Tokamak Energy news

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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crowberry
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Tokamak Energy news

Post by crowberry »

Tokamak Energy wins World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer award:

http://widgets.weforum.org/techpioneers-2015b/
Through this award it will have access to the most influential and sought-after business and political network in the world, and be invited to the World Economic Forum’s “Summer Davos” in Dalian, China, this September, or the Annual Meeting in Davos in January.
This is an excellent opportunity for Tokamak Energy to create good fusion publicity and get the message across that fusion should be taken seriously and it could arrive sooner than most people think given adequate resources.

http://www.scottishenergynews.com/uk-nu ... rd-winner/

Helion Energy and General Fusion have also been awarded in other similar competitions. Recognition by these kind of prices from organizations outside of the plasma physics community is very good.

crowberry
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by crowberry »

Tokamak Energy has written a leaflet on fusion called Faster Fusion. In it they present their roadmap of fusion reactor development (wisely enough without a schedule): http://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/testsite ... eaflet.pdf

crowberry
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by crowberry »

David Kingham of Tokamak Energy has written a nice article called The case for fusion energy.
The spherical tokamak has two big advantages: Being a squashed-up version of the tokamak it is inherently compact. Additionally, it uses the magnetic field more efficiently. Its limitation has always been the tricky engineering due to lack of space in the centre for magnets. But recently a solution has been found. The latest generation of a high temperature superconductor (HTS) is remarkably able to conduct high currents with zero resistance at temperatures well above absolute zero and in a strong magnetic field. Exceptionally high-field magnets can now be made allowing much simpler solutions to the engineering problems of magnet cooling and protection.

Earlier this year Tokamak Energy scientists published two ground-breaking papers in Nuclear Fusion. One showed for the first time that it is feasible to build a low power (~100MWe) tokamak with a high power gain. The second tackled one of the toughest of the engineering challenges of a compact spherical tokamak – the shielding of the centre.

So instead of building ever larger tokamak devices, with huge costs and long timescales, we can see a way forward by increasing the magnetic field in more compact devices. This turns the pursuit of fusion energy from a big moonshot to a series of engineering challenges: can we build a tokamak with all its magnets made from HTS? Can we get to fusion temperatures in a compact device? Can we get to fusion breakeven in a compact device? Can we get sufficiently beyond breakeven to produce electricity for the first time? And, can we go on from that to build reliable, economic, fusion power plants?

Tokamak Energy is deliberately trying to tackle a series of increasingly difficult engineering challenges as rapidly as possible. We have built and demonstrated a tokamak with all its magnets made from HTS and we are now designing the device to get to fusion temperatures. When we succeed with one challenge, we can raise the investment to tackle the next challenge. We may have some failures, but failing quickly at small scale can be a great way to learn and recover rapidly.

Tokamak Energy is able to pursue the goal of fusion energy in this particular way because of two local clusters of expertise in England’s Thames Valley: one based on the world class fusion research at Culham Laboratory; the other based on the world leading high-field superconducting magnet businesses of Oxford Instruments and Siemens Magnet Technology, who supply magnets for scientific instruments and MRI.

Fusion energy projects and start-ups around the world may pursue the goal of fusion energy in different ways by playing to their distinctive strengths. The increasing number of start-ups coming onto the scene is encouraging. A competitive race and more private investment would be good for the progress of fusion.
https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/09/the- ... qus_thread

Skipjack
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by Skipjack »

The second tackled one of the toughest of the engineering challenges of a compact spherical tokamak – the shielding of the centre.
I tried accessing the link to the paper in the article but got a "Page not found!". Anyone got a link to that? I would really like to see this.

Edit: I got it to work. Unfortunately the paper is behind a paywall:
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.10 ... C68E7BE.c1

crowberry
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by crowberry »

Tokamak Energy is working on their PR activities, which is of crucial importance in order to be able to collect investor funding.
http://www.gorkana.com/news/consumer/pi ... rgy-brief/


‘Renegade’ UK physicists say they’re on fast track to nuclear fusion by Alex Pashley
TE have a five-step plan to get to their goal. Up to £300 million is required, and they have drummed up £10 million in investments, grants and tax breaks, so far to work early versions.
There is tension between TE and the ITER people, which is not a good thing for the field in general.

http://www.rtcc.org/2015/09/09/renegade ... ar-fusion/

Skipjack
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by Skipjack »

crowberry wrote: There is tension between TE and the ITER people, which is not a good thing for the field in general.
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/09/09/renegade ... ar-fusion/
I am not so sure that this is bad. If people can get it done faster, it is a good thing.

ladajo
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by ladajo »

Bob Hirsch's commentary on ITER.
Posted this in the EMC2 threat, but it probably belongs here.

http://issues.org/31-4/fusion-research- ... -new-path/
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

crowberry
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by crowberry »

The points raised by Bob Hirsch are of course well known and valid, but this time he does a bit of exaggeration. The event at the LHC in 2008 was due to inadequate quality control on the resistivity of the electrical interconnects between the superconducting magnets. From that event one can only conclude that making good electrical contacts is crucial for super conducting magnet systems. Part of the goals of ITER is to study those problems that Hirsch mentions to find new solutions to them.

Spherical tokamaks have the potential to improve the chances of filling the criteria that Hirsch discussed, because the size could be roughly a factor 10 less compared to a ITER like tokamak of similar power output. Whether that will be enough to result in economical reactors remains to be seen. The plasma stability is of course a big topic for current tokamak research. Here again STs might provide better performance compared to traditional tokamaks, but that remains to be seen when the results from NSTX-U and MAST-U and all other STs in use or under construction are available. There is also a lot of work devoted to understanding plasma disruptions and research on ideas to mitigate them.

The smaller size of STs allows also for a more rapid development and research cycle with less funding. Until any of the alternative fusion concepts surpasses the performance levels shown with tokamaks it is a bit early to completely dismiss tokamaks.

ladajo
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by ladajo »

I agree fully. And, the more we add depth to the Plasma Community of Practice's knowledge base the sooner we will find solutions that will take us down the viability path.
Critical to this in my opinion is standing up a Q>1 machine. Right now, the best bet in the knowledge base is ITER. Unfortunate as it is from a time and resource perspective, as well as an "as it stands" viability assessment, it is essentially the best way the Community knows how to achieve Q>1 operations.
Doing so may well allow us to advance our understanding to the point that we can then advance towards a viable Tokamak basis machine, be it toriodal, spherical, or something else. This work may also inform other research constructs and move them along as well.
And, there is the chance that one of the other concept exploration teams will make a significant advance as well.
As much as I don't like it from a resource perspective, I don't think we at this point have a better choice than to not build the stinking thing.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time in science that the best bet was abandoned because new knowledge appeared from elsewhere.
I don't think anyone has significant doubt about whether ITER will work or not, and that is a stark comparison to other efforts.

Thanks for the above as well.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Skipjack
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by Skipjack »

ladajo wrote: Critical to this in my opinion is standing up a Q>1 machine. Right now, the best bet in the knowledge base is ITER. Unfortunate as it is from a time and resource perspective, as well as an "as it stands" viability assessment, it is essentially the best way the Community knows how to achieve Q>1 operations.
I understand that JET is going to do Q>1 experiments with D+T within the next couple of years in order to validate material technology developed for ITER.
I also want to point out that part of the reason why ITER is taking so long and is costing so much is because they had to come up with new materials that can handle the high energy neutrons from D+T and how a machine like this can be serviced, which needs to be done more frequently than with a D+D machine. JET is now serviced with a fully robotic arm. The other issues are related to fitting lithium blankets to a toroidal chamber. Not only do they need to capture as many neutrons for Tritium breeding as possible, for a full plant they would also have to transport the heat away from the reactor to the steam cycle. This turned out to be so complicated that IIRC they have postponed this until DEMO.

ladajo
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by ladajo »

JT-60 is a non-collision regime experiment. It does not do burning plasma, it is designed to research plasma generation and control. And, I believe it will be a DD machine for testing, not DT after an initial commissioning phase using H.
As I recall, the latest revision of the experimental plan does not light off the machine until 2019/2020. I would have to look to be sure, I want to say that the last revision was from the beginning of this year.

On a side note, I am surprised you are not also talking about DIII-D and JET work.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Skipjack
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by Skipjack »

ladajo wrote:JT-60 is a non-collision regime experiment. It does not do burning plasma, it is designed to research plasma generation and control. And, I believe it will be a DD machine for testing, not DT after an initial commissioning phase using H.
As I recall, the latest revision of the experimental plan does not light off the machine until 2019/2020. I would have to look to be sure, I want to say that the last revision was from the beginning of this year.
On a side note, I am surprised you are not also talking about DIII-D and JET work.
Unless you are talking to someone else, I was talking about JET... Are you even reading my posts at all?
JT-60 did D+D in the 1990ies and would have achieved break even with D+T.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT-60
Problem was that it had not been for the fact that it was never designed to do D+T and in contrast to JET probably can not be refit.
It is now being refit to do supporting experiments for ITER/DEMO with D+D at break even conditions with high beta plasmas lasting 100 seconds or more (JT-SA).
http://www.jt60sa.org/pdfs/JT-60SA_Res_Plan.pdf

ladajo
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by ladajo »

Are you even reading my posts at all?
Well, to be honest, not really. Mostly you sound like you are quoting wikipedia or something. It comes across as uninformed factoids.
I take that to be a sign that you do not have access to real research or real researchers other than what you find outside of paywalls.
So, I don't actually fully engage with what you are saying. I pretty much am writing off the cuff when responding. I don't give it a lot of thought, sorry.

Bottom line, there is no machine that has demonstrated Q>1 after decades of trying.
Understanding how to put together a Q>1 machine is STILL the primacy of research.
Any "research team" that professes they are skipping to the end are engaged in misleading marketing in pursuit of backing.

Even once we can demonstrate Q>1, the ability to build a viable machine in support of mankind remains suspect at best given the knowledge gaps in materials science and engineering to do so. It is well the probability that ITER and the follow on DEMO will see further delays in order to allow science to catch up to the concept.

As you peruse the glossy brochures, you can't seem to fully grasp just how hard this problem is. Even the best contender from a proven science standpoint for compact concepts is at best a <50% probability of success for the next stage which will demonstrate theoretical Q>1 conditions. No other compact project has published data or accomplished experimentation to support a similar or better position for next step. You seem to have a lot of misplaced faith that is not backed up by real science on the table.

Best bet overall, ITER to DEMO backed up by existing research plants (JET, JT60, etc.) doing plasma management and materials work in an effort to mitigate knowledge gaps in time for ITER and DEMO.
Next best bet, based on demonstrated science: Polywell with its next step to demonstrate (e-) efficiency sufficient to support Q>1 conditions. Not guaranteed, but with a less than one magnitude single step chance of success, which is better than the rest.
How close is any other compact project to demonstrating conditions for Q>1? And how do you know?
All the worrying about maintenance and cost is pointless without a workable or working machine. Prove the principle, then see how you can manifest it in the market.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Skipjack
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by Skipjack »

ladajo wrote: It comes across as uninformed factoids.
I take that to be a sign that you do not have access to real research or real researchers other than what you find outside of paywalls.
Coming from the guy that does not seem to know the difference between JET and JT60 that is actually quite funny.
ladajo wrote: Even the best contender from a proven science standpoint for compact concepts is at best a <50% probability of success for the next stage which will demonstrate theoretical Q>1 conditions. No other compact project has published data or accomplished experimentation to support a similar or better position for next step. You seem to have a lot of misplaced faith that is not backed up by real science on the table.
I dont know, I am reading a lot of papers and I get a different impression.
ladajo wrote: Best bet overall, ITER to DEMO backed up by existing research plants (JET, JT60, etc.) doing plasma management and materials work in an effort to mitigate knowledge gaps in time for ITER and DEMO.
Among the ITER participating Tokamaks, JET will be first to do a Q>1.
ladajo wrote: Next best bet, based on demonstrated science: Polywell with its next step to demonstrate (e-) efficiency sufficient to support Q>1 conditions. Not guaranteed, but with a less than one magnitude single step chance of success, which is better than the rest.
And you base this on what exactly? I am not saying that Polywell does not have a good chance. I very much think it does have a good chance. Their big problem is that they have to yet get funding for their next machine and experiments. Other competitors already have funding. Without funding they are infinitely far away from achieving a Q>1.
ladajo wrote: How close is any other compact project to demonstrating conditions for Q>1? And how do you know?
You would be surprised about the amounts of information (papers presentations, etc) that you can find online (much of it linked in this forum). Of course being able to talk to people in person sometimes helps as well.
ladajo wrote: Prove the principle, then see how you can manifest it in the market.
I guess it is a matter of personal priorities. Do you care more about the science and engineering or do you care more about having a marketable product?

ladajo
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Re: Tokamak Energy news

Post by ladajo »

Skip,
I don't fully read what you write after I determined that you are likely plagiarizing and not really having in depth original thought.
So, yes, I was not fully paying attention when responding to your posts, and mixed up what you were attempting to talk about regarding JET and JT60 work.

The bottom line is that neither project, nor the others working to support ITER/DEMO are setting up with a research primacy to achieve demonstrated Q=>1.
You are making suppositions, just like the sourcing you are using. And in some cases, based on your tempo and content mismatches, appear to even be plagiarizing.
I wonder if I took the time to search a couple of your mismatched writing styles, that it would come up with you lifting directly from some source and presenting as your own words and thoughts. Just saying; looks suspicious.
skipjack wrote:
ladajo wrote:How close is any other compact project to demonstrating conditions for Q>1? And how do you know?
You would be surprised about the amounts of information (papers presentations, etc) that you can find online (much of it linked in this forum). Of course being able to talk to people in person sometimes helps as well.
Answer the question. Show me.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

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