How are the scientific community planning on "harvesting" the energy from fusion reactors like Stellerators?
I tried to figure it out myself, but wikipedia just mentions using steam turbines, but how would you transfer the heat into the water? Im guessing that having piping inside would disrupt the perfect magnetic alignment or just simply melt.
There's nothing to harvest. Stellarators eat more energy than they produce.
Connor Walker
You harvest the energy from the impulse energy of the fusion by-products. Most common fuel is Deuterium and Tritium, isotopes of hydrogen, having one and two additional neutrons respectively. They fuse to form Helium which has only 2 neutrons. The surplus neutron receives the energy produced in the fusion reaction and passes it on to warm water surrounding the reactor. After that it's like every other power generation process. good thing you're not a scientist
Benjamin Roberts
>using a thermal power cycle Enjoy your Carnot efficiency limit
The plasma itself is made of electrically charged ions which can be harnessed for direct power conversion that's nearly 100% efficient.
Hunter White
>> carnot efficiency limit The plasma is HOT, carnot efficiency could be rather high
Christian King
If I had to guess id say the water is in that red stuff.
>The plasma itself is made of electrically charged ions which can be harnessed for direct power conversion that's nearly 100% efficient. >What is applied physics? Tell me, how do you harness the ions' energy which are trapped in a vacuum and magnetic field? Only neutrons can transport the energy out of the reactor since they have no charge. the plasma doesn't come into contact with the water, only the excess neutrons. No, the red and orange rings are magnetic coils that keep the plasma inside the reactor and direct its flow.
Most of these ideas are highly conceptual and difficult to realize. Implementing them in current reactor designs is pretty much impossible, they'd require a whole new design of reactors.
Isaac Barnes
Fusion is so new that we can afford to make new designs when we get break even down
Adam Jones
>> minimum demonstrated efficiency of 50% for tech developed in the 70s That is damn fucking good user
James Fisher
Well, I'm no fusion physicist but there's probably a reasons why these concepts aren't applied in today's fusion experiments. never argued it was inefficent.
Lucas Perry
Because we have't even gotten breakeven yet. LPP is trying to do it. Princeton Plasma Physics is investigating using fusion directly for space propulsion. You don't even need break even for that. One gets better performance than ion thrusters because one doesn't need as much power for thrust because of the fusion
Brayden Murphy
This shouldnt be a big issue, just makencirculate water through an inner pipeline circuit, and thath's all, plasma has a very high ir radiation, so the pipeline will get hot, and the water circulating inside aswell
Grayson Phillips
>how would you transfer the heat into the water? the divertor
Brayden Richardson
DEC doesn't work on neutrons, which are the primary output of D-T reaction.
You can work with Protons and Alpha particles if you are doing something like p-B11 but I have yet to be convinced that bremsstrahlung losses will not prevent p-B from ever working.
Robert Johnson
it works perfectly with old ass mirror reactor designs, since you have open magnetic field configuration, same with FRC plasmas. any design with open magnetic geometry allows for expulsion of fusion products along the magnetic field lines leaving the device, which would flow directly into the entrance of the converter
Nicholas Peterson
why are those things blacked out
Parker Bennett
>broadcasting your name and affiliations on Veeky Forums
Daniel James
OP here. How would you warm the water surrounding the reactor though? Its already surrounded by cryogenic systems and it is in a vacuum chamber. Would the water run in a layer surrounding the vacuum container?
Im not a scientist but i know this is wrong.
This is really interresting. I never thought that there would be applications such as direct space prupulsion
But wouldn't you interfere with the magnetic field alignment? What material would you ,make this piping out of?
Liam Ramirez
Actually, yeah. The neutrons hit a big metal plate with water flowing in channels underneath it. The plate heats -> the water heats. Look at the ITER project's info pages for more details.
Adrian Hernandez
Wendelstein will not produce energy. It won't even fuse anything. It's just an experiment in plasma containment. If this succeeds, they'd need to build a larger one or one with stronger magnets to actually fuse things. Only then would they worry about using the energy.
Brody Ramirez
But you posted the paper title, we can find you that way? Are you dumb or something?
Henry Collins
Brainlet question: How does Wendelstein X-7 compare to other fusion efforts like ITER? Its the X-7 the Joint European Torus (JET) of stellerators?
From what I understand, the only difference between the two is that stellerators remove the need for a central magnet. Is the case for stellerators the same as for standard tokamaks, in that it's just a matter of building one large enough in order to get energy back out of it? (i.e. ITER theoretically should get 10 times the energy out as is put in, and studies say that a real fusion power plant will need 30:1)
Xavier Anderson
Tokamaks like ITER can only sustain the fusion reacton in pulses of up to a few seconds while stellarators like the 7X can keep the fusion process going for up to 30 minutes and probably even longer. Stellarators are much more difficult to build though, they require a very high degree of precision. They are also less efficent. But if you build them big enough they too achieve a net energy gain.
Gavin Sullivan
It's not published.
Xavier Cooper
then it's trash. You didn't write it did you? SOAR appears to be an old concept
Dylan Sanchez
On top of having regular magnets, Tokamaks need to induce electricity into the plasma which in turn creates another magnetic field that keeps the plasma contained. This causes problems with instability in the plasma and necessitates a design that has to shut down after a while and restart. Stellerators just use complex, regular magnets with no need for a current in the plasma, which fixes all of those issues. Building a larger one or one with stronger magnets will yield fusion and eventually larger energy gain.
bull fucking shit. tokamaks are just as obsolete concept as "wind tunnels" in cities or meme triangular city grid
Dylan Myers
look basically it comes down to the following difference between Stells and Toks:
The divertors (which are used to absorb critical heatspots which appear in the plasma due to turbulences) from a Tokamak are not symmetrically organized and as such experience high wear on them. they have to be changed frequently which can only be done when the reactor is powered down.
a Stellerator on the other hand stabilizes the plasmacurrents in such a way that the heatspots appear in symmetrical patterns, meaning a even distribution of wear on the divertors meaning longer reactor uptime.
and calculations predict hourlong periods of plasma uptime a feat currently (and imo permanently) unachievable by Tokamaks.
pic related
Luke Reed
Thanks!
Bentley Reyes
man that's really sexy.
Lincoln White
Short answer: Deuterium + Tritium = Helium + Neutron
The magnetic field doesn't affect the neutron, which smashes into the reactor wall and deposits its kinetic energy (about 14 MeV) there as thermal energy. The reactor wall heats up water which goes to a turbine.
Colton Powell
What happens if I stuck my dick in the stellerator while it's running?
Owen Cruz
>What material would you ,make this piping out of?
Tungsten?
Jack Green
Anyways another alternative is to use a parallel plasma circuit and to harvest energy directly with a MHD generator, I believe that at such temperatures MHD system should be way more efficient than conventional vapor cycle.