Aamna Mohdin, writing for Quartz:
German scientists today will set about the first steps towards what has become the Holy Grail of energy—nuclear fusion, which has the potential for unlimited amounts of clean power. There are a number of challenges to harnessing this power—researchers need to build a device that can heat atoms to temperatures of more than 100 million °C (212 million °F).
After almost nine years of construction work and more than a million assembly hours, researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Greifswald are set to do just that by heating a tiny amount of hydrogen until it becomes as hot, hopefully, as the center of the Sun.
Researchers are keen to tap into the incredible amount of energy released when atoms join together at extremely high temperatures in the super-hot gas known as plasma. Today’s test will not produce any energy, just the plasma—a different state of matter created at extremely high temperatures. German chancellor Angela Merkel, who has a doctorate in physics, will reportedly attend.
There’s a lot packed into this post. Fusion is a huge deal. If it becomes practical, it changes the world. We’ve been chasing it for a long time, so don’t hold your breath, but this is another step along the path.
Heating hydrogen until it becomes as hot the center of the Sun. Wow! What could go wrong?
And, finally, Angela Merkel has a PhD in Physics. How cool is that?
Sounds like exactly of Dr. Octopus was created! 🙂
“German scientists today will set about the first steps towards”who writes like this? How about “German scientists will take the first steps toward”. I mean “set about”? Just painful as hell.
Already contacted Aamna to let her know that 100million C˚ is actually 180 million F˚ (plus 32˚). Those quaint American measurements.
Another reason for the anti-science brigade in Congress to hate Merkel.
I had a conversation with the real Dr. Strangelove, Edward Teller, in 1996 at a Civil Defense conference in Grants Pass, Oregon. I was working for the paper in Grants Pass at the time. I asked him about when fusion would become a practical reality and be capable of producing electricity. He said he thought it would happen between 2020 and 2025. Pretty accurate prediction it looks like.
Yup. Saw that right away, as well.
That and, well, “first steps”?
The Soviets had a working (as in “continuously fusing”) fusion reactor in 1968.
We’re well past first steps, and contra the writeup, the problem isn’t “making it hot enough”; it’s getting it to generate enough energy to be self-sustaining.
I’m a lot more sanguine about polywell fusion than Tokamaks (or variants like this stellarator).
I won’t hold my breath for ITER to produce anything other than a nice way to keep ITER funded,
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