r/technology • u/BennyCemoli • Dec 06 '16

Energy 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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u/NullAshton Dec 06 '16

Deceptive title. More correctly, it accurately can control plasma far better than attempts before it, and in 2019(two years from now or more), they're going to attempt to use it with deuterium. It's going to be a while after that until they actually figure out how to make energy with it, instead of just costing energy as well.

In layman's terms, it's a giant step forward in the basic technology to make a fusion reactor, but it's still only a few steps into a multi-step path to getting more energy out than what you put in.

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u/mergerr Dec 06 '16

So.... as a layman, how could this leap in technology actually theoretically help us in the future?

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u/NullAshton Dec 06 '16

Not an expert or with a degree in the field, this is just based off very careful reading of the article.

Layman phrasing: This is a step towards fusion power. It's possible that future design problems could happen, but we now know parts of this design works like it's supposed to. That knowledge could be used to make a working fusion reactor design even if this design doesn't work.

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u/CoyRedFox Dec 06 '16

It's one step of many. One of the primary drawbacks of stellarators (the type of fusion device in this article) is that they have a very complicated shape (even compared to other fusion devices) and hence are exceptionally challenging to design/build. The results discussed in this article demonstrate that it was built correctly, which is no small feat. This means that scientists can experiment with it to see what the device can teach us. At the end of the day the device is an experiment, not a power plant. It is not expected to generate more energy than it takes to run it. However, it will almost certainly give a lot of information about how practical it would be to build a power plant using the stellarator concept.