PR: OpenStar launches formal collaboration with MIT ... in quest to build New Zealand's first fusion energy device.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. That's a whole science in itself

https://news.mit.edu/2024/more-durable-metals-fusion-power-reactors-0819

More durable metals for fusion power reactors
MIT researchers have found a way to make structural materials last longer under the harsh conditions inside a fusion reactor.

Nancy W. Stauffer | MIT Energy Initiative
August 19, 2024

For many decades, nuclear fusion power has been viewed as the ultimate energy source. A fusion power plant could generate carbon-free energy at a scale needed to address climate change. And it could be fueled by deuterium recovered from an essentially endless source — seawater.

Decades of work and billions of dollars in research funding have yielded many advances, but challenges remain. To Ju Li, the TEPCO Professor in Nuclear Science and Engineering and a professor of materials science and engineering at MIT, there are still two big challenges. The first is to build a fusion power plant that generates more energy than is put into it; in other words, it produces a net output of power. Researchers worldwide are making progress toward meeting that goal.

The second challenge that Li cites sounds straightforward: “How do we get the heat out?” But understanding the problem and finding a solution are both far from obvious.

Research in the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) includes development and testing of advanced materials that may help address those challenges, as well as many other challenges of the energy transition. MITEI has multiple corporate members that have been supporting MIT’s efforts to advance technologies required to harness fusion energy.

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Typically, the “container” is a magnetic field, which keeps the hot plasma away from the metal walls of the reactor.


The other approach, “inertial confinement” does not attempt to maintain an ongoing reaction. “Thermonuclear weapons” were essentially the first use of “inertial confinement.” An “atom bomb” is used to provide the tremendous heat and pressure necessary to “fuse” the fuel, releasing a tremendous amount of energy. The challenge is how to harness that energy for practical use.

The much vaunted LLNL fusion device uses several powerful lasers simultaneously hitting a target from multiple directions, instead of an atom bomb to provide enough heat and pressure, to fuse a small amount of fuel.

Essentially, they’re setting off a tiny bomb, within the confines of a huge machine. The “National Ignition Facility” was never intended to be a power plant. Its intended purpose was to simulate a bomb. (It allows weapons testing, without testing weapons.)

It’s conceivable that this model could be used to produce electricity by driving a steam turbine, and companies are working on it.