3-D Model of a Stellarator Plasma

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Dennis P Brown
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3-D Model of a Stellarator Plasma

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Look's like a successful model used for Tokamak's has been extended to 3-D for stellarators. This model will be used with the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator to test an idea to reduce plasma turbulence by about half. The X-7 will be used to experimentally confirm (or prove otherwise) whether this model is useful as designed for this device. If so, this will allow for more rapided testing of plasma's in this device. This could be very useful and make fusion using these devices more likely.

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-simulatio ... asmas.html
Frank Sanns
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Re: 3-D Model of a Stellarator Plasma

Post by Frank Sanns »

I was expecting a large red spot to appear. Sure looks like the atmosphere of Jupiter. If it doesn't help for fusion, it may better explain the turbulences of the largest Jovian atmosphere.
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
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Richard Hull
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Re: 3-D Model of a Stellarator Plasma

Post by Richard Hull »

Models and test runs in the mathematical virtual world mean something only to those who create them. The real world does its thing without caring about models or virtual successful runs. Until something like the stellarator or ITER or a good cold fusion experiment creates over unity fusion energy, they are all on an equal footing in my world and that footing is failed, failed, and failed. That is why cold fusion is equal to a stellarator or ITER. None of them do fusion of any value beyond the next experiment or iteration after the current one like all that preceded, fails. They all rely on taking another stab at grabbing the brass ring, next time around. Fusion....The perfect carrot hung out in front of the donkey to keep him moving towards the impossible goal.

Get something over unity running for 24 hours continuously for just 1 week without shut down and then we are off to the races with electrical power to the grid following within 80 years from that 1 week, 24-7 run. ITER succeeding in doing this for 20 Billion dollars will then lead to "DEMO" 20 years later actually producing electricity that will, ( as planned), not be distributed for probably only 10 billion dollars. Finally 10 years after DEMO an effort to make a usable fusion power plant for under 2 billion dollars will be made. When fission plants are a hundred million and a well understood technology. Coal plants are very cheap to build, Gas plants are also cheap to build.

Renewables are a joke until gigawatt energy storage is fully in hand. Even then, renewables will never displace fossil and nuclear. Many, many years into the future.

Everything above absolutely relies on a world-wide, totally stable, first world economy and an overall peace in the world. (small 100,000 death wars in the third world will not upset the applecart.) To stop energy progress of the type we envision above, a global war of billions dead would bring the thirst for energy way down, and kill all development until whoever is left crawls out of the rubble. Renewables might be the first early localized energy after the total collapse, but once a slight semblance of stability returns, fossils would, of course, be king.

I did not mean that only a global war would put off energy research. Mass starvation in first world countries would do it. the climate change folks might be right and the earth could wipe out food stuffs, crops and inundate arable lands or all of this could bring on the wars. No telling what kind of gotcha's are already afoot in any number of insidious, yet unseen forms.

Brilliant virtual smooth running models and an "we almost got there" in such an aftermath will not mean much as we huddle around a fire, burning wood we just chopped, so we won't freeze to death. That would be the glorious energy of that day!

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Pablo Llaguno
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Re: 3-D Model of a Stellarator Plasma

Post by Pablo Llaguno »

Interesting thoughts Richard...

Having read these past months about the economics of electricity generation I also agree that the challenge is not only in getting a Fusion reactor that can generate electricity reliable (a huge challenge in itself) but getting it to produce electricity in an ever more difficult to compete market. Gas prices are at record lows, new fossil plants are still being built and big nuclear plants are getting delays and cost overruns.

There's also the issue of needing more flexibility, a combined cycle plant allows you to do load following and places with high penetration of variable renewables need this (duck curve...). For fusion to be a commercially successful technology it will need to be economical to run with this kind of flexibility, aka, lower capacity factors. This won't make much sense if your technology's fuel is very cheap ($/MWh) but is very capital intensive.

Hopefully all these fusion projects learn of the hard truths of today's electricity market, such as why new nuclear (fission) projects are having such a hard time, and act upon it on their designs. If fusion is to be the holy grail of technology that it's promised to be, it will need to be able to do so economically.
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: 3-D Model of a Stellarator Plasma

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The stellarator design as I have said is never going to provide electric power within orders of magnitude as cheap as fossil fuels assuming it even works. What the W7-X is likely to do is prove that a reactor grade plasma can be heated and held for thirty minutes. Relative to this goal, this proposed plasma modeling software - if proven by real world experiments conducted by the W-7x - would allow this process to go much faster. Like all models, it is vapor ware until real experiments prove it can accurately predict what is being seen. This is exactly what is being proposed now that the new code has been modified - since it does work for real plasma's in tokamaks I see why it is being reworked; but whether it does work for stellarators will soon be seen.

In a realistic world, people use science to decide the best approach but that isn't even possible for something as critical and obvious as the Covid disease; doing this for something that generates massive cash flow for the wealthy like oil & coal is even more difficult. So the likelihood is more inline with Richard's forecast.
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Richard Hull
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Re: 3-D Model of a Stellarator Plasma

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I can cast the negative view with ease as past evidence of mankind, his works and his progress tend to flow that way. Plus, I have no skin in the game. (no children to worry over) I do wonder for those who have children. What will their world will be like and even their children's children. I am not without feeling. I am just a person who, like Pablo, sees beyond the dream into the economics of anything competing with current systems, and how all future energy efforts that are difficult need time and the expenditure of the treasure of nations to solve. This time must be a peaceful time, not horribly stressed to the point that chasing the dream is forced to take a back seat so distant that the effort effectively dies. I fear my generation has been fortunate to live in the best of socio-economic times.

Controlled, power producing Fusion is one of the most difficult undertakings by mankind.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Rich Feldman
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Re: 3-D Model of a Stellarator Plasma

Post by Rich Feldman »

Natural gas prices are at historic lows because of fracking, and misguided federal approach to "energy independent USA".
That means we are depleting our fixed reserves faster than ever. Short sighted, kind of like cutting taxes so USA is borrowing money from China faster than ever.

My city council is going to vote tonight about adopting new 2020 building code,
with a controversial "reach" provision that would ban natural gas water heaters and furnaces in new construction.

I support measures that will reduce the demand for natural gas, sooner or later. Don't care if that means higher prices.
Leaves more in the ground for important uses in 2050 and 2080, when the stuff might be too precious to burn for heat.
I think a substantial fraction of the natural gas Earth produced, for benefit of mankind, has been flared off at wellheads in Arabia & other far away places.
All models are wrong; some models are useful. -- George Box
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: 3-D Model of a Stellarator Plasma

Post by Dennis P Brown »

While I agree we are burning through our natural gas supplies and saving it makes sense, the banning of natural gas water heaters will, overall, result in far more natural gas being 'wasted". New power plants tend to be natural gas (and I read coal plant systems will no longer be manufactured by GE.) Then do the thermo calculation of how much energy is lost when gas is used to generate the required amount of electricity, and the plant then needs to send the electrical power to the house (more loss) vs. a home that burns natural gas directly. You will see that home use uses significantly less gas. So the logic to ban such devices is exactly the opposite of its supposed goal.

Back to the thread. One thing I will add: what I was doing in this thread was showing that there are 'models' that actually work for real world systems in plasma physics (in this case, the tokamak.) If it works for the stellarator, that device (in this case the W-7x) will beable to advance far faster to its goal of operating a power plant density plasma at temperature for a full thirty minutes. This will demonstrate that this approch is likely the most mature and only one able to achieve real net energy fusion compared to any current plasma based approch (looking at you, ITER and every other tokamak system.)

That all said, this approch, while likely cheaper than a tokamak if built would be far more expensive than any fossil fuel plant (excluding long range costs buried in free use of the atmosphere which humanity will pay trillions for in the not too distant future - while a real cost, we ignore that both as a society and as short sighted profit gain.) So if the W-7x achieves its goals it is highly unlikely that anything beyond a test proto-type fusion plant ever gets built. Then even if that works/exhibits large net gain, after the real cost is discovered no way that continues beyond a test bed.

Sadly, nuclear fission is currently too expensive (with cheap gas) to realisticly pursue despite being the most cost effective in the long term.
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