/r/fusion
Discussion and news on advancements in the field of nuclear fusion energy and related technologies.
Nuclear Fusion on Reddit
Focused on advancements in the field of nuclear fusion.
Submissions should be related to nuclear fusion or plasma physics as currently understood by the scientific community.
Nuclear fusion is a nuclear reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei collide together at a very high speed and form a new nucleus. For light elements like hydrogen or helium the fused nucleus weights less than the sum of the original nucleus. The missing mass is released as energy in accordance with Einstein's mass-energy equivalence equations. Fusion is the process that powers active or "main sequence" stars.
Current mainstream approaches include:
Magnetic confinement, used in tokamak, spheromak and stellarator designs
Inertial confinement, used at the National Ignition Facility
Electrostatic confinement, used by the fusor and Polywell devices
Magnetized target fusion and Magneto-Inertial fusion, hybrid approaches used by General Fusion and Helion Energy
Related:
/r/fusion
25,449 Subscribers
Why not just say “screw it, let’s skip SPARC and go for ARC”?
Obviously, this is not exactly a prudent decision, but, if you want to win, then perhaps you need to just go for it. Let’s discuss! Looking forward to the downvotes.
01:30 UTC
Secondary K-12 Introduction to Fusion Energy (Musings)
BACKGROUND
The FIA posting last week about Workforce Opportunities and Supply Chains ...
https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/comments/1hbao8t/fia_outlines_fusion_workforce_opportunities_and/
had me thinking about efforts within the Quantum Computing community to entice Secondary K-12 students into pursuing paths leading to knowledgeable future employees.
This article is what originally caught my attention ... along with a related example:
https://scitechdaily.com/learn-quantum-physics-easier-with-this-breakthrough-approach/
What we can learn about quantum physics from a single qubit
https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.1463 abstract
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.1463 pdf
It seems there are a bunch of pre-packaged classes and curricula which different countries around the globe have developed and are sharing with each other. Everything from games and virtual labs to actual building out experiments with optical tables and breadboards. Examples ...
Material and Tools: Primary and Secondary School
https://qtedu.eu/material-and-tools/primary-and-secondary-school
How High Schools Teach Quantum Physics
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v12/s61
Analysis of secondary school quantum physics curricula of 15 different countries: Different perspectives on a challenging topic
https://journals.aps.org/prper/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.15.010130
From light polarization to quantum physics: Supporting lower secondary school students’ transition from gestalt to functional thinking
https://www.ejmste.com/download/from-light-polarization-to-quantum-physics-supporting-lower-secondary-school-students-transition-14587.pdf
Some textbooks also have content and experiments which could be easily adapted for such classes, for example "Experimental Physics: Principles and Practice for the Laboratory" by W.F. Smith.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48817167-experimental-physics
Google Books preview incl cover, toc, chapters with selected text, etc.
https://books.google.com/books?id=-svXDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=true
QUESTIONS
I'm assuming there are similar efforts afoot for attracting younger students towards Fusion? Most of the Workforce Development type docs that I've seen, they seem to be more targeted to advanced University or Grad School or PostDocs sted K-12. Ditto for most Intern type positions. To me the Quantum folks seem to me to be really thinking outside the box here ... very ambitious!
Some of the Quantum experiments seem directly applicable (e.g., Optics). If you were back in High School, what concepts do you wish you would have learned? (sans all the advanced maths)
There was that earlier article about the teen who wanted to build a fusion reactor, but supervisory and safety considerations resulted in their scaling back and building of a fusor to avoid irradiating their classmates. :)
https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/comments/1f14xoj/nuclear_fusion_reactor_created_by_school_teenager/
https://www.ans.org/news/article-6304/teenagers-school-project-achieves-plasma/
https://fusor.net/board/viewtopic.php?t=14933
That would probably be prohibitively complex for most Secondary / K12 programs ... but with the Virtualized Labs it seems more plausible. What experiments would you have liked to have seen/done back then?
My own High School instruction for Physics was pretty limited (essentially boring rote equations which didn't help prepare me at all for university and grad school ... it was a steep learning curve / vertical rockface when I got there).
I'm curious how others fared and what would have helped prep for what you are doing now (for those working in the Fusion field).
Thanks in advance for your thoughts/musings!
CU96
20:05 UTC
CFS announces Chesterfield Virginia as the site of ARC
19:44 UTC
ENN's EXL-50U
With a sharp conflict between the planned Ti/Te and the calculated Ti/Te achievable through fusion heating
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2058-6272/ad9e8f/pdf
While
https://www.alphaxiv.org/abs/2401.11338v3
and
08:58 UTC
Linkedin: New insider videos of Helion's capacitor manufacturing and production line
19:12 UTC
Zap Energy wins Techcrunch's most disruptive energy company
19:09 UTC
Can wakefield accelerators help Tokamak nuclear fusion?
I couldn't find any article or news talking about the possibility, but I was interested on understanding why it isn't useful.
I thought that since the tokamak's confined plasma is already incredibly hot and rotating, the wakefield accelerator would give a extra push to help the ions to collide with each other.
23:47 UTC
Today, Helion failed to get a temporary certificate of occupancy (TCO) for Ursa (the Polaris building) from the city of Everett
TL;DR: Helion is trying to finish as much as possible on Polaris before the end of the year. They've finalized four building and mechanical permits so far this month. This lack of a TCO may be just a paperwork hiccup or a larger issue. We will see.
Ursa was built as a concrete tilt-up shell in late 2021 and early 2022. The contractor obtained a 6-month TCO in May 2022 which was extended that August to February 1, 2023.
A new contractor began work in late 2022 installing a pit for quartz tube production and a new foundation for Polaris and the shield walls. They tried to get the original permit finalized in July 2023, but the parent permit for site work required a landscaping inspection which found that there were 16 dead trees that needed to be replaced.
The notes of today's inspection read: "12/12/2024 3:33:56 PM TCO has expired since 02/2023. Need all documents required for the public works permit."
The contractor had requested an extension of the TCO that had expired almost two years ago. The public works permit referred to is the parent permit. An added complication is that they started construction of a new warehouse on the same lot last year that is ongoing or has stalled so I don't know how that will affect the public works permit. Edit: I just found the landscaping plans and the trees were planted all around the perimeter so I don't think the new warehouse will affect the trees. 96 trees were planted in total and only 16 were dead.
Update: They are getting a landscape inspection on Wednesday, December 18. They also submitted records on Friday of their stormwater covenant and public works easements. These are basically documents that go with the deed to assure that they and future owners of the site must maintain the underground stormwater retention system that was installed when they built the building. It looks like they will get their TCO before the end of the year.
01:14 UTC
Xingneng Xuanguang completed an angel round of financing of 100 million yuan
https://www.webull.com/news/11873754175398912
Xingneng Xuanguang is a fusion energy company that specializes in the development of magnetic mirror fusion path technology. Hefei, Anhui, China
12:04 UTC
MANTA design
Hello there, Does anyone know the distance between the surface of the central solenoid and the Toroidal feild coils, in the negative triangularity NASEM compliant fusion pilot plant, the MANTA design
10:55 UTC
Helion Tritium security risk
Just realized Helion's approach, if succesful, is about to produce a hell lot of tritium. D+D is only 50 percent helium 3, the other 50 percent goes to tritium. If fusion powers the US you're gonna have 100s of ts of tritium per year. Now if you also build lots of fission reactors and couple that with the expansion of heavy water production and wide availability, this could present serious proliferation risk.
The more D-T gas you have the smaller the plutonium pit and lesser the compression from explosive lens there needs to be to have a high efficiency boosted fission bomb (not thermonuclear). It's really the smaller plutonium pit part that's especially dangerous because the D-T gas compensates for the lack of plutonium with higher burn using its own fast neutrons. This could I think easily produce a >30% efficient bomb without a difficult tamper and explosive lens design challenge.
04:51 UTC