Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists

[The Barbarian]

Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists

Carbon-free fusion power could be ‘on the grid in 15 years’
The dream of nuclear fusion is on the brink of being realised, according to a major new US initiative that says it will put fusion power on the grid within 15 years.

The project, a collaboration between scientists at MIT and a private company, will take a radically different approach to other efforts to transform fusion from an expensive science experiment into a viable commercial energy source. The team intend to use a new class of high-temperature superconductors they predict will allow them to create the world’s first fusion reactor that produces more energy than needs to be put in to get the fusion reaction going.

Bob Mumgaard, CEO of the private company Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has attracted $50 million in support of this effort from the Italian energy company Eni, said: “The aspiration is to have a working power plant in time to combat climate change. We think we have the science, speed and scale to put carbon-free fusion power on the grid in 15 years.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...on-brink-of-being-realised-say-mit-scientists

 

[Stripe]

"You don't believe all this cold fusion mumbo-jumbo, do you?"

https://youtu.be/atpbdTo9nno

 

[The Barbarian]

"You don't believe all this cold fusion mumbo-jumbo, do you?"

Cold fusion didn't work. The development of high-temperature superconductors make useful fusion possible.

Breakthrough in superconducting materials opens new path to fusion
In fusion reactor designs, superconductors (which suffer no resistive power loss) are used to generate the magnetic fields that confine the 100 million degree C plasma. While increasing magnetic field strength offers potential ways to improve reactor performance, conventional low-temperature superconductors suffer dramatic drops in current carrying ability at high magnetic fields. Now, the emergence of high-temperature superconductors that can also operate at high magnetic fields opens a new, lower-cost path to fusion energy.
https://phys.org/news/2015-11-breakthrough-superconducting-materials-path-fusion.html#jCp

 

[Stripe]

Warning for the humor impaired.

 

[The Barbarian]

The potential for high-temperature superconductors to make fusion feasible was realized as far back as the early 2000s. However, practical application of these materials to make an energy-efficient tokomak fusion generator has not been implemented until recently.

 

[The Berean]

I have been following a Canadian company called General Fusion for about a decade. They are doing interesting work with Magnetized Target Fusion.

http://generalfusion.com/technology-magnetized-target-fusion/

 

[The Barbarian]

That's kind of a shock. They've gone an entirely different direction.

The important thing is there aren't any theoretical barriers left; it's now an engineering problem. And at that point, you know it's going to happen.

 

[The Berean]

That's kind of a shock. They've gone an entirely different direction.

That's what I like about them. They are not building a gargantuan tokamak that requires billions and billions of dollars in funding. General Fusion claims it can get their system running with about $100 million. They just built the largest plasma injector in the world.

https://biv.com/article/2017/12/general-fusion-produces-worlds-largest-plasma-inje

The important thing is there aren't any theoretical barriers left; it's now an engineering problem. And at that point, you know it's going to happen.

Nuclear fusion is definitely getting close. I believe within 10 years a viable nuclear fusion reactor will be up and running.