German scientists to conduct nuclear fusion experiment today

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/03/nuclear-fusion-germany-scientists-experiment-angela-merkel

by miiiiiike • 10 years ago

100 48 10 years ago

leaveyou• 10 years ago

The Guardian about ITER: "(...) is considered fairly easy to build but extremely difficult to operate." If this is true, ITER is so failed. Wikipedia: "Construction of the ITER Tokamak complex started in 2013[6] and the building costs are now over US$14 billion as of June 2015, some 3 times the original figure.[7] The facility is expected to finish its construction phase in 2019 and will start commissioning the reactor that same year and initiate plasma experiments in 2020". It's so easy to build, that is already 3 times more expensive. And it will be so hard to operate, that it will never work.

Retric2• 10 years ago

"35 countries"

That's the real issue, they could be building a toaster and it would be 3x over budget.

PS: The ITER project was formally agreed to and funded in 2006 with a cost estimate of €10 billion ($12.8 billion) projecting the start of construction in 2008 and completion a decade later So, it's not really massively over budget yet, they just decided to build something else.

lispm3• 10 years ago

Well, the Wendelstein 7X experiment is mostly funded by Germany as an investment into the east/north German science infrastructure. That makes it easier to coordinate, but it's hard to finance such a project. A project, which will have commercial use decades away, and whose commercialization would need much larger funding...

We have actually enough financing needs in the German energy landscape currently: dismantling the nuclear power legacy, find a safe storage for radioactive materials and the research and development of the renewable energy landscape - which is in the hundreds of billions of Euros over the next 35 years.

felipellrocha• 10 years ago

Just because it's difficult to operate, that doesn't mean it's impossible.

davidiach• 10 years ago

Is fusion something we could expect to become a real source of energy in say the next 15-20 years? I assume just building a fusion reactor will take more than a decade.

vorotato• 10 years ago

from the article

“It’s a very clean source of power, the cleanest you could possibly wish for. We’re not doing this for us but for our children and grandchildren.”

norea-armozel• 10 years ago

Considering who's putting money into ignition research and alternative modes of fusion (General Fusion vs Tri-Alpha Energy for example) I'd say we should have at least one successful ignition experiment on or before 2020. I would honestly be shocked if nothing of note in that regard didn't happen by 2030 though.

creshal• 10 years ago

Wendelstein and ITER are supposed to verify whether it's possible to generate net power… with improved designs. So, assuming Wendelstein works as hoped, we will, in a few years, know whether we can start planning an actual fusion power plant (as opposed to a net-negative research reactor).

Then we will need to actual design and build one. If we're lucky, we'll see the first pilot plants in 15-20 years.

So, we're on the same level of "fusion practicability" as in 1960.

adrianN• 10 years ago

Building a nuclear power plant, something we already know how to do inside and out, takes 5-7 years. Barring miraculous breakthroughs in non-magnetic confinement technology, the chances for fusion power on the grid are pretty close to zero.

rubidium• 10 years ago

The running joke is that it's always been 15-20 years away. Since 1960.

Retric2• 10 years ago

Nah, used to be 50-60 years ago, 20 years after that it was 40-50, then 20 years after that 30-40...

Honestly, we could have working devices today. Funding has just been less than expected. Don't forget there was a ~30 year gap between JET and ITER.

PS: There was also initial talks for ITER to be a working power plant, but it was significantly cheaper to downscale the device.

b34r• 10 years ago

Time to call Elon Musk

lmm• 10 years ago

We're "two generations" away from commercial power generation: assuming (big assumption) all goes to plan with ITER, the next tokamak would be a full-scale power-generating fusion plant that commercial designs could be based on. Stellerators are one generation behind that: if Wendelstein 7-X works as intended then the next step would be an ITER-equivalent.

michielr• 10 years ago

Livestream is live here: http://www.mpg.de/9915939/wendelstein7x

antirez3• 10 years ago

"Merkel, who is a doctor of physics, is expected at Wednesday’s event, which is happening in her constituency."

A nation lead by a leader that is both a women and a scientist. I would say this is progress regardless of the experiment outcome.

rb2k_• 10 years ago

She's also the daughter of a priest, so we basically have all bases covered :)

jawilson2• 10 years ago

"A woman, a priest, a physicist, and chancellor walk into a bar..."

StavrosK• 10 years ago

Is it really such a big deal there? I don't think people would be very surprised that a woman can be chancellor.

lispm3• 10 years ago

Note that this fusion experiment is also very 'political'. Without reunification and the wish to promote science in the former East Germany, this experiment would a) never have been funded and b) it would have be cancelled because of steep cost increases and delays. The fusion device was built in North/East Germany, whereas the prior research was done in South Germany.

Thus it is fitting that Chancellor Merkel attends this event.

It's a great experiment and a wonderful achievement, but probably we had different priorities and even different scientific priorities - especially considering the large amount of money invested. There are lots of competing science areas which lack this funding.

cubano• 10 years ago

I would think being highly competent and good at building political consensus that promoted the good for the people would be the most important things, no matter what gender or profession, no?

lispm3• 10 years ago

Political topics in a country of the size of Germany (and even more in countries like the US or Russia which are much larger and have a much larger political reach) are a very complex and complicated domain. I'd say it helps a lot to have the most intelligent political person at the top. Not that I would agree to all of Merkel's political decisions, but she is without doubt the most intelligent politician in Germany of her generation.

antirez3• 10 years ago

Woman: is good not because woman is inherently better, but don't we have enough of male-only leaders? However if you ask me women may be superior politically to men in general because of dialectic abilities, human considerations when sending people to war, ability to be brutally pragmatic and so forth. So woman = good for me in different ways.

Scientist: I want politicians to do the Right Thing not to build consensus, and I believe a scientist is better in today's world compared to another politician by profession that comes from a different non-specializing background. It could also be an expert linguistic researcher and would be fine as well, but the point is, the new challenges we face are often science related...

elorant• 10 years ago

I was under the impression that her area of expertise is in chemistry. Or is it that of her husband?

mtmail• 10 years ago

Both. She has a Phd, her husband is a professor in quantum chemistry. That's how they met. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Sauer

spatulan• 10 years ago

Margaret Thatcher was a research chemist.

billybofh• 10 years ago

I remember watching a video of her washing all the goodness out of a bit of dough then baking it into a hard inedible lump of starch. Take from that what you will ;-)

pluma• 10 years ago

She also grew up in East Germany (before the fall of the Berlin Wall). That's not too astonishing in today's Germany but would have raised a few eyebrows a mere generation ago.

EmielMols• 10 years ago

Part of the reason she apparently speaks Russian pretty well. And Russia's president, mr. Putin, is fluent in German because he was stationed there when younger. Quite the antagonising characters in politics these days, but at least they speak each other's language. :)

dragonbonheur2• 10 years ago

If only that kind of money and research was put into properly exploiting the nice big yellow fusion reactor that's already in the sky... No need to worry about plasma abrasion of Tokamak walls and magnetic confinement if that happened.

lhopki012• 10 years ago

Germany has spent the most on solar subsidies of any country. Don't make this an exclusive situation. They can do both.

dragonbonheur2• 10 years ago

Solar panels aren't the only way.

Shivetya2• 10 years ago

I think the idea here is to have continuous and reliable base line power that is clean. While solar does present a lot of opportunities it is highly sensitive to weather, in not changes in the Earth's orientation seasonally.

Throw in we have lots of established plants with steam generators a new source of steam would integrate nicely into complex systems we already understand.

badsock• 10 years ago

To echo one of Shivetya's points: the dominate renewables of solar and wind both need some sort of compliment that can fill in the temporary gaps when either demand is high or supply is low. Hydroelectric is great, but there's not enough of it. We'll see how batteries do, but it's nice to have more than one horse in the race.

rorflcopter• 10 years ago

That headline sounds like something from the beginning of a superhero movie

German scientists to conduct nuclear fusion experiment today

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