The Wendelstein 7-X Stellarator

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
Post Reply
User avatar
Dennis P Brown
Posts: 3159
Joined: Sun May 20, 2012 10:46 am
Real name: Dennis Brown

The Wendelstein 7-X Stellarator

Post by Dennis P Brown »

As I posted a while ago, the 7-X stellarator has meet or exceeded all objectives for its first major campaign (achieve the desired plasma densities that are required for a power plant and maintained for 100 seconds - all records for this type of device.) As such, they have been upgrading it to achieve stable plasma for 30 minutes of continuous operation - limited by cooling only. They recently published a detailed paper on their results and provide a somewhat readable overview of the entire device as well as their experimental results. While heavy going it is well worth looking over for those that doubt fusion energy is at all possible. Certainly not proof but they are well on their way with a real machine that not only functions, but has exceeded expectations - even built within projected cost (!)

The paper can be found at: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.5098761
Post Reply

Return to “Fusion --- Past, Present, and Future”