Lifeboat Foundation

If “The Stellarator” sounds like an energy source of comic book legend to you, you’re not that far off. It’s the largest nuclear fusion reactor in the world, and it’s set to turn on later this month.

Housed at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) stellarator looks more like a psychotic giant’s art project than the future of energy. Especially when you compare it with the reactor’s symmetrical, donut-shaped cousin, the tokamak. But stellarators and tokamaks work according to similar principles: In both cases, coiled superconductors are used to create a powerful magnetic cage, which serves to contain a gas as it’s heated to the ungodly temperatures needed for hydrogen atoms to fuse.

Continue reading “World’s Largest Fusion Reactor is About to Switch On” »

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This is the world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor launching this month in Germany. And it was designed by a supercomputer…

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This is the energy source that will power the Singularity.

And everything else, too.

Continue reading “Germany is about to start up a monster machine that could revolutionize the way we use energy” »

Researchers are getting ready to turn on the world’s biggest ‘Stellarator’ fusion reactor. Called Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X), the reactor can uninterruptedly contain super-hot plasma for more than 30 minutes at a time. Scientists claim the rare design, which is contained in a giant lab in Greifswald, Germany, can finally help make fusion power a reality. Comprising super-hot plasma for long durations has been the Holy Grail for nuclear reactor designs, and can help researchers to deliver an inexhaustible source of power. Fusion reactors, for instance the W7-X, work by using two isotopes of hydrogen atoms — deuterium and tritium — and inserting that gas into a restraint vessel. Researcher then add energy that eliminates the electrons from their host atoms, creating what is described as an ion plasma, which discharges enormous amounts of energy.

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Some nice photos of odd-looking components.

Germany’s new stellarator was “hell on Earth” to build, but it will be worth it—if it works.

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“Tens of billions of dollars have been spent in the past 60 years, entire careers have been invested, but the ability to produce a commercially viable nuclear fusion reactor remains undemonstrated.”

For 60 years the world’s been waiting for cheap, clean, safe, sustainable power from nuclear fusion. Are we there yet?

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The sun powers itself through nuclear fusion. CNN’s Rachel Crane explores whether we could power everything on Earth the same way.

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An illustration of a tokamak with plasma (credit: ITER Organization)

Fusion reactors could become an economically viable means of generating electricity within a few decades, replacing conventional nuclear power stations, according to new research at Durham University and Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, U.K.

The research, published in the journal Fusion Engineering and Design, builds on earlier findings that a fusion power plant could generate electricity at a price similar to that of a fission plant and identifies new advantages in using new superconductor technology.

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