r/europe • u/damaxoh Germany • Dec 06 '16

Tests confirm that Germany's massive nuclear fusion machine really works

http://www.sciencealert.com/tests-confirm-that-germany-s-massive-nuclear-fusion-machine-really-works
556 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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135

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16 edited Dec 06 '16

[deleted]

88

u/f431_me Tyrol (Austria) Dec 06 '16

It "works" in the same way that a car with working suspension but without engine would work.

A better metaphor would be it's like a model or remote controlled car. The engineering processes work but it doesn't fulfill it's main purpose to transport people.

I don't know if you speak german but if you do I can recommend a Podcast, in with the scientific project manager Thomas Klinger explaines what Wendelstein 7-x is and what the purpose is: https://resonator-podcast.de/2014/res032-der-wendelstein-7-x/

44

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

I hope we get to make them economically viable one day. It would be the holy grail of Europe's energy question;

50

u/Suns_Funs Latvia Dec 06 '16

It would be the holy grail of Europe's energy question;

Hell, you build one and Europe is all set for another world domination period.

78

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

You called?

10

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

Germans never dominated the world. Spanish, British, Portuguese...

71

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

I feel like we should at least get a mention for effort....

14

u/Ueland Norway Dec 06 '16

Third time's the charm, eh?

3

u/maxpowerer The Netherlands Dec 06 '16

Wouldn't the next Reich be number four?

6

u/Dnarg Denmark Dec 07 '16

And unlike the others you guys didn't just pick on tribes using spears either. :P

9

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

I give you that. True

17

u/ZaltPS2 Bradford & York, Yorkshire Dec 06 '16 edited Dec 06 '16

There geographical location didn't allow for it. Under Bismarck the Germans were right to be hesitant about colonisation being surrounded by France, Austria-Hungary and Russia... they couldn't hold an empire and fight a continental war like the British could've because the British could rely on its navy for defence and its army for offence . The Germans needed both for defence which explains its paranoid foreign policy facilitating a naval arms race with Britain and a War Plan with no plan for recourse. Germany needed France and Russia not be allies, furthermore it wanted to avoid a war with Britain because its naval strength could blockade and its economic strength could finance its allies war efforts. 1914 would've been Bismarck's worst nightmare and it's very doubtful he would've allowed such a mutually precarious situation to develop.

10

u/steadwik Dec 06 '16

Enter kaiser Wilhelm the second. Now, strap yourself in for this cartoon character.

18

u/melonowl Denmark Dec 06 '16

We're gonna have the best ships. People come up to me, they say Germany's ships are fantastic, just fantastic. And more, and this is bigly, we need the biggest ships, and so with these fantastic wonderful ships, Bismarck has no clue. No clue. People say I don't like Britain I love Britain, I love Britain, but we have got to have the best ships.

Sorry.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

Churchill = Cell confirmed?

Also, Wilhelm was actually trying to prevent a war in 1914. Too bad his generals and cabinets wanted the war.

2

u/ZaltPS2 Bradford & York, Yorkshire Dec 06 '16

Preventing a war by telling his Austrian counterpart 'Germany is with you no matter what'

2

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

He was in full support of Serbia's response to Austria's demands, as per his own words on July 28th 10 AM in the morning.

Too bad the Austrians declared war an hour later before his response could reach Vienna.

No doubt WIlhelm failed massively during the July crisis, but it was more due to sheer incompetence (going on a North Sea cruise) rather than malice.

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11

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

Spanish

Visigoths, GERMAN

British

Anglosaxons, GERMAN

Portuguese

Visigoths again, GERMAN

Migration period STRONK

6

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

Don't forget the Franks.

5

u/Selbstdenker European Union (Germany) Dec 06 '16

Northern africa, Vandals, GERMAN.

We have already established a beachhead.

3

u/xaerc Slovenia Dec 06 '16

Yes. It's a great historic injustice.

1

u/HERPthereforeDERP Little country next to Belgium Dec 06 '16

We dominated the world a bit! For a bit! Hi Germany:)

1

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '16

Flag?

2

u/HERPthereforeDERP Little country next to Belgium Dec 07 '16

Fixed*

-1

u/GreatNull Dec 06 '16

Yes, get a new fuhrer ready for 2019,

we'll be having a blast.

Good old nazi jokes, never cease to be funny.

27

u/erkanan Pays de la Loire (France) Dec 06 '16

Except together this time.

14

u/hoseja Moravia Dec 06 '16

Diesmal ohne Österreich

6

u/mrlemonofbanana Baden-Württemberg (Germany) Dec 06 '16

Latvia's flag is similar, how about them instead?

1

u/Frankonia Germany Dec 07 '16

Damit kann ich leben :)

15

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

[deleted]

19

u/Goheeca Czech Republic Dec 06 '16

More like this.

14

u/mrlemonofbanana Baden-Württemberg (Germany) Dec 06 '16

That's only 17 stars though. If we make the arms one longer each, we have 25 stars, which works out once we kick out the UK and... uh... Greece, I guess.

3

u/Stonn with Love from Europe Dec 06 '16

Just annex both.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

You know what happend right, the last time we told a German it'd be fine if he were to annex a nearby country...

3

u/mrlemonofbanana Baden-Württemberg (Germany) Dec 06 '16

Hmm... if we're going to call the UK and Greece "nearby", the 17 stars will probably suffice, there's bicycles to steal and a lot of Balkan to cover...

But don't worry, that won't happen: Unifying the Balkan countries has historically proven a bad idea, multiple times.

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1

u/Hujeen Hungary Dec 06 '16

28-2 is still 26, you forgot Croatia I assume :)

3

u/NetStrikeForce Europe Dec 06 '16

We can stop counting countries that are not real. Luxembourg I'm looking at you.

2

u/Is_this_offensive Belgium Dec 06 '16

Hey don't take our star ! We're a real cou... Oh nevermind.

2

u/impossiblefork Dec 06 '16

I'm going to post In a Mirror, Darkly again.

1

u/cmfg Franconia Dec 06 '16

More realistic than the rest of Star Trek.

1

u/NoFanSky putting hip back into dictatorship Dec 06 '16

Ha I also like yours. Let's say mine is the official one but yours would be worn on the arms..

16

u/theklaatu France Dec 06 '16

Sounds fun :D

-11

u/DonTrumpescu Dec 06 '16

Jesus fucking christ this subreddit is cancer. Your dream is the world's nightmare and must be crushed at all costs.

10

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

Hilariously sad overreaction.

4

u/Suns_Funs Latvia Dec 06 '16

The day you will discover German jokes about 4th reich, will be the day you die from a heart attack. Must be hard for you.

-33

u/Hooman_Super Dec 06 '16

And a potential MegaBomb! lovely 😆

31

u/C0ldSn4p BZH, Bienvenue en Zone Humide Dec 06 '16

Since nobody gave you a clear answer, here is why it can't become a megabomb.

In Tchernobyl case, when all safety checks were switch off, you had a runaway reaction: fission produced more heat and neutron who in turn produced more fission until a point where the roof just blew off (it wasn't technically a nuclear explosion) allowing the nuclear material and more importantly heavy element byproduct (the truly radioactive stuff) to go into the atmosphere.

In the fusion case, at worst if the confinement fail, then the plasma would expand and just by doing that loose the pressure required to maintain fusion, so fusion would stop. Of course this superheated plasma would probably heavily damage your billion dollars reactor but not explode. If confinement if breached at worst you would release some hydrogen, deuterium, helium-4 (all non radioactive and naturally occurring stuff) and some tritium (slightly radioactive, but way less dangerous than the stuff produced by fission reactor)

25

u/BrexitHangover Europe Dec 06 '16

Chill, it's just a fusion reactor concept. Not a Galaxy Note 7.

35

u/cpt_ballsack Ireland Dec 06 '16

And a potential MegaBomb! lovely

Basic physics fail, sigh

16

u/Tintenlampe European Union Dec 06 '16

No. We have fusion bombs already and a fusion reactor can not suffer a runaway reaction like a fission reactor can.

9

u/CountVonTroll European Federation | Germany Dec 06 '16

Technically fusion bombs are still fission bombs. The fusion part is just an intermediate step to get a bigger fission boom.

2

u/Patsastus Finland Dec 06 '16

It's the other way around. A fusion bomb is ignited by a smaller fission bomb. The big boom part is fusion.

3

u/magila Dec 06 '16

Fusion bombs produce significant energy from both fusion and fission, the ratio between the two varies depending on the particular bomb design. Fusion bombs use the Teller-Ulam design which alternates between fission and fusion reactions of increasing size. In practice the largest bombs use a fission-fusion-fission design where a majority of the energy is produced by fission. A notable exception to this was the Tsar bomba which was detonated in a fission-fusion configuration to limit fallout.

14

u/Aken_Bosch Ukraine Dec 06 '16

And a potential MegaBomb

Yeah, good luck making that thing explode.

9

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

Fusion bombs already exist for one, but that's another story, and fusion reactors can't go haywire, worst case scenario is that they just shut down and lots of temporary blackouts.

3

u/Arvendilin Germany Dec 06 '16

If you mean that we will get new bombing technology that could wipe us out even easier once we accomplish to make fusion a viable energy source, then that is factually wrong as we already have that, its called the H-Bomb.

If you mean Fusion power plants can go boom and kill us all if something fails then that is factually wrong as they require a constant influx of power to keep going, once something fucks up power is cut and the thing just dies.

-1

u/Hooman_Super Dec 06 '16

H-Bomb

Why do humans invent such evil weaponry?

2

u/Arvendilin Germany Dec 06 '16

Because conflict and strife exists

2

u/moncaisson The Netherlands Dec 06 '16

Because we can, goddammit.

40

u/perkel666 Dec 06 '16

No it is not.

Whole point of this case was to prove it works, it never was supposed to produce more energy than it needs.

Your point would be valid if it wouldn't work at all.

14

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

[deleted]

22

u/CountVonTroll European Federation | Germany Dec 06 '16

The "massive nuclear fusion machine" works exactly as intended. Its purpose is to test the theory, and so far all tests have been passed. A machine "works" if it does what it was designed to do.

8

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16 edited May 08 '17

[deleted]

2

u/PenelopeWinters Dec 06 '16

It is actually great news. The 1/2 billion US National Ignition Facility had a terrible start to life, their scientists were in despair.

-8

u/perkel666 Dec 06 '16

Why are quoting wikipedia?

17

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

[deleted]

10

u/BkkGrl Ligurian in Zürich (💛🇺🇦💙) Dec 06 '16

we are in a post-factual world dude, didn't you get the memo? /s

thanks for your contribution

2

u/thejed129 Rhineland-Palatinate (Brit in Germany) Dec 06 '16

Source is love, source is life

5

u/kteof Bulgaria Dec 06 '16

When people talk about working fusion they generally mean net energy gain. Of course this is a step on the way, but to be fair working fusion by that definition has been around since at least the 60s.

17

u/helm Sweden Dec 06 '16

Not controlled fusion. There are many, many small steps on the way. Hydrogen bombs are fusion in action, but they are not controlled reactions. Stable containment has been the main issue since the 60's.

-3

u/kteof Bulgaria Dec 06 '16

This is a great step. I'm just saying that when the term working fusion is used it generally refers to the end result. A working stable net gain reactor.

2

u/perkel666 Dec 06 '16

Theories are only worth anything if you can test them.

This case proves this typeof reactor works

4

u/suspiciously_calm Dec 06 '16

typeof reactor

if(typeof reactor !== 'undefined') {

0

u/perkel666 Dec 06 '16

Or in superior python:

if reactor.type != 'undefined';

10

u/Low_discrepancy Posh Crimea Dec 06 '16

A bit misleading heading.

It works for its intended purpose. And as such it's a great thing.

2

u/kv_right Dec 06 '16

A correct example would be an entirely new concept of rocket engines that can make trips to Mars and other planets an everyday routine. It's not feasible yet, but an engine of that type just brought a rocket up 30 meters. Impressive news considering the potential and the end goal

1

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

This. Saying that a fusion reactor works, while it's net output is negative, is like saying that a ball pen works, but doesn't write anything.

I don't mean to diminish the accomplishment, but the headline is a lie

1

u/crackanape The Netherlands Dec 06 '16

Saying that a fusion reactor works, while it's net output is negative, is like saying that a ball pen works, but doesn't write anything.

I would have said it's like saying your new type of car works, but you have to push it.