Clean, Abundant Energy: Fusion Dreams Never End

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/science/fusion-energy-iter.html

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A. There is a famous joke among scientists: The practical use of the fusion of hydrogen atoms to produce energy is only 20 or 30 years in the future — and always will be.

But it does seem progress is being made. The largest and most expensive research effort is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. A multinational effort headquartered in France, ITER has a doughnut-shaped chamber called a tokamak that will eventually hold a plasma of hot ionized atoms constrained by very strong magnetic fields.

The next major step will be the arrival in 2019 of the first of the project’s huge magnets, now being fabricated in Japan. The magnets are needed to generate and contain the extreme temperatures necessary to fuse atomic nuclei and to produce energy without the harmful environmental effects of today’s technologies.

A smaller fusion experiment, called Sparc, is being designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It will rely on smaller, stronger magnets, which in theory will reduce the amount of energy needed to produce short but powerful bursts of heat.

In order to shed this heat so that it does not destroy the device’s containment chamber, scientists are contemplating construction of a long “exhaust pipe” of strong secondary magnets, placed inside the main coils rather than outside. The modular design would permit the magnets to be removed in sections for maintenance and precise placement.

Some of the scientists involved have suggested that the Sparc design could bring success within 15 years, but others cautioned that this hope was still far too optimistic.

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