DIII-D tokamak simulation

Simulation of a DIII-D Fusion Plasma
by the MHD code NIMROD. DIII-D is the tokamak developed in the 1980s by General Atomics in San Diego, USA, as part of the ongoing effort to achieve magnetically confined fusion. Source- http://fusion.gat.com/global/Movies More info- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIII-D Star Power interactive simulator- http://fusion.gat.com/diii-d_global/simulation/jstar/

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Howto & Style

Tags:

• tokamak
• fusion
• energy
• plasma
• animation
• CGI
• science

[Rajputo]

@DarkTemp0 And from Heavy water reactor where tritium is a by product of D2O absorption.

[DarkTemp0]

@ChrisPCrunchy

tritium is in short supply because it has a short half life of about 12 years, that's why you don't find it in nature. So tritium is made "as nedeed". Tritium is made by neutron activation of lithium. So basically you only need to extract lithium and activate it with neutrons from the reactor to make tritium

[moz1966]

ne tokma ardas yaa

[ChrisPCrunchy]

Deuterium has to be extracted from water. I assume they would use fractional distillation, but I guess the volumes are low enough that the energy involved is not a major factor. Extraction & mining would also add to the lithium & conversion to trituim, I guess they have done the calcs on input fuel costs although isnt Tritium in short supply & therefore very expensive, I was of the opinion that D-T was mainly used in experimentation as it requires lower input energy. Have they looked into Boron

[drandersw]

We don't need He3. We need water and lithium.

If we become very good in the future at confining plasmas and find a way to actually do direct conversion to electricity and want to build D-He3 reactors then we could go to the moon and suck up He3. It seems more practical to me to make tritium from lithium and D-T is the easiest reaction to make use of.

[ChrisPCrunchy]

Where did you propose we get the H3 to fuel the reaction. Very little exists naturally on earth. Have you looked into polywell yet. What are your thoughts?

[ChrisPCrunchy]

OK. Thanks for having an open mind and all the Info, it is indeed a fascinating subject that anyone with an interest in science would like to have an involvement in. Sometimes it is hard to get your head around all the issues involved, not just science but politics, finance, etc etc. Enjoy your New Years break. Let me know if you find out anything interesting and take care. Regards ChrisP

[ChrisPCrunchy]

Prof Bussard wanted to test further with WB7 to confirm results prior to failure of unit. Prof Nebel has improved greatly on the concept. Both came up with extremely similar estimates on scaling, time and budget estimates on a full scale plant, but information on progress is hard to obtain, eighter because of prudent professional caution which we can all understand or because of DOD secrecy. It seems to me as DOD funding increases Prof Nebel becomes less open with information on progress.

[drandersw]

Maybe it is useful for tritium production for nuclear weapons or something.

I will look into the matter as best I can about its validity as a concept for a fusion reactor and let you know.

[ChrisPCrunchy]

The concern is exactly as you stated above. The technology is being used for some other purpose or changed in some way to suit the objectives of the DOD. Think of fission and how it was weaponised before it was ever considered for peaceful purposes. What if polywell is being hijacked to make some type of a weapon instead of power generation. Sometimes the source of funding may NOT be benificial to the outcome. DOD funding makes me very uncomfortable & the outcome doubtfull.