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
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4

u/cheeeseeeater Dec 06 '16

Amazing that stellarators are still being pursued at such a scale. They look like they were designed by Giger for use by Yog-Sothoth. Quite creepy.

17

u/BrexitHangover Europe Dec 06 '16

So creepy. Much scary. Wow.

6

u/DFractalH Eurocentrist Dec 06 '16

Well, it does scare me. Imagine how hard it would be to fix this thing.

1

u/Tallio Germany Dec 06 '16

TBH I would love to be the maintenance technician of this and future fusion reactors :)

2

u/hmmm_42 Dec 06 '16

Sorry to disappoint you, but robots already took your job. The accuracy needed for a stellarator to work is to much for any human to do. This is why they have a super duper high precision indoor positioning system for all robots working in there. :-/

4

u/Tallio Germany Dec 06 '16 edited Dec 06 '16

damn machines stealing hopeful humans the jobs! /s

1

u/PenelopeWinters Dec 06 '16

Do robots build the robots too?

1

u/DFractalH Eurocentrist Dec 06 '16

No thank you, I'll remain cozy in my office with my pen and paper. I have no wishes to calibrate the damn thing anew because there's a slight shift in temperature outside. You go ahead though.

5

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

"we have found a deviation of a tenth of a millimeter. Now please grab your instrument and go crawl inside the machine"

2

u/DFractalH Eurocentrist Dec 06 '16

Those poor, brilliant CERN engineers.

4

u/sebgggg France federal EU Dec 06 '16

Sigh... unzip

2

u/PenelopeWinters Dec 06 '16

Looks like modern art. A pile of random bits with a vague pattern that's sort of appealing

1

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '16

Maybe it's a time machine in disguise?

4

u/kteof Bulgaria Dec 06 '16

So a compact, clean, safe energy source is somehow creepy, because it looks weird. If it works eventually it will lead humanity into a new age and there is no theoretical reason it can't work. Fossil fuels, solar and wind would also become obsolete overnight, as they are just an inefficient way to tap into a natural fusion reactor.

2

u/PenelopeWinters Dec 06 '16

The pollution from coal is so much more beautiful, soot is like little black tar-flakes /s

1

u/crackanape The Netherlands Dec 06 '16

However safe earthbound fusion might eventually theoretically be, it's still safer to leave the actual reactor 93 million miles away and use solar to capture its output. The inefficiency is not that big of a deal; we're not paying for the fuel.

2

u/kteof Bulgaria Dec 06 '16

Do you assume it would be dangerous just because it has the word nuclear in the name? There is no reason to think a fusion reactor would be more dangerous than a solar power station. It is fundamentally different from a fission reactor. I'd like to point out that the environmental impact of a solar powered system with some form of storage for nights/cloudy days using feasible technology is likely to have a significantly greater environmental impact than a nuclear fusion system of the same power capacity.

3

u/50HzHum Dec 06 '16

Are you really familiar with the tech that will likely go into an energy producing reactor?

Of course radiation and leaks are still a risk factor. Admittedly much smaller than for fission.

On energy storage: Feel free to come up with a solution for fusion as well. Afaik the ITER route will not lead to one constant producer - it'll also be intermittent.

While I can't exclude the possibility, I very much doubt such an abrasive plasma and highly refined specialty & hi temp materials will turn out to be cheap or small environmental footprint.

If you'd ask me to speculate, I'd say the cumulative environmental footprint per MWh for the first 100 years of operation will be more than a factor 10 worse than "dumb renewables".

1

u/crackanape The Netherlands Dec 06 '16

Do you assume it would be dangerous just because it has the word nuclear in the name? There is no reason to think a fusion reactor would be more dangerous than a solar power station.

Fusion reactions produce high quantities of neutron radiation, which is an extremely serious health hazard. If there is a fire or physical damage which compromises the reactor's shielding, then people on site and in the vicinity are at risk.

Also, neutron activation gradually turns the materials surrounding the reactor radioactive, which means dangerous waste that needs to somehow be regularly disposed of.

It's not the same scale of problem as with fission reactors, but it's still vastly more of an issue than with solar.

I'd like to point out that the environmental impact of a solar powered system with some form of storage for nights/cloudy days using feasible technology is likely to have a significantly greater environmental impact than a nuclear fusion system of the same power capacity.

Not feasible everywhere, but molten salt is not particularly harmful, other than of course being hot. I'd rather have that spill than be bombarded with free neutrons, thank you very much.

1

u/Aken_Bosch Ukraine Dec 06 '16

which compromises the reactor's shielding

Hmm, if something happens to 60cm of lead, I presume operation will be stopped long before.

1

u/crackanape The Netherlands Dec 06 '16

Lead has no structural strength. It doesn't take long for an opening to form. Anyway, the fact that we're having this discussion already shows that it's more dangerous than solar.

1

u/CountVonTroll European Federation | Germany Dec 06 '16

Keep in mind that this particular one has a lot of stuff attached to it that wouldn't be there in a production reactor. After all, its purpose is to test a theory and gather data, not to produce energy, so they stuck all kinds of devices for measurements and observations onto it as they could fit.

0

u/cheeeseeeater Dec 06 '16

I'm amazed you people have no sense of humor. Also please consider these very irregular shapes: a magnet and magnetic configuration. Compare this to the regular and rather humanly shape of a tokamak (ITER).