
ITER Live: Start of Machine Assembly - RainforestCx
https://youtu.be/2-7GyVLKE6A
======
mrtksn
I recall multiple conflicting stories about how this is the future and how
this is waste of money on a ill conceived giga-project.

I also recall a skunk works reactor that takes radically different approach
(smaller reactors, instead of big) and was supposed to have results if few
years.

[2014]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458339)

Then there are new stories about skunk works being on track.

[https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/lockheeds-skunk-
works...](https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/lockheeds-skunk-works-
building-bigger-fusion-reactor)

~~~
maccam94
IIRC, when ITER was conceived, it wasn't a waste of money. They just chose a
conservative development path that was expensive but very likely achievable.
Technology and theories have since advanced that might leapfrog it, but the
project has still contributed a great deal to our understanding of fusion and
the engineering required to produce it.

Relevant talk by one of the MIT professors working with Commonwealth Fusion
Systems:

Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion? - Prof. Dennis Whyte (2016) -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4)

Timeline (in case you want to skip over some parts):

    
    
      00:01:00 - introducing Dennis Whyte, MIT department head for nuclear science
      00:04:24 - presentation starts
      00:06:00 - identifies breakthrough with REBCO magnets
      00:07:25 - explains deuterium-tritium fusion
      00:12:30 - basic metrics for reactor performance
      00:17:15 - energy output of other previous fusion experiments
      00:19:00 - examines ITER and the problems of its approach
      00:22:00 - problems solved by high energy magnetic fields
      00:28:15 - full scale reactor concept, teardown of REBCO magnets
      00:37:00 - design limits and margins
      00:39:00 - fixes plasma instabilities found in weaker magnetic chambers
      00:40:00 - maintainability, lifespan, component replacement
      00:45:00 - solution to neutron damage and energy capture
      00:50:30 - cost and profitability
      00:54:00 - full graph of field strength vs reactor scale (and thus funding requirements)
      01:01:50 - Q&A
      01:30:00 - question about the biggest risks
    
    

A more recent (2019) talk with more numbers and even more confidence:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY6U4wB-
oYM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY6U4wB-oYM)

~~~
sgift
> Technology and theories have since advanced that might leapfrog it

With "might" being the operative word. As long as none of these new approaches
has achieved viable fusion (so, more power out than in) I think it's not a bad
idea to just continue with the less radical plan that will probably work, even
if it is slower.

~~~
xorcist
ITER is research. There are numerous engineering problems yet to be solved,
plasma physics, materials science, you name it. Research projects are always a
"waste of money" in some way so that particular criticism is neither
surprising nor very helpful.

------
inputmice
Does this mean we are only 10 years away from fusion?

~~~
swebs
No, ITER will not be used as a power plant. Think of it as an experimental
device like the LHC. The findings from ITER will be used to build DEMO which
will be able to output power continuously. And DEMO's findings will be used to
create PROTO, a commercial power plant. Sometime after 2050. Maybe longer.

And if you want to be really technical, we've had fusion reactors for decades,
but ITER should be the first one that produces more energy than it consumes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Station)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTO_(fusion_reactor)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTO_\(fusion_reactor\))

------
waynenilsen
How far behind? How much over budget?

------
DiabloD3
All the while, we have the new company formed out of the work of the SAFIRE
project that uses self-organizing plasma fields that makes traditional
tokamaks look entirely stoneage.

Not only are they doing fusion at a tiny fraction of the power, they're doing
it with a much much much smaller system that is producing heavier elements out
of thin air _while_ having started as just a "sun in a bottle" research system
to understand how the Sun interacts with the electromagnetic field of the
galaxy (and why the 1960s nuclear fusion model of the Sun explains _nothing_
of the past 50-60 years of observations published since).

They did it on basically a shoestring budget, too.

~~~
Zealotux
I really wanted to believe in the SAFIRE project, but it looks like an
embarrassing scam, unfortunately:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmVdPgkudC8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmVdPgkudC8)

Really hope I get proved wrong in the next years.

~~~
DiabloD3
Yeah, I don't get the point of those kinds of Youtube videos. If they think
its a "scam", they should publish a paper on the inability to replicate of the
results.

Instead its just some weird reaction video by some rando on Youtube that has
not cited his sources. The irony of this is, he accuses them of doing the same
thing EU proponents have accused modern Cosmology of doing: filtering out
anything that doesn't fit their narrative, even when its established science
in another field for the past few decades.

The SAFIRE guys aren't cosmologists, they're approaching the problem of the
Sun the same way a plasma physicist would. Literally, they are following in
the footsteps of Hannes Alfvén (the guy that got the Nobel for magneto-
hydrodynamics), and Kristian Birkeland (nominated for a Nobel seven times due
to his work in this field), and continuing their work.

The people who claim that plasma physics has no place in space, in
solar/planet interactions, in galactic/star interactions, etc are, frankly,
insulting both the Nobel committee _and_ the work of NASA for the past 30+
years. They're on the same delusion spectrum that flat earthers are on, just
not quite to that extreme.

I'm not saying SAFIRE is right, but SAFIRE isn't even saying they're right.
They've literally asked for other labs to replicate their results because
they've found a novel way of replicating the Sun's activity in their lab, and
they need to rule out measurement error in ways they haven't already. They are
_seeking_ replication and validation, something scammers don't do.

