Re:A Primer to Nuclear Fusion and First Light Fusion
by xupybd on Saturday October 15, 2022 @09:05PM
(#33220178)
So we might have to go much bigger than ITER?
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Re:A Primer to Nuclear Fusion and First Light Fusion
by XorNot on Saturday October 15, 2022 @09:26PM
(#33220283)
Yes. The ITER successor is DEMO which is larger and meant to be the production power plant design. The idea is ITER proves out the plasma control physics and scaling laws for fusion, so you can then build DEMO, get the predicted results and say "right, this is how a fusion plant looks". ITER will do Q=10 if we're right anyway, but the scaling laws are all volume based: the real trouble with fusion is that building gigantic vacuum vessels is very hard to do, but we're at the limits of magnets (unless MIT can get HTCs working, but even then, you still benefit from volume).
[1] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/175830/nuclear-f...
Re:A Primer to Nuclear Fusion and First Light Fusion
by DennisP on Sunday October 16, 2022 @04:05PM
(#33226759)
Tokamaks scale with the square of plasma volume but the fourth power of magnetic field strength. The REBCO used by CFS should let them get ITER-level output from a reactor a tenth as large.