Sounds like a Harry Harrison novel no?
Holy smokes... Scientists in Southern France are in the middle of making an artificial sun that will be used as a renewable energy source. Can humanity really control such a force? Sounding like something that destroyed the planet in Fallout 3 the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is due to be completed in 2018 and has totally taken me by surprise. The idea is to create controlable fusion on a small scale using huge woven magnetic fields to contain the 150 million kelvin plasma (149999726.85 °C if my math is correct).
Costing around €10bn involving backing from several national and supranational parties including the EU, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, and the USA this project is on par with the ambition of the LHC.
A very cool piece of science news and there are other options for our future fusion needs including DEMO, Wendelstein 7-X, NIF, HiPER, IFMIF, and JET.
Want some more on ITER?
New Scientist Aricle: Building a second sun: Take $10 billion, add coconuts
Official ITER Website - (Warning, it's all in French)
ITER is delayed. It is going through a project review. In addition 2018 WAS the projected start up date for a reduced experimental set. The original plan was to finish the experiments by 2030 and then build a real power plant. Of course that is all up in the air now.
ReplyDeleteYou might want to look into the Polywell Fusion Reactor Experiments sponsored by the US Navy. A yes/no answer is expected by 2011 at the latest.
SandustanBrasov
ReplyDeleteMy brthren you have capacity of to construct the thermonuclear controlled reactor, only that, you must needs let construct something functional. The tokamak were invented in 1950 by physicists Igor Tamm and Andrei Sakharov inspired by idea to Oleg Lavrentyev, when he studyed the realization of the hydrogen bomb, which has not need of magnetic trap, and thus all the experiments were finished with the destruction to the tokamak installations in the central zone.