/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10062312
By 2050 we might now if controlled fusion is technically possible but that's it. A first fusion plant might become operational somewhere around 2100. In China. But it would still be just an expensive money burning test for fusion technology.

>>10047399
Fusion is a scam. Scientists spread this myth. They make impossible promises to get huge amounts of taxpayer money for expensive plasma experiments. That's it.

>>8992119
It has no random instabilities because there's no electricity induced into the plasma.
That same lack of current is also why there's no need to shut down the reactor every once in a while.
So it looks like it overcomes some of the biggest remaining weaknesses of current tokamaks.
I'm not quite sure but it also might be easier to introduce new fuel and remove waste from the plasma.
Overall, the stellerator looks like it might be a charm to keep running for extended periods. All of this is of course going to be researched thoroughly in the coming years.

But ultimately, I agree with you that I'm skeptical of this being viable in the long run.
But then the people involved with it seem to be thinking of the whole thing more as an exercise in ridiculously meticulous engineering instead of the future of energy.
Ultimately, this thing just getting built migh've helped other fusion projects. Either with engineering solutions they had to come up with or generally just by raising demand for materials related to fusion tech. Several of the supplier companies were greatly advanced in the colaborations.
And in general it's a new device to study plasma physics in over extended periods. That might also be neat, I guess.

>>8899320
Climate change sucks. If it were 30 years slower, we could just finish fusion research, build that everywhere and be done with it.

As it stands, we have to start building renewables while they are still economically unviable, because the whole 1.5 or 2 degree goal sort of runs out between 2040 and 2050.
With ITER set to work with Deuterium/Tritium the first time in fucking 2035, fusion just takes too fucking long now.

That German stellarator looks promising to me.
https://phys.org/news/2016-06-scientific-experimentation-wendelstein-x-fusion.html