anschutz_shooter t1_irwoiy2 wrote on October 11, 2022 at 4:32 PM

Reply to comment by oldcreaker in UK to build first grid connected Fusion Power plant by noelcowardspeaksout

> 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 on October 11, 2022 at 5:38 PM

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 on October 12, 2022 at 8:19 AM

> 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 on October 12, 2022 at 4:48 PM

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 on October 13, 2022 at 1:02 PM

> 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.