeseen challenges, and it could undoubtedly have gone quicker if governments were vaguely interested in funding Fusion research properly. But it's not impossible, and at least one of the DEMO reactors is going to work. The level of engineering has risen and the technical risk has fallen. There's a diversity of designs, which improves the odds of finding the sweet spot.
Dermutt100 t1_irwnmb4 wrote
Britain has more "firsts" than any other nation, it sort of invented the modern world.
I'm sure it will be alright.
Chewable_Vitamin t1_irxok68 wrote
First place on earth to put beans on toast
Aceticon t1_irzwumy wrote
Modern Britain is nowhere near at the same level as 19th century Britain when it comes to the Science & Tech of its age.
Nowadays the country specializes in talk, not in doing.
Dermutt100 t1_irzx2l0 wrote
It's nowhere behind anywhere else.
Even in the 2oth century it still provided most of the world's "firsts", the jet engine, first commercial jet airliner, atm, DNA, IVF, the hovercraft, Concorde, VTOL aircraft and the first nuclear power station in the West,
Aceticon t1_is0154d wrote
Absolutely, the run lasted until the mid XXth century.
(Although some of the stuff you list as "great firsts" didn't turn out quite as amazing as all that or was much better done elsewhere)
After that, not so much. I can only think of graphene, a discovery rather than an actual implementation (and which, by the way, has yet to produce actual practical results anywhere close to matching the grandiose announcement of how groundbreaking a discovery it was).
For a country of 60 million people with all the wealth and institutions it still has left of from the age of Empire, Britain has been punching below its weight since maybe the late 70s or early 80s.
As I said, modern Britain isn't a country of doers, it's a country of talkers (a subsection of whom seems specialized in relentelessly celebrating past glories) or at least a country that rewards tall stories and swindling your fellow man far beyond merit in execution and the direction of travel seems to remain a worsenning of things in that regard.
It's thus not surprising to see a story like this selling this Great British Achievement (tm) which turns out to be a plan to start work on planning it and is clearly a play for getting more funding.
Samsbase t1_irwowem wrote
This will be a follow on from ITER no doubt which is the first prototype at scale.
Henri t1_irwql01 wrote
ITER is another experiment, so no grid connection. What you're thinking of is DEMO.
smopecakes t1_iryzexm wrote
The private spherical tokamak company in the UK has become the second privately funded company to reach 100 million degrees in their test reactor, they recently worked out a five year co-op plan with the STEP group
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