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Re:Livestream of Wendelstein 7-X Stellerator being turned on by mabbo on Wednesday February 03, 2016 @09:56AM (#11026727)
The tl;dr of this is that if the Wendelstein works, and works well, we're potentially only a few years away from building a fusion reactor that generates large amounts of clean power at extremely low cost.

If it doesn't work, well, they'll keep trying.

It's like when SpaceX landed that rocket over the ocean (without a barge) then let it crash- if they succeed, the cool stuff comes next.

Re:Livestream of Wendelstein 7-X Stellerator being turned on by petra on Wednesday February 03, 2016 @10:22AM (#11026882)
Between this, and moltex , which claims to have designed an intrinsically safe molten-salt nuclear reactor same capital costs of coal, hence cheaper than coal , the future of clean energy look bright.
Re:Livestream of Wendelstein 7-X Stellerator being turned on by mng2 on Wednesday February 03, 2016 @01:39PM (#11028543)
>we're potentially only a few years away

The press loves to hype this sort of thing but I think if you talk to most scientists in the field they'll be much more circumspect about getting to commercial fusion. Personally I think it's at least twenty years out, and that's if everything goes well, which it will not.

Re:Livestream of Wendelstein 7-X Stellerator being turned on by celticninja on Wednesday February 03, 2016 @10:03AM (#11026773)
im not sure they let it crash, i think that bit was an accident.
Re:Livestream of Wendelstein 7-X Stellerator being turned on by maxerickson on Wednesday February 03, 2016 @10:22AM (#11026879)
They didn't stick a barge under it for the early tests:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_booster_landing_tests...

Re:Livestream of Wendelstein 7-X Stellerator being turned on by maaku on Wednesday February 03, 2016 @10:23AM (#11026887)
Different event.