And a little bit of $ for ITER

Aero · Post by **Aero** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 3:12 am

Some may be interested in this. Frankly, it just makes me disgusted.

http://www.physorg.com/news172162391.html

Seven million dollars to study the first wall problem. And I thought Polywell was finally getting some respect. No, the $8 M is just a bone sized tidbit to soothe the savages.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 4:18 am

Yeah. I saw that and couldn't even be bothered to post it here. Let alone do a blog post.

A 10 T machine burning pBj has a very small first wall problem because the wall is magnetized. We may have a second wall problem (the reactor shell) but I think that is tractable.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 10:06 am

Yeah, I think that by this time we all know that the only thing that will ever ignite in ITER is money

jmc · Post by **jmc** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 5:05 pm

Tokamaks have neutron emmissions that are well established, Polywells don't when Polywells produce a similarnumber of neutrons to tokamaks then they'll get the billions.

7 million pounds invested in studying plasma-surface interactions will help a wide array of different fusion approaches.. not just ITER.

TallDave · Post by **TallDave** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 8:45 pm

jmc wrote:Tokamaks have neutron emmissions that are well established, Polywells don't when Polywells produce a similarnumber of neutrons to tokamaks then they'll get the billions.

For tokamaks, the billions came first, then the neutrons.

Also, Polywell probably doesn't need billions anyway.

93143 · Post by **93143** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 8:52 pm

How much did the Soviets spend to get to T-4? It can't have been that much...

KitemanSA · Post by **KitemanSA** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 9:02 pm

jmc wrote:Tokamaks have neutron emmissions that are well established, Polywells don't when Polywells produce a similarnumber of neutrons to tokamaks then they'll get the billions.

7 million pounds invested in studying plasma-surface interactions will help a wide array of different fusion approaches.. not just ITER.

chrismb, you've changed your initials!

Aero · Post by **Aero** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 10:19 pm

And its seven million dollars. That is not so much money as seven million pounds.

TallDave · Post by **TallDave** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 11:19 pm

93143 wrote:How much did the Soviets spend to get to T-4? It can't have been that much...

Hard to tell. Communists weren't very good with budgets, so I guess we can only say it cost "To each, according to his need."

It was apparently the 1000eV that had everyone excited, though.

From this list, I would guess toks have seen ~ $100B in total funding to date, with no prospect of commercial viability in the foreseeable future.

Currently in operation
(in chronological order of start of operations)

T-10, in Kurchatov Institute, Moscow, Russia (formerly Soviet Union); 2 MW; in operation since 1975
TEXTOR, in Jülich, Germany; in operation since 1978
Joint European Torus (JET), in Culham, United Kingdom; 16 MW; in operation since 1983
JT-60, in Naka, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan; in operation since 1985
STOR-M, University of Saskatchewan; Canada in operation since 1987; first demonstration of alternating current in a tokamak.
Tore Supra,[5] at the CEA, Cadarache, France; in operation since 1988
Aditya, at Institute for Plasma Research (IPR) in Gujarat, India; in operation since 1989
DIII-D,[6] in San Diego, USA; operated by General Atomics since the late 1980s
COMPASS,[7] in Prague, Czech Republic; in operation from 2008, previously operated from 1989 to 1999 in Culham, United Kingdom
FTU, in Frascati, Italy; in operation since 1990
Tokamak ISTTOK,[8] at the IPFN - Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal; in operation since 1991
ASDEX Upgrade, in Garching, Germany; in operation since 1991
Alcator C-Mod,[9] MIT, Cambridge, USA; in operation since 1992
Tokamak à configuration variable (TCV), at the EPFL, Switzerland; in operation since 1992
TCABR, at the University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil; this tokamak was transferred from Centre des Recherches en Physique des Plasmas in Switzerland; in operation since 1994.
HT-7, in Hefei, China; in operation since 1995
MAST, in Culham, United Kingdom; in operation since 1999
NSTX in Princeton, New Jersey; in operation since 1999
EAST (HT-7U), in Hefei, China; in operation since 2006
KSTAR, in Daejon, South Korea; in operation since 2008

[edit] Previously operated
LT-1, Australia National University's plasma physics group built the first tokamak outside of Russia circa 1963
T-3, in Kurchatov Institute, Moscow, Russia (formerly Soviet Union);
T-4, in Kurchatov Institute, Moscow, Russia (formerly Soviet Union); in operation in 1968
Texas Turbulent Tokamak, University of Texas, USA; in operation from 1971 to 1980.
Alcator A and Alcator C, MIT, USA; in operation from 1975 until 1982 and from 1982 until 1988, respectively.
TFTR, Princeton University, USA; in operation from 1982 until 1997
CASTOR,[7] in Prague, Czech Republic; in operation from 1983 after reconstruction from Soviet TM-1-MH until 2006
T-15, in Kurchatov Institute, Moscow, Russia (formerly Soviet Union); 10 MW; in operation from 1988 until 2005
UCLA Electric Tokamak, in Los Angeles, United States; in operation from 1999 to 2005
Tokamak de Varennes; Varennes, Canada; in operation from 1987 until 1999; operated by Hydro-Québec and used by researchers from Institut de Recherche en Électricité du Québec (IREQ) and the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS)
START in Culham, United Kingdom; in operation from 1991 until 1998
COMPASS in Culham; in operation until 2001

jmc · Post by **jmc** » Thu Sep 17, 2009 4:46 pm

I think you might have missed out a few of the Spherical Tokamaks

CDX-U In Princeton
HIT University of Washington
PEGASUS University of Wisconsin
GLOBUS-M Ioffe Institute Russia
TS-3 University of Tokyo
TS-4 University of Tokyo
TST-2 University of Tokyo
LATE Kyoto Institute Japan
NUCTE-ST Nihon University
ETE LAP Brazil
ROTOMAK-ST Flinders University Austrailia
HIST University of Hyogo Japan
SUNIST Beijing Lab China

I think another spherical tokamak called QUEST is being built in Japan.
And Kazakstan is planning to build the world's largest spherical tokamak in the next few years.

On the normal Tokamak front I think you missed out TCV in Lausanne Switzerland aswell as TRIAM-1M

There are some other small tokamaks that can be found on this link including two in India, 3 in Iran 1 in Egypt 1 in Libya etc...

http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0029-5515 ... 0254e697c6

Torulf2 · Post by **Torulf2** » Thu Sep 17, 2009 5:47 pm

Are all this machines giving good data for the development of the tokamak technology?
Or as I suspect, in many case are for make the science of the “nation” become in the frontier in “fusion technology”.
Even if the tokamac was a good concept it had been better to spend that money on alternative concepts.

chrismb · Post by **chrismb** » Fri Sep 18, 2009 5:33 pm

KitemanSA wrote:
jmc wrote:Tokamaks have neutron emmissions that are well established, Polywells don't when Polywells produce a similarnumber of neutrons to tokamaks then they'll get the billions.

7 million pounds invested in studying plasma-surface interactions will help a wide array of different fusion approaches.. not just ITER.
chrismb, you've changed your initials!

I'll surely second that post, though!

chrismb · Post by **chrismb** » Fri Sep 18, 2009 5:35 pm

TallDave wrote:
jmc wrote:Tokamaks have neutron emmissions that are well established, Polywells don't when Polywells produce a similarnumber of neutrons to tokamaks then they'll get the billions.
For tokamaks, the billions came first, then the neutrons.

Absolutely not so. There have been many >trillion-fusions per second tokamak-type devices that have cost 'only' 6-figure sums. Take a look at the START project.

TallDave · Post by **TallDave** » Fri Sep 18, 2009 6:10 pm

chrismb wrote:
TallDave wrote:
jmc wrote:Tokamaks have neutron emmissions that are well established, Polywells don't when Polywells produce a similarnumber of neutrons to tokamaks then they'll get the billions.
For tokamaks, the billions came first, then the neutrons.
Absolutely not so. There have been many >trillion-fusions per second tokamak-type devices that have cost 'only' 6-figure sums. Take a look at the START project.

START began in 1991 and used leftover parts. Billions had already been spent.

Polywell probably won't need the 20 years of tokamak funding that led up to START. Most likely it will either be producing net power or discarded as a concept long before it burns through anything like that kind of money.

It's not clear how much START actually cost. I'm not sure I believe "six figures" without a source. That would be a 2-man team and no materials.

chrismb · Post by **chrismb** » Fri Sep 18, 2009 7:03 pm

TallDave wrote:
chrismb wrote:
TallDave wrote: For tokamaks, the billions came first, then the neutrons.
Absolutely not so. There have been many >trillion-fusions per second tokamak-type devices that have cost 'only' 6-figure sums. Take a look at the START project.
START began in 1991 and used leftover parts. Billions had already been spent.

Polywell probably won't need the 20 years of tokamak funding that led up to START. Most likely it will either be producing net power or discarded as a concept long before it burns through anything like that kind of money.

It's not clear how much START actually cost. I'm not sure I believe "six figures" without a source. That would be a 2-man team and no materials.

I'm lead to believe it was GBP100k and 6 people 'part-time'.

Polywell has already had 20 years and $25M. it ain't no spring-chicken-fresh idea any more, just one more to add to the (l)on(g)-going quest for fusion, seemingly futile to date.