Japanese experimental nuclear fusion reactor inaugurated

How the hell are they going to fit that under the hood of a DeLorean?

gary

Just thinking about the cost for all those balcony platform railings alone!

So many questions in my head that I need to go away and read up on this once again.

What prefecture are they gonna evacuate this time when it all blows up?

lunaticToday 05:38 pm JST

What prefecture are they gonna evacuate this time when it all blows up?

That's the beauty: it probably won't, or at least not spewing radioactive waste. There are experimental fission reactors that are a lot safer as well.

Plus - helium is the biproduct! Imagine how the scientists will sound when they discuss progress.

Getting it to work is the greatest hope for the future.

bravo, Japan and the West work together shaping the world future clean energy! ( dont leak the technology to your commy neighbour, they are expert in stealing it)

"How the hell are they going to fit that under the hood of a DeLorean?"

'they' are NOT going to fit 'that' 'under the hood of a DeLorean'...there are no longer any more DeLorean existant.

A nuclear fusion reactor explodes.

I learned something new.

It is the right thing to do for Japan, which relies on oil resources, to explore new ways to generate electricity.

If nuclear fusion reactors become a reality, we will be able to reduce the number of nuclear power plants.

I'm looking forward to being able to use it as a railgun if it is made smaller.

In the future, I would like it to be made large enough to be mounted on a ship.

Getting it to work is the greatest hope for the future.

Perhaps. But, as Arthur Eddington said, “[U]nlimited energy means unlimited power for war and destruction.” Our problem is in our very souls, not our machines.

They want to power a space ship with this technology Fusion Engines  One disadvantage is that conventional electricity production requires a low-temperature energy sink, which is difficult (i.e. heavy) in a spacecraft. Direct conversion of the kinetic energy of fusion products into electricity mitigates this problem.

lunaticToday  05:38 pm JST

What prefecture are they gonna evacuate this time when it all blows up?

Way to announce to the world that you have no idea how nuclear fusion works.

Maybe someday fusion energy will be practical, but we are not close to achieving this technology.

What we are capable of doing, world wide, is Enhanced Geothermal. Just a mile or so under the surface of the Earth, literally everywhere, including Antarctica, Earth is hot enough to run steam turbines. The technology now exists, and is very clean.

Many people here say that a fusion reactor cannot explode. This is straight up false. A nuclear fusion reaction is not a chain reaction, as with nuclear fission, but this does not mean it cannot feed itself back. Particularly, nuclear fusion reactors are an example of a potential thermal runaway. A thermal runaway occurs when some process which is triggered by heat is exothermic itself. This means that, once the process is started, it will release more heat that, if kept contained inside the system, will further increase the thermal conditions for the process to keep on accelerating, eventually leading to a destructive result.

The only fission reactor that exploded was Chernobyl. There has not been a single fusion reactor that has exploded because it cannot happen.

 Fusion reactors cannot explode because these reactions do not involve chain reactions that cannot be stopped.

https://www.iaea.org/topics/energy/fusion/faqs

200 million degrees Celsius

An unimaginable temperature. The centre of the Sun is only about 15 million degrees C.

Fusion reactors cannot explode

I think that generally means they can't cause a radioactive explosion. But they may be prone to more general types of explosion. After all, hydrogen is the key input element.

I Googled the subject so now I'm an expert.

Fusion has its dangers. But better than fission by a long shot.

Why does the title say it's only Japanese when it's a joint project?

The denial of the climate crisis is stupid and suicidal. Our knowledge of physics and system theory tells us that in the wake of the inputs inserted by humans the climate system has become nonlinear and unstable. This system is full of malignant positive feedback loops that push it away from equilibrium. There are no stabilizing mechanisms whatsoever that can keep the climate system in equilibrium. But there is no need to be an expert: The rapid rise in temperature and humidity is visible to the naked eye. The catastrophic loss of our planet and the ultimate extermination of humanity are very near. There may still be a remedy: Getting out very rapidly from energizing ourselves from carbon, and moving on to a new era of energizing ourselves from the sun's radiation and from nuclear reactions. That is easy to do, and should have been done a long time ago. However, there are powerful social forces that fight vehemently against this simple and obvious cure and against the attempt to salvage the planet and the human race. These enemies of the planet claim that moving to modern transportation based on electricity will ruin our society. These devils do not explain how can the usage of efficient, high performance and enjoyable electric cars ruin our society? And what society will remain when the temperature rises to hundreds of degrees Celsius and all the oceans boil and become steam?

Can’t be used for spacecraft. You have to expel mass. That pesky physics thing.

People have been working on tokamak devices since the early 1960’s. Practical, working fusion was 40 years away. It’s always 40 years away.

Conservation of energy has yet to be defeated. The “net energy gain” at Livermore was like a TikTok sciencey post. They did not include the massive energy used to fire the lasers. There was no gain of the total system.

A good representation would be input 100 units total to get 0.0001 energy out. A solar panel can get 20% efficiency. It got 0.0001% efficiency.

The six-story-high machine, in a hangar in Naka, Ibaraki Prefecture, comprises a donut-shaped "tokamak" vessel set to contain swirling plasma heated up 200 million degrees Celsius (360 million degrees Fahrenheit).

O_o

What could possibly go wrong?

Researchers at ITER, which is over budget, behind schedule and facing major technical problems, hope to achieve nuclear fusion technology's holy grail, net energy

.

Nothing new there.

lvis is hereDec. 2 08:07 pm JST

I Googled the subject so now I'm an expert.

Fusion has its dangers. But better than fission by a long shot.

That's great. Let us know when the fusion gets here. Until then, fission it is, unless you live on a fault line.

Probably still decades away from achieving success but safer than fission reactors.

Probably. I've read other posters say the exact same thing.!. The knack is a simple energy balance (chemical eng undergrad 101) to get the energy input to be less than the energy output. That's the mechanical success. Good news is progress is being made.

A failure would be if it means that efforts to clean the planet up in other ways will be neglected.

In theory fission power could be of benefit, if we can get it to work and more importantly if it can be done economically without the massive subsidies out of the public purse which is the only thing that has kept the nuclear fusion energy business going.

The only fission reactor that exploded was Chernobyl

On 11 March 2011, three reactor cores exploded, releasing the highest amount of radioactivity in the environment since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The country was Japan. I was here and indirectly experienced it. I'm surprised at your over-sight on this.

There were no reactor explosions at Fukushima on 3/11. In reactor buildings 1,2&3 there were hydrogen explosions badly damaging the buildings and plants in them.

Hydrogen-air explosions in Units 1, 3, and 4 caused structural damage.

There were no explosions inside the reactors like what happened at Chernobyl. Reactor 1,2&3 went into meltdown because of the lack of cooling liquids. The reactor containment vessels remain intact but were probably damaged by the earthquake and the hydrogen explosions. They have cracks that leak cooling water into the basements and contaminate the groundwater in them.

The high levels of released radiation came from the meltdowns and not from any exploding reactors.

The steel and concrete reactor caps have molten fuel on the inside side producing radiation levels above 15 Sieverts. It will be very difficult to remove them which will be necessary to remove the molten fuels. The No2 cap is ajar releasing high levels of radiation into the building.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident.aspx#:~:text=Following%20a%20major%20earthquake%2C%20a,beginning%20on%2011%20March%202011.

lol! Big ba da boom.!.

There are several major investigations and reports describing what happened at Fukushima.

Fukushima

Analysis of the hydrogen explosions.

https://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu17_e/images/171225e0217.pdf

This technology has been 15 years away for the last 30 years. Progress is being made, but it's expensive and slow. Maybe Japan will be the first to figure it out. Then, it will be time to miniaturize it. Japan has always been good at that.

Excellent...

GO JAPAN..

For example... Lol!!..

What prefecture are they gonna evacuate this time when it all blows up?

That's the beauty: it probably won't, or at least not spewing radioactive waste. There are experimental fission reactors that are a lot safer as well.

>

If the creation of energy is similar to the sun, shouldn't humans be sending more probes like the Parker Solar Probe to gather more data rather than going to space to create space tourism? We are a dumb species.

wow!

We've had nuclear fusion since the 1950s, just in a highly destructive way. Generating power that can be used, captured, stored, is the real challenge. I wish them luck and speed. Would be nice if we could buy a clock-sized fusion electric generator to power our homes for 50+ yrs for $1000.