Fusion Stabilized By Chaos?
New work at General Atomics in San Diego indicates that there might be a way to keep a nuclear fusion reactor from destroying itself.
A nuclear fusion reactor would produce more power than convention nuclear fission reactors, but so far it's been unsuccessful because it takes more energy to contain the resultant plasma so that it will not melt the very walls of the reactor!
Physicists try to get around this problem by containing the plasma in a magnetic field that will keep it clear of the walls of the machine. Unfortunately, as the magnetic field squeezes the plasma tight in the center of the machine, the plasma eventually bursts through the weakest point in the field. Imagine squeezing a balloon full of water, says General Atomics physicist Todd Evans. Except the plasma is so hot and energetic that the released matter corrodes key parts of the machine.
But Evans thinks he may have a solution to the dilemma. Using a modified tokamak [Russian acronym for "toroidal (donut-shaped) magnetic chamber"] reactor to introduce chaotic static into the magnetic field, his team found that it weakens the field just enough to let some plasma leak out through the bottom, releasing the pressure on the rest of the field and preventing a more disastrous leak.
The exact nature of what happens is still unknown beyond that, but the research (published in Nature Physics) could help make the $5.5 billion (US dollars) International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) a success, if it can be incorporated into the design of the machine. The heat of the ITER reactor may not allow for incorporation of the conducting coils that Evans used.
Related Articles:
- Sources of Power Production
- Nature: "Chaos could keep fusion under control"
- About Physics Energy Resources directory
Image: A design image of the ITER magnets and coolant pipes. Note the scale of the human standing at the bottom of the image. This and other images are available for non-commercial use from the ITER consortium.
Comments
very, very stupid. YOU LOOK LIKE FOOLS AND MADMEN, FACE IT YOU ARE NOT SMART, AND IF YOU ARE, YOU’LL DO IT IN SPACE OR ON ANOTHER PLANET. YOU ARE TRULY IGNORANT, THE IGNORANCE OF HUMANITY KNOWS NO BOUNDS, INTELLIGENCE IS ANOTHER MATTER ALTOGETHER. I HOPE YOU PAY DEARLY.
quote “note the size of the human”
How IGNORANT. There is no reason to build it of such a scale, What a waste, why not spend 5 more minutes of thought and engineer the same to a different scale? You truly are semi evolved primates. DISGUSTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m sure that the scale was determined based on the input/output ratio of the energy they’d be able to obtain from the fusion reaction versus the energy needed to maintain it in the electric field. If you make too small a reactor, it would take more to power the magnetic field than you’d actually get from the fusion material (which is the problem with all experimental fusion reactors to date). Not being a nuclear physicist, I am not sure if it would be possible to build a useful reactor to a smaller scale.
Also, keep in mind if you could make a smaller one and get, say, half the power output, but it would still cost $11 billion instead of $13 billion, then the cost-benefit analysis would also demand that you go with the bigger reactor.