Please do go on? I won't say irrelevant, but when compared to SPARC project, it seems kind of underpowered?
HH70: major radius: 0.75 m, magnetic field 0.6 T
SPARK: major radius: 1.85 m, magnetic field 12.2 T
HH70 has the advantage of actually existing and working, but to my completely layman eyes, it doesn't seem that using high temperature superconducting magnets brought expected increase in parameters.
The real hair-raising thing is that HH70 is out of the blue. Three years is a very short period of time to put together a company, supply chain, and working HTS tokamak of any scale. The plasma performance metrics are nearly irrelevant. They've knocked down a lot of difficult questions and paved the way for bigger machines on short timescales. I'm not sure what the next out-of-the-blue headline will be in 3 years, but there's a good chance it will be "burning plasma". The West runs a real risk of being left way behind here.
> e real hair-raising thing is that HH70 is out of the blue.
I wish them best of luck and China speed. It doesn't matter who develops the technology, in either case it's a win for humanity. 7 out of 8 billion people are not in the "west".
I think this is a reference to the normal pattern in the tortuously slow development of practical fusion power. Despite all of the significant milestones, fusion remains about 20 years down the road, for the last 50 years.
Wow, I never imagined that fusion funding was that paltry. Considering the insane things that have to be built to make it work, it is very impressive what has actually gotten done.
To be fair, that's budget for magnetic confinement fusion. US has always been more interested in inertial fusion (i.e. shoot it with lasers). Likely because of synergy with military application of lasers.
The thing it, inertial confinement seems to be a dead end and has been for quite a while. At least rest of the world has decided to fund magnetic confinement (plus few oddballs with z-pinch), so I assume it's more promising approach.
If you have a substantive point, please make it thoughtfully; if not, please don't comment until you do.
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Please do go on? I won't say irrelevant, but when compared to SPARC project, it seems kind of underpowered?
HH70: major radius: 0.75 m, magnetic field 0.6 T SPARK: major radius: 1.85 m, magnetic field 12.2 T
HH70 has the advantage of actually existing and working, but to my completely layman eyes, it doesn't seem that using high temperature superconducting magnets brought expected increase in parameters.
The real hair-raising thing is that HH70 is out of the blue. Three years is a very short period of time to put together a company, supply chain, and working HTS tokamak of any scale. The plasma performance metrics are nearly irrelevant. They've knocked down a lot of difficult questions and paved the way for bigger machines on short timescales. I'm not sure what the next out-of-the-blue headline will be in 3 years, but there's a good chance it will be "burning plasma". The West runs a real risk of being left way behind here.
> e real hair-raising thing is that HH70 is out of the blue.
I wish them best of luck and China speed. It doesn't matter who develops the technology, in either case it's a win for humanity. 7 out of 8 billion people are not in the "west".
I think this is a reference to the normal pattern in the tortuously slow development of practical fusion power. Despite all of the significant milestones, fusion remains about 20 years down the road, for the last 50 years.
Considering the funding for past 50 years has been below "fusion never" level, I think they made a great progress.
See fusion budget vs expected timelines: https://imgur.com/u-s-historical-fusion-budget-vs-1976-erda-...
Wow, I never imagined that fusion funding was that paltry. Considering the insane things that have to be built to make it work, it is very impressive what has actually gotten done.
To be fair, that's budget for magnetic confinement fusion. US has always been more interested in inertial fusion (i.e. shoot it with lasers). Likely because of synergy with military application of lasers.
The thing it, inertial confinement seems to be a dead end and has been for quite a while. At least rest of the world has decided to fund magnetic confinement (plus few oddballs with z-pinch), so I assume it's more promising approach.
It seems that the investment in fusion is incredibly tiny relative to the potential payoff and compared to other trivial or even destructive pursuits?
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