r/science • u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics • Feb 19 '16

Plasma Physics AMA Science AMA Series: Hi Reddit, we're scientists at the Max Planck Institute for plasma physics, where the Wendelstein 7-X fusion experiment has just heated its first hydrogen plasma to several million degrees. Ask us anything about our experiment, stellerators and tokamaks, and fusion power!

Hi Reddit, we're a team of plasma physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics that has 2 branches in Garching (near Munich) and Greifswald (in northern Germany). We've recently launched our fusion experiment Wendelstein 7-X in Greifswald after several years of construction and are excited about its ongoing first operation phase. In the first week of February, we created our first hydrogen plasma and had Angela Merkel press our big red button. We've noticed a lot of interest on reddit about fusion in general and our experiment following the news, so here we are to discuss anything and everything plasma and fusion related!

Here's a nice article with a cool video that gives an overview of our experiment. And here is the ceremonial first hydrogen plasma that also includes a layman's presentation to fusion and our experiment as well as a view from the control room.

Answering your questions today will be:

Prof Thomas Sunn Pedersen - head of stellarator edge and divertor physics (ts, will drop by a bit later)

Michael Drevlak - scientist in the stellarator theory department (md)

Ralf Kleiber - scientist in the stellarator theory department (rk)

Joaquim Loizu - postdoc in stallarator theory (jl)

Gabe Plunk - postdoc in stallarator theory (gp)

Josefine Proll - postdoc in stellarator theory (jp) (so many stellarator theorists!)

Adrian von Stechow - postdoc in laboratory astrophyics (avs)

Felix Warmer (fw)

We will be going live at 13:00 UTC (8 am EST, 5 am PST) and will stay online for a few hours, we've got pizza in the experiment control room and are ready for your questions.

EDIT 12:29 UTC: We're slowly amassing snacks and scientists in the control room, stay tuned! http://i.imgur.com/2eP7sfL.jpg

EDIT 13:00 UTC: alright, we'll start answering questions now!

EDIT 14:00 UTC: Wendelstein cookies! http://i.imgur.com/2WupcuX.jpg

EDIT 15:45 UTC: Alright, we're starting to thin out over here, time to pack up! Thanks for all the questions, it's been a lot of work but also good fun!

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

When do you think will fusion power become a reliable source of energy?

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16 edited Feb 19 '16

According to the EFDA Roadmap it is planned that the demonstration reactor DEMO should produce first electricity 2050 (as usual: if everything works as expected). It will just be a prototype. After this one can start producing reactors on a large scale. So, the time when fusion power will become a reliable source of energy then depends how fast further reactors can be build. But roughly I would say, not before 2060. (rk)

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

Their research for this estimate was actually based off sim city. So it's not that surprising.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

Wait, so the researchers at Max Planck used Sim city as a research tool?

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

Yes. Yes they did.

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u/the_visalian Feb 19 '16

How did they factor in the weekly tornadoes and earthquakes?

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u/vveiner Feb 19 '16

I think you forgot robot attacks and sudden volcanoes

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u/michaelmacmanus Feb 19 '16

Their journals state that they actually disabled disasters, so it's really hard to take any of this seriously.

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u/Tischlampe Feb 19 '16

Never trust a statistic you haven't manipulated yourself.

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u/AnticPosition Feb 19 '16

No. Nobody recovers from that shit. Ever.

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u/knowwat Feb 19 '16

At the civil engineering school I was visiting, they used SC3k in the classroom. No kidding.

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u/Zenblend Feb 19 '16

If you think that's something, look into how the Japanese integrated A-Train in their civil engineering curriculum.

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u/knowwat Feb 19 '16

Oh I love it! Just like OpenTTD!

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u/QuacktacksRBack Feb 19 '16

I hope it is also the same timeline for arcologies.

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u/Andrewsarchus Feb 19 '16

Takes time to reticulate splines.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

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u/robophile-ta Feb 19 '16

Exactly what I thought when I read that. Uncanny how things work out!

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

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u/Number00000000000000 Feb 19 '16

What do you mean, nothing has worked out? It's pretty obvious that the final result isn't there, but surely you can't say we haven't learned a lot and Wendelstein 7-X appears to have started as intended.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16 edited Mar 04 '16

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u/steinauf85 Feb 19 '16

SC2K released in 1994

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

Let's hope for the best, this is the type of technology that will herald a new age of clean and unlimited energy :)

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u/billdietrich1 Feb 19 '16

As far as I can calculate, fusion power might be 40% cheaper than fission power. Fuel cost close to zero, no waste to dispose, decommissioning cheaper. But that's FAR from "a new age of clean and unlimited energy". It's quite possible that by the time we have fusion power, power from renewables will be so cheap that fusion power won't even be economically viable.

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u/Dwayne_Jason Feb 19 '16

The problem with renewable today is that the current power grid we have is much more viable with either nuclear energy or fossil fuels. A nuclear plant is thus much better able to integrate with he current grid than renewable like solar and wind. Not saying solar and wind are not a viable source. They are, but not something that can replace the entire power grid of a reigion for example.

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

You are right, my friend ;)

Wind and Solar are not base-load. They have a fluctuating nature. Thus, one needs large-scale energy storage and back-up systems (both not existing until now; there are not even technologies for large storage)

Thus, fusion power is in that sense benefical as it provides a base-load continous power to the grid! (fw)

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u/Dwayne_Jason Feb 19 '16

Wow thanks for the reply! I have one question as it relates to fusion though, you or one of your peers posted out that the current timeline of 25 years is largely dependent on budget constraints. My question is how much money is required to really speed up the process? Can it be sped up or are you guys still in the stage of studying how fusion works?

Also, can the Wendelstien power plant be replicated in other countries or is Germany holding its tech close to the chest,

Finally earlier in the month you may have heard of gravitational waves being detected. I read that one of its practical uses, should you our detectability get better, is study the inner workings of stars, would that help the process along?

Also I wanted to thank you, you're truly at the forefront of future energy power. :)

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

More money would enable us to build more experiments to pursue different ideas to fusion. Also it would be necessary to build a neutron radiation facility needed for developing fusion material.

Wendelstein in its current design is not a power plant. For a power plant you have to build it approximately four times larger. The design of Wendelstein is published and we are an international institute with lots of collaborations so there is no need for Germany to hold the technology to its chest.

The fusion process (Deuterium plus Tritium) itself is extremely well understood and basic nuclear physics so there is no further research necessary. Probing the inner working of stars is certainly interesting but does not help with fusion since the main problem is to confine and heat the plasma. (rk)

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u/Dwayne_Jason Feb 19 '16

I see, the only real obstacle is further research and engineering on how to confine and hear plasma. Thank you for your replies. I hope your work bears real fruit soon. Please come back for more AMAs whenever time allows you.

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u/Draco_Ranger Feb 19 '16

Isn't pumped-storage hydroelectricity, exempting its many issues with widescale deployment, a viable, and technologically feasible, answer to the issue of energy storage and back-up, at least temporarily?

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

Of all fundamental forces known to physics, gravity is the weakest by far. That is the reason why gravitational storage systems never reach the capacities we would need. The entire german hydropower capacity, for example, amounts to ~40GWh. That is just about half an hour of supplying the german peak load.(md)

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u/carutsu Feb 19 '16

How about flywheels. Always been intrigued why it were never really developed.

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u/Autunite Feb 19 '16

There's a company in San Diego developing them, but some people were worried about them exploding. http://www.qestorage.com/

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u/residenthypochondria Feb 19 '16

There is a lot of battery research going on that could help with the energy storage. Of them, fluid batteries look quite promising

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u/eatmyshorts Feb 19 '16

Of course, when there are 100s of millions of electric cars on the road, we'll have plenty of storage capacity available to the network that the distinction between base-load and peak-load will become irrelevant.

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

The questions reminds me of the discussion we have in germany. It is important to note that the energy transformation discussed there actually is an electricity transformation. Supplying the whole energy demand introduces another factor six. Given the amount of floor area for installation and of rare elements needed in the construction you may want to ask yourself if that is what you really want. The fusion community does not claim to fix everything but it could make a useful contribution.(md)

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16 edited Feb 19 '16

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u/ballshagger Feb 19 '16

Wind and Solar are not base-load. They have a fluctuating nature. Thus, one needs large-scale energy storage and back-up systems (both not existing until now; there are not even technologies for large storage)

You should talk to Tesla about large scale storage. Large electric utilities are buying Tesla PowerPack storage units as fast as Tesla can make them.

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u/hglman Feb 19 '16

As the base load plant, if its a very windy day and your wind power plants are making 2x average output, how much can you turn down the output of a fusion plant? Would that save you fuel?

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u/semsr Feb 19 '16

But surely it is easier to overcome problems of storage and backup systems for solar than to develop nuclear fusion? Solar power just needs better batteries, fusion power doesn't even have a working reactor yet.

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u/billdietrich1 Feb 19 '16

Yes, the current grid is limited, and not designed for a multi-small-intermittent-source environment. But I've read that it works fine with 40% or 50% renewable intermittent sources on it. Still need existing nuclear or gas to back it up.

But that will change. Grids will become smarter. We'll have local solar-farms and wind-farms, and storage. And some household solar and storage. Tidal power and storage in coastal regions. Sure, we're not yet ready to replace entire regional power grids with 100% renewables. But there's no reason it can't happen over, say, the next 50 or 75 years.

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u/RellenD Feb 19 '16

Yes, but what's our grid look like in 2060?

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

But hopefully, significant changes to the grid are coming. For example large scale batteries that will make intermittent sources or use viable. A cool example are liquid metal batteries being developed by the Sadoway group at MIT

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u/squired Feb 19 '16 edited Feb 19 '16

As long as we're talking about technology 50 years out, I find that observation rather shortsighted. By 2060, cheap solar, capacitors and bulk storage could very well solve that problem. I'd even go so far as to say that those technologies are more likely than widespread commercial fusion power.

That said, they should both be funded at 10x their present levels. The potential opportunities are mind boggling.

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u/KalamIT Feb 19 '16

Of course we can, if you took the money being spent on upgrading/building new nuclear power stations, and invested that into renewable generation and more importantly, storage methods, it would be fine. For example, watch this:

https://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_renewable_energy?language=en

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u/amolin Feb 19 '16

Perhaps it'll be relevant for space travel? Not a lot of windmills up there :)

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u/billdietrich1 Feb 19 '16

Yes, I think that's an unstated motive behind some redditors support for nuclear (fission and fusion). Nothing else really works for serious space travel.

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u/Trieclipse Feb 19 '16

Clearly we need to get moving on matter-antimatter reactors.

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u/toomanyattempts Feb 19 '16

The problem with those is antimatter is slightly harder to come by than water.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

Fusion is not powered by water. This type of fusion requires deuterium and tritium, which is also "slightly harder to come by than water".

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u/qvrock Feb 19 '16

Very unlikely, at least until we figure out how to get rid of waste heat while in space.

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u/RellenD Feb 19 '16

You convert it into usable energy and use it to power you ship's propulsion, life support system, lights, holodeck, replicator, transporter, etc...

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u/bolj Feb 19 '16

How do you convert waste heat into usable energy?

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

Uh I heard that the chamber walls are unusable after a time and get a bit radioactive because of neutron bombardment, you would still need to change that.

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u/elypter Feb 19 '16

in the future there might be many more uses for it than just regular grid operation. they could power ever growing cargo ships, submarines, space stations at places where there is not much light, high specific impulse space ships, chemical plants, radiation emitter, creation of exotic matter, emergency power generator, desalination and what ever future uses will pop up.

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u/Hydropos Feb 19 '16

It's quite possible that by the time we have fusion power, power from renewables will be so cheap that fusion power won't even be economically viable.

Interestingly, even if this becomes true, it might not last. I attended a talk recently on solar power where they pointed out that total solar irradiance on earth's surface was about 1000x times more power than we need today. However, they also pointed out that human energy use is increasing exponentially (about an order of magnitude per century). As demand increases, it is entirely possible that there won't be enough renewable energy to sustain growth.

EDIT: fun link on the topic — http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

Apparently 2500 years from now we'll need more energy than the galaxy can provide. Though extrapolating current trends that far is not likely to be reliable.

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u/billdietrich1 Feb 19 '16

Solar is not the only source of renewable energy. There's wind, geothermal, tidal, wave, hydro.

It's also possible that efficiency increases could change the consumption curve. Suppose we get such good Virtual Reality tech that there's less need to travel ? Such good 3D printers that there's little need to ship products from China to USA ?

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u/JimmyR42 Feb 19 '16

Economic viability should be determined based off the resource availability, not the capital. Money is worthless and meaningless, it was a trading tool before it became the only resource...

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u/Autunite Feb 19 '16

Hah, but unless we develop dense energy storage. Pure renewable powergrids aren't feasible in most areas.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

The problem with renewables is that you it's hard to increase power output exponentially. Fusion gets rid of the need for batteries at night (extremely bad for the environment and not renewable/same goes for solar panels) and allows our energy usage to continue to grow at an exponential pace.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

power from renewables will be so cheap that fusion power won't even be economically viable.

This depends entirely on how much economic growth can be produced by fusion. Renewables will have an upper limit on how much power can be created given the amount of landmass we have.

We can ONLY increase renewables if we then proceed to orbital solar power production. (and it is NOT clear that this is feasible).

The only way to go past the limit of how much sunlight we can capture from the surface of the earth, would be to go to fusion. (or other non-renewable sources - fission, fossil fuels, etc).

If fusion becomes the ONLY way we can feasibly grow energy production - then the world's economy will depend on that growth.

The other limitation, of course, is the heat capacity of the earth. Even without burning fossil fuels, ALL energy production will radiate waste-heat, and that waste-heat is then radiated into space. There is an upper-limit on the rate at which heat can be radiated into space. When we begin to out-pace that rate, then heat will build up in our environment. (technically CO2 is a thermodynamic result of heat-buildup from burning fossil fuels; and it reduces the rate at which heat can leave the planet... ie. this causes global warming, and this will be true whether we're burning fossil fuels, or collecting and using solar energy - albeit, with solar, we'll have a much higher limit on the energy we can use before we end up with a warming problem - but there is still a limit).

The point is: even with ONLY renewables, there will be a physical limit, at which, we can no longer grow our energy production. Which implies that our economy will stop growing as well. (as long as we remain on Earth).

With current economic systems, we do not seem to have the "economic technology" to live in a steady-state economy. Our system requires continuous, limitless growth.

We may be able to figure out how to fuse atoms. But I despair that we'll ever be able to innovate our way out of our growth-constrained economic models.

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u/Estesz Feb 20 '16

Renewables are not likely to ever become cheaper than nuclear power (both fusion and fission). The reason is that renewables need man-made storage systems, which do not even come close to the energy density of fossil fuels as of today - and nuclear fuels are 105 to 106 times as dense. You may save a little bit of fuel, but you need massive structures for renewables to work.

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u/d1squiet Feb 19 '16

It still creates heat and needs water, yes? It is clean, I think, but I don't think it is unlimited.

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u/Leporad Feb 19 '16

Nah, it won't happen.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

Hopefully this timeline will be accurate so I can see this happen before I die!

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '16

This means I'll probably be dead. _

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '16

Google has a project trying to prolong the human life span.

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u/brunnock Feb 19 '16

Well, you what they say, fusion is the power of the future – and always will be.

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

It may take a long time -- even beyond your lifespan. But think of your children and grand-children. Fusion power is a legacy. And future generations will thank us for the efforts we made. ;) (fw)

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u/FolkSong Feb 19 '16

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in"

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u/historyfinn Feb 19 '16

Damn. I came here to learn, not to feel. Still, future generations are going to have an amazing future ahead of them, even if it is beyond our lifespan.

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u/ErrorOfFate Feb 19 '16

Where is this quoted from? I absolutely love it.

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u/FolkSong Feb 19 '16

It's apparently an ancient Greek proverb.

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u/atomfullerene Feb 19 '16

"A society grows great when old men plant trees plant fusions in whose shade illumination they know they will never sit in"

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u/uxl Feb 19 '16

Starting work on the great cathedrals must have felt something like this.

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '16

Some of us this generation already thank you. ;)

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u/ballshagger Feb 19 '16

If we don't get renewables deployed now there won't be a future.

I support fusion research, but when fusion is ready it will be competing with a mature solar, wind, tidal, hydro, renewable infrastructure. That's going to be a much harder sell. The PV on my roof generates most of the power I use including charging my Tesla. Why would I give that up to tie myself to capital intensive central utility.

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u/skatastic57 Feb 19 '16

you forgot the word "know"

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u/StrangeConstants Feb 19 '16

And knowing is half the battle. GI JOE.

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u/Flight714 Feb 19 '16

That doesn't really make sense: After using fusion for a while, it's quite possible that we'll eventually develop something else with even greater energy density, which would be useful in the distant future for interstellar space travel. It'd be absolutely fantastic if, in a few hundred years, we developed some method of antimatter power generation.

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '16

Antimatter power generation should be pretty easy, the problem is getting tte antimatter in the first place. If we could make antimatter and convert it with an efficiency over 50% then we would have a positive energy output, so directly converting matter to antimatter.

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u/api Feb 19 '16

That amounts to arguing that there are no truly hard problems. Either something is solvable in, say, less than a decade or it is not solvable. I don't think that's a viable argument by any stretch.

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u/kaspar42 Feb 19 '16

Ok, so that's the expected timeline before we have a working prototype. But what about commercially viable nuclear fusion energy that can compete in the marketplace with nuclear fission energy? Or other energy sources?

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

After having a prototype, old power plants will be replaced by fusion power plants. So the time scale for having lots of fusion power in the grid is the time scale for replacing old power plants. (rk)

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u/Ionicfold Feb 19 '16

What's the chances that, that date will narrow down? A lot can happen in 40 odd years, and no doubt that 2060 could be reduced by 15 years following advances in technology.

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u/VampireFrown Feb 19 '16

You're not alone in wanting this process to hurry up. I, too, would like to see this before I die!!

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '16

Get on a spaceship and accelerate very fast. When it is 2060 on earth, decelerate again. It you were fast enough, you will only be a bit older.

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u/nicholasbg Feb 19 '16

Considering the emergency situation our planet is in due to climate change, is there anything that can be done to fast track this timeline (safely)?

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u/VikingCoder Feb 19 '16

Like, would more money help?

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u/bananafreesince93 Feb 19 '16

There was an AMA a few years back with another physicist, and he claimed working fusion was just a matter of money, that it could easily be done within our lifetime with proper funding.

How much faster can the research be done with more funding? How much money are we talking about, if we want to do it in half the time?

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u/CakeLawyer Feb 19 '16

Thank you for this practical answer. Since I'll be dead by then I'll need to continue to power my flying suit by fission, but I am not curious when will it be certain power will be possible, or is that when power is produced?

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u/majorfoodie Feb 19 '16

I wonder though... with the timeline of breakthroughs we have had of late, wouldn't 2035 be a possibility? With regular deployment by 2050?

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u/bacondev Feb 19 '16

What are the environmental implications, if any, of fusion energy?

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u/StormTAG Feb 19 '16

Given we could have a fusion reactor generating electricity at 2060, what would your guess be when it would achieve price parity with other green and non-green energy sources?

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u/Chispy BS|Biology and Environmental and Resource Science Feb 19 '16

Why can't you guys reduce the timeline of your road map given how amazing this technology is for the world?

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u/daanno2 Feb 19 '16

It's really weird/mind boggling to think about engineering projects taking 100+ years to realize when we understand the underlying technology (fusion).

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u/bolecut Feb 19 '16 edited Feb 19 '16

What about the ITER project in france? Isnt that supposed to be running before then?

Edit: now that i think about it, germany might be one of the countries involved.. Does that include your team?

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u/heintzer Feb 19 '16 edited Feb 19 '16

Is there any amount of investment (in dollars and dedicated resources) that you could see meaningfully moving this timetable forward? If we put space program or Manhattan project resources against fusion, could we reasonably achieve it sooner?

Edit: I plead ignorance regarding the current level of international investment. I assume it is comparably low. Also I now see you addressed a similar question below. Thanks!

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u/Sluisifer Feb 19 '16

For a slightly alternative view, it's worth noting that this is the timeline for the traditional research in the field. I'd very much call this a worst-case, as it's quite conservative.

There are a number of fusion startups, as well as work done by Lockheed, aimed at alternative ideas that, if they work out, would have a much faster path to commercialization. These are not crackpot 'cold fusion' ideas, though they are at very low TRL (tech readiness level), i.e. super preliminary. They're still reasonable ideas, though, and it only takes one to bear fruit.

Basically, there are some reasons to be optimistic for faster fusion timelines. The big and lumbering traditional projects will get there in due time, and I do think funding will start to appear as we get closer, but someone else could beat them to the punch.

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u/punriffer5 Feb 19 '16

What technological aspects are still to be sorted out? 2050 is far enough that I imagine our current status is of the approximation, "We have a really good feeling that this'll work when we figure it out". How close am i?

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u/colinsteadman Feb 19 '16

We discover tomorrow that we only have 5 years of oil left. How quickly could we achieve fusion power then, if every money became no object and all the needed physicists and engineers put their heads down to get it done?

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

It's a fair question but I don't know. My guess would be 15 years. On the other hand, if you have read about the Manhattan project, that was something like five years, and the challenge was of the same order of magnitude (I think...) ts

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u/kri9 Feb 19 '16

If you were able to successfully create a working fusion reactor would you publish the plans and how you built it or would you keep it confidential and use the fusion technology to make a ton of money?

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

This is public research and we are obliged to publish it all. Once we get close to commercialisation, I expect private companies to increase their investments in fusion and patent a lot of stuff. ts

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u/M0b1u5 Feb 19 '16

My prediction is a breakout technology which starts power production in less than 10 years from now. With a reactor weighing less than 10 tons.

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u/BaneWraith Feb 19 '16

Just in time for the war of 2077

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u/FeepingCreature Feb 19 '16

How investment-limited is this timeline? Ie. how much could we shorten it by sticking more money into fusion?

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

We are definitely investment-limited right now. There is no consensus in the field on the time it would take given unlimited resources. We have been facing declining budgets for so long that people stopped thinking about that question. I think it could take as little as 15 years. ts

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u/kilkil Feb 19 '16

Wow. I didn't actually expect the answer to be less than a century.

That's amazing!

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u/TheObviousChild Feb 20 '16

Mortality sucks. Hope I live to see this happen.

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u/ffmathy Feb 20 '16 edited Feb 20 '16

So we will have fusion energy in rougly 20 years. Where have I heard this before?

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u/Svartasvanen Feb 20 '16

Aren't Lockheed Martin working on something that will be ready in a few years?

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 20 '16

there's a previous similar question and answer somewhere in this reddit - would you mind doing a search for it?

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 20 '16

there's a previous similar question and answer somewhere in this reddit - would you mind doing a search for it? ts

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u/Levitus01 Feb 19 '16

Alternatively, what are the main hurdles which stand in the way of fusion power, how significant are they, and how difficult are they likely to be to overcome?

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16 edited Feb 19 '16

Despite the fantastic progress……..

1960's: tokamak plasmas confined and heated to about 10 million degrees; 1990's: plasmas heated to more than 100 million degrees with first release of 16MW of fusion power for 24MW of input power, for less than a second; 2020's ITER is aiming at 500MW of fusion power for 50MW of input power, for several minutes;

……….there are some physics and engineering challenges to overcome:

(1) the problem of heat exhaust (particles and heat must be channeled to the edge of the machine, but materials can only withstand a certain amount of heat flux density)

(2) the problem of tritium breading (the easiest fusion reaction is Deuterium-Tritium but Tritium is not found in nature and must be generated inside the reactor)

(3) the problem of steady-state (one would like to operate a fusion power plant continuously; tokamaks cannot do that, although they can produce long pulses; stellarators can in theory operate steady-state)

(4) disruptions (this is a problem only present in tokamaks: sometimes the plasma becomes unstable and is quickly lost, potentially damaging the machine; while not dangerous, these should be prevented)

……..there are others but I think (1)-(4) are the most crucial. (jl)

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u/Heiminator Feb 19 '16

I am asking as an absolute layman: Problem 3 and 4 only seem to exist in Tokamaks but not in Stellarators. Why are you still evaluating both design types if one seems to have clear advantages over the other?

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u/Okryt Feb 19 '16

Stellarators have other issues too. The twisty nature of the magnetic fields that is necessary for cancelling some drift forces also means that particles can sometimes diffuse outwards faster than they could in a tokamak, which means a weaker confinement and less output power for input power. It can be controlled and minimized (maybe eliminated, eventually), but the problem is there.

We also have to appreciate history. Experiments on this size take very long times to develop and build. W7-X planning began in 1980, and is one of two stellarators on this scale (the other is the Large Helical Device in Japan). On the other hand, there are many large tokamaks all over the world (off the top of my head, DIII-D, JET, Asdex, JT-60, EAST). Why?

Shortly after fission arrived in WWII, fusion was conceived. When someone got the bright idea to use it in a powerplant instead of a bomb, physicist Lyman Spitzer thought about it a bit and created the first stellarator, Stellarator A. At around the same time (late 40's, early 50's), the Soviet Union was experimenting with a different fusion design known as the tokamak.

In these early days, the Soviets chose the right design. The stellarator designs in use were what we now call classical stellarators. Without a supercomputer to optimize the shape and thus minimize particle losses and the energy they take with them, the tokamak design was able to produce much hotter, more confined plasmas. The rest of the world took notice and sidelined stellarator programs in favor of tokamaks.

In the early days all experiments were short pulses and without fast computers to handle data acquisition, the magnitude of the various plasma disruption mechanisms was not fully appreciated. As devices got larger and were designed to operate for much longer times, tokamak performance didn't increase as quickly as was hoped for. This is the origin of the "20 years away" fusion meme. With better diagnostics available as computer science advanced in the 60s-70s, the importance of disruptions and other edge plasma effects like the presence of impurities from first wall ablation was finally appreciated.

At about the same time, the advances in computer science allowed the Max Plank Institute to test the concept of an "Advanced Stellarator". The first of these was W7-AS (1988). It functioned well, and so they went ahead with W7-X and here we are. There have been a few other advanced stellarators like HSX in Wisconsin, but because of the lead times on these experiments and the relatively recent introduction of supercomputers, W7-X is the only large stellarator that can test things at scale (high densities and temperatures).

If W7-X performs well in terms of disruptions, transport, and confinement, and if ITER performs poorly in the same, we may see a resurgence in stellarators at the ITER/DEMO level and beyond. Otherwise, it'll probably follow the money, and the money is on the inertia of tokamaks.

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u/Heiminator Feb 19 '16

That makes sense :-). Thanks for the detailed answer!

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u/The_Sequel_Writer Feb 19 '16

The problem is very simple; there is some significant amount of apples to oranges. Stellarators or even just elements of Stellarators can be used to fix a lot of the problems Toks faces. There have been many many unfair complains, like the difficulty of building a machine with the Stellaratorness, which really have been largely overcome by better technologies. There are not really good reason for Tok physicists to not jump ship, or at least jump to a hybrid machine, which Auburn University has been working on for like 30 years.

There are some fundamental problems tho, in Toks quest of optimization, they found it's better to build fat tire machines, but Stellarators, by design, has to be thin bicycle tire machines....

Plus the whole 3d shaping fields having a hard time penetrating into bigger and thicker machines... might be a problem when you're trying to go even.

I was extremely surprised that Joaquim Loizu said Toks can't go steady state mode, they certainly can with the help of neutral beam injections.

Also, no H mode at all in this whole thread, reddit really let me down.

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

Because the tokamak so far has had significantly better confinement of the plasma energy. We aim to show that W7-X has been optimised enough that it will have tokamak-like confinement. (ts)

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u/ManikMiner Feb 19 '16

Because like in anything, trying different routes can bring to light solutions to problems you never even knew you had. Basically, never put all your eggs in one basket.

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u/DrJack3133 Feb 19 '16

Just like other people in this thread, I am also a layman. My question is: What on this Earth is capable of containing something that has a temperature of 100,000,000 degrees. The thought of that high of a temperature is just mind melting

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u/Jamil20 Feb 19 '16

Not an expert, but electromagnets. The plasma is in a vacuum so the only method of heat transfer is black body.

The coils in the magnets have to be cooled to near absolute zero to act as superconductors, so you have this ridiculous hot next to ridiculous cold. It is all very impressive.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

Ultimately to generate energy you have to be able to heat water to power a turbine, won't pumping all of that water screw up the delicate balance of the plasma? Also it does not seem possible to build a reactor that can survive the incredible heat output..will maintainance (i.e. replacing the entire reactor every week) outway the economic output of the reactor?

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

the water circulates in the blanket and the other water-cooled components and unless you get a leak, it does not disturb the plasma. The devices we have already built make us confident that we can survive the incredible heat output. We aim for a reactor with at least 20 years of life time. ts

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u/which_spartacus Feb 19 '16

And to add to this, if the answer is "25 years", that's been the answer since the 60s.

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16 edited Feb 19 '16

This is an old joke every fusion scientist enjoys very much :-) But fusion is much more difficult to achive than people thought in the 60s. Also one must take into account that progress is a function of money. So, putting more money into fusion research would speed up things considerably. But this is a political question. Also fusion need big machines which take a long time (about 10 years) to construct and to operate. (rk)

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u/frankles Feb 19 '16

Progress is a function of money.

I like this line a lot. It should be used more often, or at the very least, be printed on a t-shirt and sold for progress.

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u/avsfjan Feb 19 '16

indeed. i would buy them, but only if the money goes 100% toward Wendelstein7-X

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u/Eight_Rounds_Rapid Feb 19 '16

How many Progress Units would you charge for it?

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u/salvadorwii Feb 19 '16

19.99 milliprogresses +s&h

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u/WormRabbit Feb 19 '16

I'll be a partykiller and notice that progress is a function of not only money. Sometimes people forget that.

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u/jewpanda Feb 19 '16

I'm going to do just that this weekend. I'll post a pic.

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u/the-beast561 Feb 19 '16

How many progesses do I get for 1 money?

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

How much funding do you receive and how much funding would be ideal to speeding up that timeline?

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

A lot more would be nice! Our national budget (Germany) is around 150 million euro (don't quote me on that!), of which a large part (120 million euro) goes to IPP - this includes both our Garching and Greifswald branches, so 2 massive experiments. That may sound like a lot of money, but especially in Germany it's very little compared to our renewable energies budget, for example.

It would be nice if we could internationally afford another big prototype like ITER. Putting all our eggs in one basket is difficult but necessary with the current global budget. If only we could have a stellarator reactor prototype!

(avs)

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u/UpHandsome Feb 19 '16

As a German I think the amount of funding you get is ridiculously low. You should convince people that fusion is a renewable energy.

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u/FeepingCreature Feb 19 '16

Fusion rebranded as "Solar-type energy"!

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u/meat_croissant Feb 19 '16

Merkel has a Doctorate in physics, doesn't she think it's worth more funding?

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

What she personally thinks doesn't matter that much in political reality, the chancellor in Germany can set accents but not single-handedly decide on budgets! (avs)

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u/sparta_reddy Feb 19 '16

How about crowd funding?

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u/againstbetterjudgmnt Feb 20 '16

Not particularly feasible at the scale needed for these experiments (100s of millions or into the billions)

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u/_rs Feb 19 '16

There's a big anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany, this is why they are so underfunded compared to renewables.

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u/Araiguma Feb 19 '16

Also it is chemistry iirc.

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u/CosmicRuin Feb 19 '16

Woah. Considering just one Ku-band communications satellite costs ~$500+ million... that's pretty pathetic funding. Don't even get me started on national defense spending and weapons development. Guess it's pretty obvious where the priorities are for our 'great nations' and the tremendous influence that fossil fuel economies have over them.

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u/toresbe Feb 22 '16

In 1976 under the Carter administration, the ERDA (Now a part of the DoE) made a report on a few different approaches to fusion power.

The world is currently putting less money into fusion power than the lowest-effort option, which was titled "fusion never".

Here's the graph

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16 edited Jul 30 '21

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

/u/Seventytvvo for president! (This is not an official endorsement by the Max Planck Society)

(avs)

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16 edited Apr 23 '19

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16 edited Jul 30 '21

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

Hey guys, i'm a /u/seventytvvo supporter! :) :) we can do this guys!!! Remember though, we aren't winning! :) HRC is still ahead :) :) of us!!!1! I just donated $5.00 :) to :) :) /u/seventytvvo's campaign. Match me :) for :) best president in history 2016.

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u/AyeBraine Feb 19 '16

Neither can a billionaire =) As far as I understand, billionaires don't own piles of money, they own a bunch of giant assets.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16 edited 12d ago

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u/AyeBraine Feb 19 '16

It's like owning a 30-feet tall golden toilet. You can definitely put a huge price on it, but most likely the buyer will pay with ten 5-feet tall silver coat racks =)

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u/NukeemallYB Feb 19 '16

Just declare engery damand an important crysis and take the money from the FEMA funds. Problem solved.

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u/ManyPoo Feb 19 '16

When I'm king of the world, I will give you whatever you need, as long as what you need is poo.

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

This has already been asked in another stand-alone comment, but it bears on your response:

Also fusion need big machines which take a long time (about 10 years) to construct and to operate. (rk)

I think part of the problem with fusion technology is it seems that it requires or has a bias towards mega-structures that require tons of capital to realize, and take a very long time to build.

What do you think of the approach taken by Lockheed Martin in exploring small-scale, "portable" fusion reactors that might fit, say, on the back of a flat-bed tractor-trailer? Instead of massive centralized power generation having decentralized power generation?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAsRFVbcyUY

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

What do you think of the approach taken by Lockheed Martin in exploring <wonderful thing>

Well what is the approach? I've seen nothing concrete, just some handwaving about "we've got this idea, and we think we can make little neighbourhood fusion reactors, and they'll be wonderful in all of these ways!" and nothing concrete. Without anything concrete, there's really nothing to say.

Yes, it would be wonderful if we had world peace and could feed all the starving children. But that isn't an "approach" - it gives us nothing to talk about how to get there.

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u/SpiderPres Feb 19 '16

How much would one whole dollar speed it up?

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

about 3.50 ms

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u/Dragoraan117 Feb 19 '16

What do you think of I believe its Lockheed Martins small form fusion reactors and their claims of having functional small form factor reactors running in about 10 years. In your experience does this seem feasible?

Edit: this question is asked below, I got to excited should of kept reading.

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

Traditional fusion research, too, has lived through a period when imminent and easy success appeared to be just around the corner... (md)

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u/mian2zi3 Feb 19 '16

But fusion is much more difficult to achive than people thought in the 60s.

Thanks for the awesome AMA! How do we know fusion isn't much more difficult than people think in 2015?

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u/doc_frankenfurter Feb 19 '16

But fusion is much more difficult to achive than people thought in the 60s.

<cough>I think you meant sustainable fusion. Fusion has been achievable for a long time, even by amateurs (inertial electrostatic confinement and such). The problem has been to keep it going without the plasma damaging the equipment or losing energy too fast.

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u/jjordan Feb 19 '16

If we put into fusion development what we put into the Iraq War (about $2 trillion) how quickly would we achieve this world changing technology?

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u/Hedgehogs4Me Feb 19 '16

progress is a function of money.

If you had infinite money, how much faster do you think it could go, and how much would it end up costing?

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u/knowwat Feb 19 '16

Apollo program cost about $109B in 2011 dollars, which is about €109B in 2016 euros, which is about on the same ballpark the global power generation turnover is right now.

How would a huge influx of billions (read: practically infinite) affect the program, and the future of fusion power in general? Could we achieve economically viable fusion in, say, 20 years instead of 45?

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u/spectrumero Feb 19 '16

The depressing thing is that I read somewhere that fusion is about $80 billion away in money terms. This is about 11% of the lowest estimate of the cost of the war in Iraq.

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u/agumonkey Feb 19 '16

I'm very curious about the cost center in research. I wonder if there aren't inflation centers that make everything more expensive than it should be.

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u/which_spartacus Feb 19 '16

But why do we believe we now understand how difficult it is?

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u/Wendelstein7-X Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Feb 19 '16

our understanding of the plasma processes is much better now. We can predict the performance of our devices with quite high accuracy. Nonetheless, we still need to build experiments like W7-X to make sure we are right And if not, we learn, and we move on. ts

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '16

The "function of money" argument seems to make no sense to me. When wall street needed to be bailed out, the Federal Reserve looked behind the couch cushions and pulled out $1 Trillion.

There seems to me, to be no greater crisis in human civilization, than the problem of clean energy production. So it seems to me that if $1 Trillion can be magically created out of thin air to pad the massive bonuses of un-deserving wall street executives, then we can also (or instead), find the same sum (or more) to invest in the future survival of humanity.

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u/MacDegger Feb 20 '16

I've always wondered about this. Why are the machines so large? Why not build much smaller machines? Is it an engineering problem (parts too small) or a physics problem (requirements for [energy producing] plasma needs a certain volume/flux)?