Energy might be soon limitless and clean; scientist succeed expieriment

[Melech 9,900]

"The 16-metre-wide machine is the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) and it's a type of nuclear fusion device called a stellarator. Scientists have been talking about the enormous potential of stellarators for decades, but this is the first time a team has shown that it can produce and control plasma just as well as other fusion reactor designs. 

On 10 December, the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics tweeted out thisincredible image of its new machine's first plasma:

Nuclear fusion occurs when atoms fuse together at incredibly high temperatures and generate energy, and the reason scientists are so excited about it is because it has the potential to produce an almost-unlimited supply of energy from little more than salt water. This is the same process that's fuelled our Sun for the past 4.5 billion years, and is predicted to continue doing so for another 4 billion years.

Unlike nuclear fission, which powers today's nuclear power plants, nuclear fusion also doesn't produce any radioactive waste, and is a whole lot safer.

But it's also been incredibly tricky for scientists to achieve, because it requires them to construct a device that can produce and control a 100-million-degree-Celsius blob of plasma.

The key to controlling plasma is using superconducting magnets, and scientists have already built several working doughnut-shaped fusion reactors known as tokamaks.

But there's a big problem with tokamak reactors – they can only maintain plasma for a maximum of 6 minutes and 30 seconds at a time, which isn't long enough to harvest significant energy. In other words, we've already been able to achieve nuclear fusion, but it consumed way more energy than it generated.

And this is why the launch of the stellarator is so exciting, because it's predicted that the device will be able to control plasma for an unheard-of 30 minutes at a time.

In its first run, the machine was filled with helium – an unreactive gas – heated with a laser to around 1 million degrees Celsius. This plasma was maintained for around one-tenth of a second, which may not sound like much, but was enough to show the machine works.

"We’re very satisfied," said Hans-Stephan Bosch, who led the team. "Everything went according to plan."

The next step will be to increase the duration of helium plasma discharges, with the ultimate goal of building them up to 30 minutes in length. In January, the scientists will start trying to produce plasma from hydrogen, which is what would be used in a functioning nuclear fusion machine."

http://www.sciencealert.com/german-has-just-successfully-fired-up-a-revolutionary-nuclear-fusion-machine

 

[Raikou 1,169]

This is obviously too good to be true and the reddit experts will tell us how.

 

[Nino 12]

I might soon leak Act II and become a billionaire for doing absolutely nothing. 

[FlopSlurper 34,336]

2 minutes ago, Nino said:

I might soon leak Act II and become a billionaire for doing absolutely nothing. 

or leak it now and become a hero by saving millions of thirsty poor souls

[Didymus 34,380]

Sounds like something no one will want to invest in.

[Melech 9,900]

1 minute ago, Didymus said:

Sounds like something no one will want to invest in.

Ofc not, it would totally destroy all the capitalistic energy companies. 

[Nemo 4,410]

Fusion's been "30 years away" for about 50 years now, so I'm not holding my breath for this.

But, there's one useful fusion reactor in our solar system already, and we know how to use it:

 

[Sunny 12,753]

rip economy if it works (for a longer period of time)

I would love it to work tbh 

[Slayer 9,227]

such profitable

much realistic

happen definitely 

wow

[Melech 9,900]

46 minutes ago, Sunny said:

rip economy if it works (for a longer period of time)

I would love it to work tbh 

We all know what happens then

 

 

 

[AbuHassan1992 766]

I'm still still short of fusion cores tho

[Economy 52,857]

5 hours ago, Raikou said:

This is obviously too good to be true and the reddit experts will tell us how.

 

Simple. Takes almost as much energy to make it happen as the energy you get out of it

 

if they can improve it further tho it has a lot of potential. Plus its clean!

[Woolfsmck 2,763]

On 12/12/2015 at 5:05 PM, Economy said:

Simple. Takes almost as much energy to make it happen as the energy you get out of it

 

if they can improve it further tho it has a lot of potential. Plus its clean!

That's one of the goals is to get nuclear energy without waste contamination.  Plus they are using hydrogen as fuel so like 70% of the earth surface has some...8-)

 

[AlphaMonster 1,806]

On 11.12.2015 at 3:04 PM, Simon said:

We all know what happens then

Communism would be great if humans could actually make it work which seems not realistic considering how past experiences of communism were... I do not think very cheap, limitless energy is enough to make communism viable. We should invent droids that can do everything for us, and more robots to maintain them, and more robots to maintain, maintaining robots etc 

[Melech 9,900]

55 minutes ago, AlphaMonster said:

Communism would be great if humans could actually make it work which seems not realistic considering how past experiences of communism were... I do not think very cheap, limitless energy is enough to make communism viable. We should invent droids that can do everything for us, and more robots to maintain them, and more robots to maintain, maintaining robots etc 

Yeah. Communism would totally fail at the moment  Capitalism is too manifested in basically everything. But maybe in some day in the future