Fusion Power - Latest Breakthroughs/Updates

there have been a lot of incredible updates in relation to fusion power but there is also a lot of misinformation as well one common misconception that is going around right now is the q value or energy gain of the reactor if the q value is larger than one then there is an energy gain but the problem is is that most energy inputs are left out and this would include cooling magnetics and even electrical conversion and the actual number is quite a bit lower ether is a really good example of this but this only demonstrates net power gain in the fusion plasma not the net power gain in the entire reactor system ultimately this project has cost billions of dollars and it's not going to produce power anytime soon but fortunately we are researching alternative methods and i think this diversification is going to be beneficial in the end one notable development is the spark reactor from mit and commonwealth fusion system they have recently revealed a very compelling high-powered system once again this is a tokamak design but its most intriguing feature is its high temperature superconducting electromagnet these are very powerful individual units with a recent demo releasing 20 tesla make it to be one of the most powerful magnetic fields created on earth artificially the stronger the magnetic field the stronger containing force on the charged particles in the plasma thus greater efficiency this project still has a long ways to go and operation is not expected until 2025. ultimately it could shed light on the practicality of a highly confined tokamak reactor design another company which is worth following too is tokamak energy and their spherical st40 reactor they have combined a high magnetic field with a low aspect ratio rather than toronto the plasma is more spherical and there could be an advantage to this because you can combine a high magnetic field with a low aspect ratio once again this will utilize the hds magnets for confinement and plans are underway to operate the st40 at 100 million degrees celsius which is necessary for controlled fusion it's still really debatable on whether or not a really efficient high temperature superconducting electromagnet can be the key to these tokamak designs but either way i think we'll find out the next couple decades whether or not these reactors can provide power to the grid there is a really intriguing method of producing fusion and it's called the field reverse configuration this particle accelerator technology injects neutral beams to drive current heat and stabilized plasma for fusion to oversimplify this process you can kind of think of it like an engine with direct electrical conversion there are two notable companies which are focusing on reversed field configuration tae technologies has already come up with their fifth generation platform and it currently produces around 650 experiments a month most importantly their next unit will be designed to operate at the 100 million degree mark for net energy production eventually this could lead to a marketable fusion plant by the late 2020s another notable company worth falling is helion energy its new reactor should be able to handle one fusion pulse per second thus generating a small amount of net electrical energy but it would also produce helium-3 which is a very rare isotope and this could be used in anything from rocket field to quantum computing the company should have the reactor running by 2024 but it is worth noting that it's not going to be supplying power to the grid anytime soon i guess what you can take from this is that we should know if reverse field configuration can actually be a feasible reactor in the future and i think that answer is going to come within the next five years another fusion method involves stabilized dead pinch technology this is often overlooked by mainstream media but ironically this could lead to a feasible compact fusion reactor this method is also a type of plasma confinement which utilizes an electrical current which generates a magnetic field and then this in turn compresses the plasma zap energy is one of these few companies focused on developing this type of fusion power and they are already really close to reaching a q value of one they are far from being dead in the water and they have received more funding for this year there's also the infamous zed machine which provided some valuable data with zed pin shots and they estimated that a feel capsule implosion every 10 seconds could produce 300 megawatts of energy but that has yet to be confirmed and obviously there is magnetized target effusion which you have probably seen me talk about before this particular machine uses steam-powered pistons to compress a metal liquid which surrounds the plasma heat is then transferred back into the liquid metal and eventually used to initiate a steam process to drive a turbine this was a big challenge to tackle before but thanks to computational fluid dynamics this type of system can be accurately controlled now general fusion should have their reactor running by 2025 but once again it will not generate power but if successful this potentially could lead to a new and improved version by 2030 which can provide power to the grid as a conclusion fusion is still an elusive form of power the sd40 and spark reactors are leading the forefront when it comes to conventional tokamak designs and they will eventually probably get to the 100 million degree plasma benchmark which is required for fusion if everything goes absolutely perfect mit and tokamak energy still have to develop new reactors which would output electricity to the grid so we are looking at seven to ten years at least we also have magnetized target diffusion which could be another potential method in producing power general fusion should have their demo plans ready by 2025 but like spark and st40 this will not actually produce power to the grid whether or not it's actually more feasible than a conventional tokamak design with hds magnets is still debatable but it's going to be very interesting to see between these three companies which one actually produces the most net energy gain finally we have field reverse configuration which combines accelerator and plasma physics the frc process is very intriguing because it captures magnetic flux and generates electricity directly through coils so it does not need turbines or superconducting magnets so it potentially could have a big advantage over the other methods die technologies is currently building copper nicus which will run at 100 million degrees celsius within a couple years however they do intend to build another variant which will output power to the grid and this could be completed within eight years helion energy has also made their own claim of reaching 100 million degrees celsius and their polaris variants should output electricity by 2024 so it's very hard to imagine a reactor which can output electricity in just a couple of years but more importantly i would like to know what you think about all this so please leave a comment like the video if you enjoyed it and make sure to subscribe to my channel

Channel: Tech Planet

Views: 368,450

Keywords: fusion, fusion power, new fusion, fusion updates, fusion breakthrough

Id: SGHuLVagKhA

Length: 7min 14sec (434 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 28 2021