Fusion is one step closer

[HomeBrewerDude]

http://www.madison.com/wsj/mad/top/index.php?ntid=126454


Despite installing a piece BACKWARDS they've had pretty good success:

The scientists have figured out a way, by using a twisting array of magnetic coils, to increase and retain the energy of the plasma in which fusion takes place.

It's a crucial and much- anticipated step toward reaching and maintaining the temperatures needed to achieve fusion in a much larger commercial fusion reactor.

The research team, headed by electrical and computer engineering professor David Anderson and research assistant John Canik, published their work in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

Researchers, after striving for years to reach this point, have allowed themselves to exhale.

"We all thought the machine would do what it's turning out to do," said Anderson, sitting last week with the other researchers in the instrument- and computer-filled HSX lab. "But there are a million reasons why it might not: The theory might be wrong, or we might have built it badly. But everything is panning out and supporting the fact that the ideas on which it was based were correct and really points the way of the future for the stellarator."

 

[everman]

Looks very...odd.

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

Originally posted by: everman
Looks very...odd.

and wiki's:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellarator

 

[ShotgunSteven]

Between your name and the thread title, I was thinking of Young Einstein splitting the Tasmanian Beer Atom.

 

[ForumMaster]

all irrelevent until the energy gained is greater then the energy needed to fuel the reaction. a great step towards clean energy nonetheless.

 

[djheater]

Yep, looks like a spaceship engine to me!

Titan colony, here we come

 

[Jeff7]

I didn't catch anything in the article of just how much of an improvement in efficiency this yielded.

Best of luck to them; in my opinion, fusion will be the solution to the future's energy needs.

 

[harobikes333]

maybe. time will tell