The promise of fusion power is coming to life in a pioneering lab in Oxfordshire.

The promise of fusion power is coming to life in a pioneering lab in Oxfordshire.

A ring-shaped tokamak device traps a plasma. Larger tokamaks can harness fusion, the reaction that powers the stars. Credit: Tokamak Energy.

I know the Tokamak Energy Science has been around a long time, But this is an interesting development.
Could these devices replace the current power grid in the near future?
Maybe, but not if it takes profits away from the reigning Power Suppliers. With Government Subsidies, maybe they'll change. Any way you look at it, the cost filters down to the tax payer and end user.

Here's the Youtube Video regarding this years Royal Society Science exibition: Faster Fusion by Tokamak Energy.
Faster fusion

originally posted by: imd12c4funn
Could these devices replace the current power grid in the near future?
Maybe, but not if it takes profits away from the reigning Power Suppliers.

You make it sound like energy companies are the be all and end all. They aren't. You think other industries would turn down the opportunity for drastically cheaper power, thus lower overheads in manufacturing? Not a chance.

Can't wait for the day fusion becomes viable. It's been a long road but with such huge potential payoffs it will be worth it.

Interesting, that's in Abingdon, very near here. Hopefully it will be a truly efficient energy that isn't hijacked by multinational greed or government people pocket lining privatisations.

The trouble is, it won't be any cheaper! Monopolies like to keep their monopolies!

Cleaner for sure, but it ain't exactly 'free' energy! But I agree - it is a step in the right direction.

Great!

So, in about 50 years or so, we'll finally get fusion power!

'cause there is always one more niggly thing that needs to be done to get it right...

Great now we just need to nanosize it and we have wearable generators in our clothes FTW!

Sorry but those types of fusion generators are too In effecient and the Lockheed fusion reactors will become standard due to size and simplicity within the time they get the tomos working.

It's an interesting idea. Is any technology too powerful to put into action in rapid time frame? The danger is it'd make a lot of people unemployed because their service or product would become obsolete or unproductive. So they'd be displaced for X time. Some of them would never recover. The more powerful the technology, as it goes, the greater the displacement and potentially the more difficult ti will be for workers to readjust.

Look at machines. In theory, they should have displaced workers. A job that required 10 people could now be done by 1 person with a machine. But the thing is, this didn't all happen overnight. It happened over many decades. So maybe here and there a worker was displaced, but since it was only one or two it wasn't too great a change. If a bunch of workers are out of work overnight, however, then it can become a problem, depending on how long it takes for them to reacquire employment and/or to create new jobs.

If a company owner EXPECTS to be obsoleted by competition then the reasonable choice is to raise prices while possible and save/save/save and prepare to shutdown the business, while formulating new business ideas. So when the business is no longer viable they have a cushion.

For a worker it means to always be prepared to lose your job and to accept whatever is on the table when the time comes--to pay the bills. One must enrich thyself at every opportunity to bolster thee resume.

Sometimes I wonder if our universe has a finger on the "tap", ensuring the inflow of new wonders is at a reasonable rate? A sort of friction or glue or membrane or mass which permeates our progression. One would not want the child to gain ready access to the gun, not until the child is competent. But who/what supervises when humankind gains ready access to potentially destructive forces? Nature? God? I tend to think nature. It's something between order and chaos. It's the eye in the storm.

Can you turn it into a bomb?
There are the big guys and there are the terrorists, two reasons this technology might not make it out.
Aren't there space probes powered by nuclear already?
12.2 trillion watt-hours per square mile per year hits the earth, why can't we see the elephant in the room, so to speak?
I think that someone will one day discover either true magnetic shielding or anti-gravity to produce power.
They will then have to get the info out very quickly, but they will also have a moral dilemma, as mentioned earlier.

a reply to: Esarman

No, that's the beauty of fusion. If the plasma confinement in a tokomak fails, fusion shuts down because the energy is no longer confined to the target.

Actually if any part of a fusion reactor fails, the whole fusion process stops. That's why its so hard to do. You can fuse anything in nature, but more energy is required to squeeze the heavier elements together, they need to be squeezed tighter and harder to fuse. Its why stars die when they have used up most of the material they have to the point of reaching iron.

You could probably create a weapon that uses the energy generated from fusion, but not using the generator itself, not here on earth anyway. It would fissile out like a bad fart in a matter of seconds without all the pressure to do its thing.

I live in oxford too, i have worked on that site quite a bit. Im a carpenter and have done alot of maintenance on all the buildings there including the biggest which hold the fuison generator.
The info iv gathered from that place is the reactor they have there is just a toy to test theories, the bigger one in france is another test to see if they can get more energy out. Then they will build another one that will be the one that supplies the new clean energy. So uless they manage to succeed in build a smaller more better reactor then its going to be another 10 years at least before we see any new fuison power stations.
If you ask me that place is just a place to put all these new students who dont have a job, lots of money to throw away. a reply to: theabsolutetruth

a reply to: Lompyt

It probably is a place for research ATM. If it was more than that it would be known more, they aren't hiring large scale yet. I get the feeling when it is about energy there are a lot of interested parties that are ultra aware of competition and well you know the rest, government pockets, interested companies, yada yada.

a reply to: imd12c4funn

The main problem with our current Tokamak reactor design is being able to produce a magnetic field of sufficient strength and quality to keep the plasma away form the machine walls. Need to perfect the technology before it will ever become mainstream.

And even if these type of devices do enter service don't be getting your hopes up regarding extreme reductions in energy prices for the everyday consumer. Considering water does not cost anything to produce and they still charge us way over the odds for that.

They really need to just release what the pistol shrimp does, cavitation. Humans seem really dim witted, allowing criminals to destroy our world when nature shows us the way. The bubble it releases and puts the HZ shotgun sound through, forces all the molecules to release their energy and inside the bubble temperatures reach that of a star.

They duplicated it in labs and called it, a star in a jar.

That should be powering the entire world.

a reply to: Unity_99

You make it sound like there's been no research into sonoluminescence which is patently false. Shame the quacks have leapt on to this new buzzword as techno jargon to hawk all sorts of fraudulent nonsense.

originally posted by: imd12c4funn
I know the Tokamak Energy Science has been around a long time, But this is an interesting development.
Could these devices replace the current power grid in the near future?

I'm still hoping they can get DPF up to a high-enough temperature to work with Hydrogen Boron fuel. It should also cost a fraction of the price to build one compared to a Tokamak.

DPF + H-B Fuel + direct energy conversion (ie thermoelectric materials etc) = happiness and awesome spaceships!

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: Unity_99

You make it sound like there's been no research into sonoluminescence which is patently false. Shame the quacks have leapt on to this new buzzword as techno jargon to hawk all sorts of fraudulent nonsense.

OMG, its not research. How much research is needed to demonstrate that a sound HZ shot into a bubble causes cavitation and sun's corona temperatures.

What is needed is adaption of technologies, that are clean, inexpensive, can heat homes, run vehicles and power the world, out of this.

And the governments working with projects to put everything over to it.

The repeated hidden little research teams are no longer needed.

This was studied years ago.

And the world should no longer be in the boat its in, savvy?

Implement this.

And lock up any elite that tries to stop it.

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

In Scientific circles, RAL (which is where this sounds like it is) is a national lab, it is fairly well known. The Diamond light source is located on that site, which was (not sure if still is) the most intense light source on the face of the Earth.

Lots of fusion physics is done there. The light source can be used to ignite fuel pellets and attempt to simulate stellar cores.

Its not some mom-n-pop shop

originally posted by: Unity_99
They really need to just release what the pistol shrimp does, cavitation. Humans seem really dim witted, allowing criminals to destroy our world when nature shows us the way. The bubble it releases and puts the HZ shotgun sound through, forces all the molecules to release their energy and inside the bubble temperatures reach that of a star.

They duplicated it in labs and called it, a star in a jar.

That should be powering the entire world.

Yes its true, but energy in usable amounts I the biggest hurdle.
Tried doing energy audit on my invention and believe me energy is a real stumbling block to overcome, if it
got to be made usable, short of having to resort to other dimensions and all the consequent dangers of blowing up
your lab or maybe the entire earth

I dunno I'm gunna side with Yuppa on this one. Lockheed Martin's skunk works says they will have a commercially available fusion reactor that can fit in the bed of a pick up truck in as little as 5 years or so.

Now how it usually works with Lockheeds skunk works. If they claim they'll have it ready in for the public in 5 years. Heck even 15-20 years then that means they already have them operational in the military.

So I'm pretty confident that Lockheed will beat these guys and their ancient tokamak to the first working commercially available fusion reactor.

Fusion reactors small enough to fit in a pick up trucks bed. I'd put it on submarines, drones, oh yeah and fighter jets to power things like lasers. Or AESA. pew! Pew!!