Korean artificial sun sets the new world record of 20sec at 100M degrees | Hacker News Reader

Korean artificial sun sets the new world record of 20sec at 100M degrees

phys.org

65 pointsNiceWayToDoIT20 comments

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At this rate I’d say we’re only 20 years or so away from practical nuclear fusion...

Always have been, always will be.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FrUWoywZRt8

Fusion research produces more (and higher-energy) falsehoods than neutrons.

Gotta go with 25. Standard answer since 1960.

But then, only 25 more years until we can light up the moon. https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/

Anybody know how they keep something like that from melting everything in the room?

The answer is carefully hidden right in the first sentence of the article:

> The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR), a superconducting fusion device also known as the Korean artificial sun, set the new world record as it succeeded in maintaining the high temperature plasma for 20 seconds with an ion temperature over 100 million degrees.

Tokamak here is a Russian for toroidal chamber with magnetic coils. The plasma is hold in place by interaction of magnetic fields from these coils with magnetic fields from currents flowing trough the plasma.

The amount of stuff that is kept incredibly hot is very small, so the effective radiated power is manageable using the gigantic containment vessel which was purpose-built for this problem.

Not an expert, but don’t they fuse matter kept in the center of a toroid vacuum chamber using magnetic fields? So the high temperature doesn’t have a medium to escape through.

I conceptually love how the answer to the question "how do you stop something from melting the room" is

- stop melting from being an applicable concept

- remove the concept of a room from the equation

I love this

this is accurate. thats the purpose of the superconductors

magnets, really big magnets.

Magnets or electrically induced magnetic fields?

I believe the way it used to be done was magnets made by inducing a moving current in a ring shaped superconductor which needs to be at c. 2 kelvin to maintain superconductivity? They are supercooled by liquid Helium, which then has it's compression system cooled by a liquid Nitrogen compression system.

That said, I do recall reading about a fancy new higher temp superconductor which would allow for a much smaller torus to be made. This may be using that system.

I'm not completely up to date.

So how long does it have to run to break even?

This sounds like the background for some superhero origin story.

...or supervillain.

It is! This is what Doctor Octopus is doing in (the original) Spider Man 2. He built his arms to help contain the reaction.

Note that "the original" in the above comment refers to the movie series, not the comic books. There were two movie series post-2000 by different directors. The second one didn't feature Doctor Octopus. In the comics, he was like a typical scumbag villain, but in the movie referred to here, he's more like a misguided psychopath.

They should bring that character back for the new movies and have him be played by the old actor. ...

They are doing that

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