Small Tri Alpha news blurp

[Maui]

I was disappointed by target for late 2020s for a commercial demo reactor. Wasn’t it mid 2020s just recently?

[Skipjack]

I think that was for break even. And yes, it seems like their timeline moved to the right a few years.

[mvanwink5]

Norman is supposed to show that they can reach temperature, the next scaled up revision to determine engineering specs, then they build a demo.
A demo late 2020's is huge.

There is enough fossil to not fret.

[Skipjack]

Norman is supposed to show that they can reach temperature, the next scaled up revision to determine engineering specs, then they build a demo.
A demo late 2020's is huge.

There is enough fossil to not fret.

The next reactor, Copernicus will reach break even or higher. Demo will include energy conversion and other things that don't make sense to worry about until you can demonstrate that the whole thing is viable.
I think that Helion will beat everyone to the punch though. Their full scale reactor is scheduled to be ready by the end of the year. We could see them reach break even before the end of 2019. I don't think anyone else is that close. After that, it will be a race between TE, TAE and a few other contenders for second place. In any case, once one of them reaches break even, investors will line up for all of them and then development will accelerate massively. I think we will also see a strong support industry forming. Things like switches and pulsed power supplies, etc, which to my understanding are not always that easy to get off the shelf.

[mvanwink5]

2019! SJ, I hope you are right. ITER will dry up immediately and funding will flow to the others (IMO). There may still be hope for Polywell. So many things will take place with such success announcement.

[Skipjack]

2019! SJ, I hope you are right. ITER will dry up immediately and funding will flow to the others (IMO). There may still be hope for Polywell. So many things will take place with such success announcement.

I don't think that ITER will dry up. Rather, I think that more private investors will jump on the (many) commercial fusion startups. I just hope that we won't see too many "bubble" - startups pop up that should never have gotten funding (like we saw during the whole .com bubble era).

[mvanwink5]

ITER has many contracts funded by tax dollars, yet the size of a plant will be so huge that no utility will build it. Once a reasonable sized fusion reactor is proven, what will be the need to continue funding it?

Investors don't throw money at projects with the time horizon these fusion reactors take to develop, so have no fear of a bubble.

[RERT]

If someone succeeds with 'aneutronic' direct conversion power, then much of the work at ITER on how to deal with massive neutron fluxes, get thermal power out if the reactor, and handling tritium is surely largely moot. They would be solving really tough problems which don't need solutions any more.

[mvanwink5]

There are massive magnets and power requirements to run them that would also be useless. A huge mothball effort.

A great monument to Gruberment idiocy and bloat.

[Crawdaddy]

I once asked the CEO of General Fusion if he was angry at all the waste of funding and effort associated with ITER. He laughed and said: "In terms of the 3 trillion dollar global energy market ITER is an insignificant rounding error." That should either fill us with hope for the amount of resources that will be deployed once aneutronic fusion is demonstrated, or make you depressed when you realize how little effort is being made to implement practical fusion right now.

[Skipjack]

It is not quite that simple. ITER is not just about building the plant in France. The ITER project has employed dozens of research labs all around the world and that research has contributed a lot to our understanding of plasma physics. The simulation software alone has helped a lot of private fusion startups.
What will be interesting is the effect that reactors built by companies like Tokamak Energy and Commonwealth Fusion Systems will have IF they are successful. They are Tokamaks too and they are much more compact and may achieve break even before ITER does.
IMHO, the ITER reactor in France may never become the template for a reactor that produces electricity, but it is not useless. The money spent on ITER is not a whole lot if you look at the big picture. I would still keep the project going, though maybe make some changes to scope and focus.

Also worth noting that even fusion reactors using "aneutronic" fuels like D+He3 will be subject to a flux of neutrons. I cant quite remember the exact number, but at least 5% of the energy released in Helion's Fusion Engine will be in the form of neutrons. That is because they will be "burning" D+D as well in order to produce Helium3. So they will still benefit from material research done at ITER.

[RERT]

That's why I put 'aneutronic' in quotes. 11B+11B is said to lead to an average of one neutron over many cases. There is also p+11B->11C+n, 12C+gamma, and alpha + 11B -> 14N+n or 14C+p. It generally looks like thrifting the 11B in the fuel mix will make for a cleaner burn, as long as you can get the thing lit. I think you would also choose isotopically pure 11B and 1H if you could, though you will still get triton and deuteron production from alpha+11B -> 13C+d and 12C+t.

[Munchausen]

Fresh publication:

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5037079

[Skipjack]

While our current #plasma generator Norman undergoes construction to double the power of its #accelerator #beams, TAE is already siting for the next machine, Copernicus - expected to achieve net energy gain in the early-2020s. More by @b0yle for @geekwire: http://ow.ly/rlxV30lkd79

https://twitter.com/TAE/status/1027254970905554945
Sounds like a confirmation that they expect net energy gain by the early 2020ies.

[crowberry]

Here is one of the many TAE Technologies abstracs at the 60th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics conference:

Abstract: PP11.00080 : Overview of C-2W Field-Reversed Configuration Experimental Program

TAE Technologies’ research is devoted to producing high temperature, stable, long-lived field-reversed configuration (FRC) plasmas by neutral-beam injection (NBI) and edge biasing/control. The newly constructed C-2W experimental device (also called “Norman”) is the world’s largest compact-toroid device andhas the following key upgrades from the preceding C-2U device [1]: (i) higher injected power, optimum energies, and extended pulse duration of the NBI system; (ii) installation of inner divertors with upgraded edge-biasing systems; (iii) fast external equilibrium/mirror-coil current ramp-up capability; (iv) installation of trim/saddle coils for active feedback control of the FRC plasma; and (v) extensive upgrade/expansion of plasma diagnostic capability. C-2W experiments have already produced dramatically improved initial FRC parameters with much higher plasma temperatures (Te>250 eV; total electron and ion temperature >1.5 keV) and more trapped flux inside the FRC immediately after the merger. Plasma duration/lifetime has reached up to ~10 ms via outer-divertor edge biasing. This paper will review highlights of the C-2W program, including recently obtained experimental results.
[1] M.W. Binderbauer et al., AIP Conf. Proc. 1721, 030003 (2016).

http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP18/Session/PP11.80