New, unique fusion reactor comes together due to global research collaboration

16 pointsposted 9 months ago
by pseudolus
(phys.org)

18 Comments

bell-cot

9 months ago

Headline is 99.97% hype. Looks like phys.org merely reprinted a U of Princeton press release - about their Physics Dept. being a collaborator on a tiny*, experimental tokamak at the U of Seville (in Spain).

Yes, it is real science - at least for those really interested in this particular deep-niche specialty.

But is it meaningful "general science" news? I'm thinking "no".

*From the photo, the whole tokamak would fit in a long-bed pickup truck.

BurningFrog

9 months ago

I've come to think most of current journalism is reprinting/rewriting press releases.

It's by far the easiest way to fill a news paper/site, and people will read it.

Already__Taken

9 months ago

I hate phys org for this crap. what did they say is unique about a tokamak?

bell-cot

9 months ago

Basics - it's a "spherical"-type tokamak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_tokamak

Longer bit - it's also uses a different cross-section shape for the confined plasma. I'm not a physicist, but "negative triangularity" seems to have been discussed in research papers for 4+ decades. Good bet that it's the usual "there are advantages and disadvantages to using this..." situation.

pfdietz

9 months ago

Phys.org is basically a PR engine. It can be useful if the paper being described is behind a paywall.

Anyway, yet another tokamak that doesn't solve the inherently poor economics of tokamaks.

bell-cot

9 months ago

> ...yet another tokamak...inherently poor economics...

True. Though the U of Seville co-leader's quote shows an excellent understanding of the economics of modern fusion research:

"It [our first tokamak] needed to be one that a university could afford but also one that could make a unique contribution to the fusion landscape at the university scale," said Garcia-Munoz. "The idea was to put together technologies that were already established: a spherical tokamak and negative triangularity, making SMART the first of its kind. It turns out it was a fantastic idea."

pfdietz

9 months ago

That's the economics of research. I was referring to the economics of ultimate delivery as a power source.

pjdesno

9 months ago

IIRC one of the early Tokomak projects was instrumental in development of the titanium bicycle frame industry - I think the folks at Merlin Metalworks (later bought by Litespeed) learned to weld the stuff working for a fusion project at MIT.

I think that’s the sum total of the economic contribution of fusion research to date, and I don’t expect that to change in my lifetime.

benchloftbrunch

9 months ago

Imo any article using the term "computer codes" to mean "software" is not worth taking seriously.

perihelions

9 months ago

That's the correct use of the term in this context (numerical HPC, I guess). The author's doing nothing wrong with their language; it's the language the physicist researchers use in the paper [0] this article is about ("code" appears 17 times in that text).

Physicists and software engineers do not use the same jargon uniformly.

[0] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6587/ad2edc

dotnet00

9 months ago

Calling numerical computation software as a "code" seems to be pretty common terminology for people who aren't primarily software engineers.

user

9 months ago

[deleted]

af3d

9 months ago

The ironic thing about all of this hype is that fusion isn't even inherently capable of maintaining a self-sustaining reaction! Unlike fission, which is a chain-reaction process, fusion requires *huge* amounts of energy every single ignition cycle. Once the reactants fuse, that is it, time for the next cycle. The only way to "get fusion for free" is to have it occur in the middle of a massive object such as our Sun, as in that case the immense pressure is continuous and thus the reaction as well. But much like quantum-computing and other such fantasies which only serve to attract research and venture-capital funds. My advice? Don't donate a penny to these "causes". They are the NFT's of scientific research....

pfdietz

9 months ago

There are good reasons to be skeptical of fusion, but the argument you give isn't one of them.

af3d

9 months ago

I would think "not capable of producing a net-positive yield" a pretty compelling reason. The field has been researched for more than half a century and yet to date we still have zero evidence this is even achievable. The limiting factor always comes down to sustaining the pressures and temperatures required to get the reaction to occur. Color me cynical, but I just don't see it. Perhaps you could provide some actual experimental results which support your specious allusions to my misunderstanding of the current state of the art?

pfdietz

9 months ago

It's not a reason, it's just your assertion. You didn't back it up. There is no physical reason to believe your assertion is true.

Consider that someone could have (and many did) make the same argument about reusable launch vehicles. Then SpaceX put an end to that.

You need to burrow more deeply to get to the real objections. They have to do with details of economics and engineering. Your facile approach doesn't cut it.

af3d

9 months ago

Sorry, the onus here is on you to provide a single shred of evidence to support the dubious claim that the technology is merely hindered by "details of economics and engineering". Fact: fusion reactions are not self-sustaining. Fact: we have never even come close to break-even. Fact: fusion research is a huge industry which attracts BILLIONS of dollars of funding every year (and hence there is little, if any, motivation for researchers to stop proselytizing fusion power). Your turn...