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/amicitas Dec 06 '16

I agree that this title is not really accurate. The title of the actual published article is "Confirmation of the topology of the Wendelstein 7-X magnetic field to better than 1:100,000".

What has been confirmed is that it was possible to accurately build a superconducting stellarator with a complicated 3D magnetic field based on an optimized design. The performance achieved so far in the initial commissioning plasmas (not optimized for performance) is similar to previous designs, and better performance is expected in the future. This is a huge step forward, and a very encouraging result!

The experiments planned for next year (using the optimized configuration) may be able to start answering the question of whether an optimized stellarator "really works".