The Stellarator would fit just as well in an art gallery as it would in a research institute. The strangely intricate wavy curves look arbitrary and organic, yet they all serve some rigorous mathematical purpose. In my opinion it is the singular most futuristic-looking piece of current technology we have.
@@Sagittarius-A-Star Stellators could totally be working inside of an giant art gallery. Like Wendelstein stellators are just so beautiful and transpire so much aptitude. Modern art galleries on the other hand would need to bury stellators to the basement because it would totally reveal their grand illusion.
I'm a fusion scientist who enjoys this channel and unfortunately this is a very misinformed view. Small physics inaccuracies I can accept, but directly comparing the size and cost of Wendelstein to ITER is bonkers; Wendelstein's performance is likely to be less than 1% of ITER's. In the fusion research community it is generally accepted that stellarator-based fusion power plants would be larger and more expensive than their tokamak counterparts. You should have your videos reviewed by some people with more experience, your Blender modules and video production are great and spreading good info would be extremely welcome.
@@JaviReinaLara I spent much of the past years in your position, though now I'm doing much more theoretical work since I got fixated on something (and I like computers so). Depending on the institution you are involved with, I would say engineering and design are the major push at this point. If you do a PhD or Postdoc at Princeton, you will likely be doing some pretty advanced plasma physics theory. If you go to MIT there is theory (I'm doing it), but the majority of people are doing technology work. If you work at a private company, of course, relatively few people are expected to know plasma physics at all. If you're designing instruments and diagnostics, you're gonna need to know a lot about tokamaks, though. I found you can do this while skipping most of the physics, just thinking about how pieces fit together.
My main issue with Fusion is that is seems a much to make a mini sun on earth only to use it to boil water more efficiently to turn a turbine really fast. Surely theres a better way for us to gain access to the raw energy being produced and if so, then how?
@@Archangel657 There is a lot of literature on this. The standard operating procedure in designs right now is to assume a Helium or Supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle, which is still turbines but has large efficiency of conversion of thermal energy to electricity. Some fusion approaches can consider non-thermal energy conversion, but it is generally not worth discussing until the technology has been demonstrated (there are many methods applicable in different situations).
Collaboration is key. You should insight information to the poster and he in turn should accredite you for your contribution to the science. Love light and unity my friend ❤
I think that something a lot of people may miss after watching this video is how much we have learned while pursuing tokamak reactor designs. The people who decided ITER would utilize them were not stupid, and it was a good decision at the time. Additionally, the budget for these reactors is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Our nations can easily afford these projects dozens of times over, and that they consistently choose not to is telling.
No spending 2 trillion$ on a war is definitely better than some spare change on cool science stuffs. And we can get rid of our depleted Uranium by actually shooting it around war zones.
"The people who decided ITER would utilize them were not stupid, and it was a good decision at the time" Nope because there were several major design problems before construction was started. The team just ignored them & pressed on with construction. ITER is not an energy program, its a jobs program. Neither reactor will work as Stellarators have not solve the plasma stability problems. Nor is either going to be cost effective. A commercial Magnetic confinement reactor (if it did work) would cost 10 times more than a fission plant for the same amount of energy output. Fission power is already too expensive, and most of the world is phasing it out.
The issue with stellarators is that they are designed for only one mode of operation. Tokamaks are general and can operate in many different modes so they are much better for research. The consensus among the physicists I talked to is that once we find the best mode of operation in tokamaks, we can then mass-produce these specialized stallarators for that mode.
@@nickholloway5086 @p0xus If I'm not wrong, I believe he his talking about the optimal shape of plasma confinement. I forgot the names but you can have 2 rings one of top of the other, you can have a triangle shaped plasma ring etc, etc, etc. These shapes are made by adjusting and controlling the magnetic fields confining the plasma. Some shapes are very hard to maintain without help of an AI for example.
That was my thought too. From what I understand stellarators are quite sensitive to getting the complex shape of the coils just right. Tokamaks have a greater number of simpler, independently controlled coils, so there are a lot more options for fine tuning the operating parameters in software after the reactor is already built. Pretty handy if you're trying to improve plasma physics models. Another potential issue is maintenance of internal shielding. One of the major goals of ITER is to test if the interior of the reactor can be effectively shielded from the intense neutron flux, and how well this shielding can be maintained, replaced, and used for tritium breeding. Any reactor design without such shielding would only ever be good for short research runs. Since stellarators have narrower internal spaces and more complex geometry, I imagine such maintenance would be much harder. (On a side note, omitting this shielding is an easy way to artificially inflate the performance of "prototype" reactors.)
it is correct that tokamaks are much more flexible with respect to the magnetic configuration, but ITER will run with ONE magnetic configuration as well. It is the task of the smaller machines to check wether some other plasma shape (diferent triangularyty, negativ triangularyty, single null divertor, double null divertor, supper X divertor, snow flake divertor, wapor box divertor, liquide metal divertor, metalic wall, liquide mettal wall, ...) is better for plasma confinement.
Wendelstein 7-X is a lot less powerful than ITER, so the cost comparison isn't fair. Also, the budget is largely blown up because it is a cooperation. Let's hope Wendelstein will show promising results, so that a bigger machine can be built within next 20 years.
Yes, the W7X isn't designed to be a net gain machine and a stellerator designed to reach >1 gain will need to be similar in size to ITER (using traditional superconducting magnets). A smaller net gain machine could be built using HTS magnets but this applies to Tokamaks as well.
Although the stellarator can fix some of the hurdles behind reactor design, I still get why ITER is using a tokomak design. Beyond just the lack of research into stellarators over the years, ITER's biggest purpose is to achieve net-positive output from a fusion reactor. Even with the tokomak's drawbacks, we are still extremely close to optimizing its design to break this barrier. We need to know how the plasma will behave under self-sustained fusion. Considering how much has already been put into the technology, this is the most understood way we have of doing it. Rather than building from the ground up, we have enough data already on tokomaks to make fine adjustments throughout the experiments. And although stellarators can be cheaper to set up and run, tokomaks still hold the edge on what will get us to net-positive output the fastest. From there, we can use the data to optimize stellarators to get over that threshold faster
Your salary comes from tokamaks, right? We can breed Thorium into U233 right now in Molten Fluid Fission Reactors, while you guys tinker around. #Aloha
@@jimrobcoyle Fluid fission reactors have their own challenges. Their development stalled in the 60s since they couldn't be used to produce plutonium. The main challenge now is develop the right allows for them that can resist the heat and the corrosion effectively. IMO, we need all these technologies. They're all better in some ways, and the research into each one will certainly have a other uses.
ITER is a joke and is already obsolete. It won’t even put useable power on the grid. SPARC/ARC is the future of fusion. ARC will put electricity on the grid before ITER even builds a second plant.
Scientists decided to go in direction of Tokomak instead of stellarator not just because it's simpler to design, just check the design of any tokamak. They decided to go that way because it is a quicker way to test if fusion is viable. There is tons of project around fusion and we are only at the beginning of this technology 😅 we'll see
I like the video except for the fact that you compare the mass of the systems without talking about the output. You can create a massive stellarator that is even larger than ITER, does its mere existence suggest all stellarators must be massive? There should be a bit more explanation as to the scaling of each system in regards to input energy vs theoretical output.
@@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk Ok, how much bigger? for how much output? It wasn't stated in any way. There are small tokamaks too, but they are not net positive, so I was saying that the breakeven point should be declared to show how the stellarators are more viable as they are able to have net positive output with less energy input therefore can be smaller due to requiring much less cryo cooling, energy for magnetic coils etc. These are true facts and are the great thing about stellarators, so they should be addressed!
@@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk Since neither is viable at the current time and we have no idea if either will be viable your argument makes zero sense.
This is hands down my favorite video you've ever made now. From 6:00 on is just so aesthetically pleasing, both visually and auditorily. You've grown so much as a content creator and your skills are showing. I love it!
This is the first time I've heard of a Stellertator.... and going by this one point of view it seems like a much better way of approaching fusion.... BUT, like I said.... this is just ONE PoV... I have to learn more... But THANK YOU for opening my eyes to it :D
Well, one thing that Tokamaks have an advantage over Stellarators is that, apparently, they are more flexible as a vessel for fusion research than a Stellarator, while Stellarators are purpose built to be power generators first and foremost.
Recently found this channel, and i love how you don't dumb things down too much. Really explaining how these things work is a refreshing change of pace.
I agree. I think we've all seen a hundred videos about fusion power and every single time the producer has to explain it, and it was really great this time to get through that in 45 seconds instead of seven and a half minutes.
I’m a little disappointed with the information you decided to bring; you haven’t discussed the physics that makes tokamaks better than stellarators. There is a Q parameter defined as Fusion energy output over Energy input. This criterion is a powerful way to asses how close a particular fusion concept is to achieving the necessary conditions. There are mainly three things required for fusion energy: plasma density (n), plasma temperature (T) and energy confinement time (e). Basically: T and ne giving Q => 0.1 is ready for fusion energy; Q lower than that is a physics experiment The idea of stellarators is quite impressive since we get a very good plasma performance but as of today it’s very tough to engineer. Since they are difficult to work with, Q is very low. Some can say engineers have the duty to improve them since they are approaching relevant conditions but other might say it’d be better to push the engineering of tokamaks since they have performed the best (scientists managed to get Q near 1) The tokamaks lead by a lot since they have demonstrated energy-ready performance, of course stellarators come next and will be interesting to watch By the way I really love the graphics
I recently visited the Paul Schärer Institut and if I am not mistaken they have a stellarator aswell. I didn't have to check it out but I did evaluate their SULTAN facility which is the wolrd's largest testing machine for superconductors, which is used for among others testing magnets for fusion reactors.
PSI does not have a stellarator. They are involved in fusion research though, in superconductivity of course and I think also on the plasma side of things. SULTAN is amazing to see, I visited PSI last month for a work trip of the research group I do my PhD in. An alumnus of ours is working in one of PSI's superconductivity groups. Little detail, SULTAN is not used to test the magnets, but used to test the cables themselves specifically in SULTANS high magnetic field. In our group we has a long history of testing those cables as well. If I'm not mistaken SULTAN will test some samples of ours in the next few months also.
I think the developments with the MIT SPARC reactor are also very interesting. A much smaller and cheaper reactor, that while not quite as powerful as ITER, would still in theory be much more powerful then any other Fusion reactor made so far aside of it. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC_(tokamak) Developing their much stronger magnets to full technical maturity will allow various projects to in future use much smaller reactor designs, thus vastly reducing the cost and weight issues. Which ultimately means that it becomes possible to more quickly iterate on prototype designs, as well as make it possible to run more fusion projects at the same time. One can but imagine what this could mean for future stellerator research as well. It's one of the developments making me hopeful that Fusion progress can in future go more quickly again.
I still like the polywell fusor. It has a special place in my heart as the reactormthat got me obsessed with nuclear energy. Thank you Bussard. I also like focus fusion. I like the idea of a power plant in my garage powering my world. And the Spark reactor is also cool. I think ITER, DEMO and the W9 are all worthy projects that should get continued funding but I don't expect them to be the end-all in Fusion reactors.
When trying to digest, advanced subjects such as this, for someone with purely a basic understanding, a soundtrack that is delivered at such levels is beyond distracting. An adjustment of, 20/30% woul be welcome. Great topic, thanks for sharing.
The like is well deserved - for the artwork alone. I too am a Stellarator supporter. To fully enter the collective consciousness, it needs a good T-Shirt. If only we knew someone who: 1-sells T-shirts & hoodies; and 2-has crafted an awesome Stellarator picture...😉
We'll see how the W7-X Stellarator performs soon this year, as for Tokamaks they have proven to be reliable candidate for fusion energy due to more time spent working with them and more promising results as of late regardless of similar drawbacks. ITER has exponentially more funding and could be the direction we most likely will go for a few decades before a promising Stellarator is produced to have net-positive return in energy and is self- sustaining.
Well, that title is unfortunate. Edit: to future viewers, the author labled this video as stellarators are the "MASTER RACE" of fusion reactors. Just lol.
How would quenching make it unsafe? at the very most it would result in melted wires, there is no chance of it creating a hazard for humans even if it could damage the machine I am about to say something mean, but I hope you believe me when I say that I do not want to be mean spirited. I love your models/animations, they are nearly, if not the best, on this platform; the only other chanel I know that produces visuals that are comparable is branch education. However, I believe that there is a lack of deeper understanding in much of the material you talk about. It is surface level and sensationalized, like with the inherent unsafety of the tokamak design or with how the ITER weighs more than the Wendelstein stellerator. Of course it weighs more, it is a bigger project. I am also sure that the people behind ITER are not stupid and know what they are doing and just talking about the positives without explaining why the other types exist is doing a disservice. The informative value of your videos is subpar. In my opinion, what is holding the channel back isn't the amount of work you put in, but rather the way in which you cover the topics. I think you like to cover cool topics, and a way I think you could do this while using your strong suit would be to do collaborations with other youtubers. Everyday astronaut and Markus House are two youtubers who know quite a bit about rockets and regularly cover new developments. You could reach out to them or some others and work on a model of some new system or something. Then your visuals could be paired with something that is more informative and better researched. Once again, I do not intend to be mean... I love your work!
The heat generated by a quench will boil of the liquid helium coolant, which worst case scenario can make for a massive explosion. Also the insides of the reactor become radioactive due to continuous neutron bombardment, which potentially could spread.
@@WouterVerbruggen an MRI machine works on the exact same principle, not one has ever exploded as for the insides of the reactor being radioactive, this is the exact same for the stellerator as for the toroidal fusion device... the whole video was about how the stellerator was better
@@michal5642 for an MRI the stored magnetic energy is much, much lower. Of course there are protection systems in place to prevent and/or detect and limit quenches. My professor always says "redundancy, redundancy, redundancy!", which really is a main concern in large superconducting systems. Still that doesn't make it cannot happen. That what "worst case scenario" means ;) On your second point, that's irrelevant since I respond to your comment here, where you argue that there's no hazard in general.
@@WouterVerbruggen the total weight of the superconducting wire is about 600 tonnes for iter, with an energy capacity of 59E9 J. Assuming a heat capacity of around .5 j/(k*g), total supermagnetic collapse would raise the temperature of the wire by 200K, up to around room temperature. No wire would melt. As for the helium, I am sure it is not that difficult to design a venting system.
@@michal5642 If the entire magnet would lose superconductivity at once yes, but that is specifically not the case in a quench. If your quench protection is ideal and can propagate the quench through the entire magnet fast enough then there doesn't need to be an issue. Btw specific heat at cryogenic temperatures drop down significantly, numbers in the order of 10 mJ/(g*K) are not out of the ordinary. That especially makes the local nature of a quench very dangerous. Quench detection and protection is a huge topic in our field of applied superconductivity. About the helium, a flash evaporation somewhere in the middle of an integrated magnet system can't simply be vented easily. Check the design of the ITER cables. There should also be plenty of videos to be found online of research magnets quenching where you can see some massive venting. Now keep in mind that those systems are in a bath of liquid helium and also have ample room for easy venting.
Hi, nice movie, but ... as somebody who is working in fusion, I have a few points to trow in. Quenching is when superconductive conductors lose the superconductivite. It can happen in tokamaks as wel as in stellaratos as wel as in CERN, and it is always an isue. W7X is generally one genaration behing ITER. It is more fair to compare it to the JET tokamak. Even thou W7X is a bit smaller than JET, it is expected that W7X will have better results than JET. We were able to build the JET in 1980s, but it was possible to start to buid the W7X in 2010s. Generally, if we expect to produce electricity with stellarators, we will still have to build either the machine in the siye of ITER, or build it with strongel magnetic field like the ARC should have. Also, since the heat load of the plasma facing components, mainly the divertor, is much larger that the heat load of the space shuttle during the landing, we still have a lot of work to do to push this to the powerplant, does not matter if we talk about the tokamaks or the stellarators. but thank for a nice movie and cool animations.
Been a Stellarator fan since before the W-7X was finished, so like, 2013 maybe? I've always been a big fan of plasma based fusion, and Stellarators just look so much cooler..
Yes, I was thinking that the whole time. I wonder if anyone is working on that. Either way, I feel like the world's supply of YBCO wire needs to be going straight to CFS for their SPARC project, but once that's proven to be viable it would be interesting to see if a more complicated stellarator design with YBCO superconductors could take things to the next level.
Good episode. Iter is just a research project is it not? I'm sure that if we got stellarators working, recycling iter into multiple setellarators would make sense
One part of stellarator vs. tokamaks is that by definition, stellarators are steady state, compared to tokamaks which will always be pulsed, which induces fatigues in the machine, and is hard to add to the grid
Seems to me that a Stellarator is just a more advanced and complex Tokamak. The Tokamak is the tool that we need to learn with and Stellarators will be the tool that will be used to produce power. You have to learn how to walk before you can run. 😃
Pretty much, but I wouldn't call a Stellarator a "more advanced and complex Tokamak", that's like calling an orange a "sweeter and more flavorful apple".
no, terrible attempt to sound educated on a subject you clearly don't understand. You can get away with BSing like this at a party with a few people but the more people that see your BS the more likely it wont work. Stop.
I feel using the term 'master race' adds an unnecessary and unpleasant taint to the whole point you are trying to make. I know it's a meme, but some people are easily startled into mass flag campaigns over the most trivial of issues
Not related to the content of the video, but i really hate it when the term "master race" gets used for something. Its history is really not cool, i'd like to see that term gone. Maybe its because im german and im more sensetive on that topic because of this, idk
Yeah same here. I would be totally fine with the term in a clearly ironic context, but since this is an educational video about something completely unrelated, I can just assume that he simply didn't know the origin of the term at all. But yeah, maybe we're just over-sensitive germans.^^
Why do you use the term “master race”? This is science, why use such a loaded term that brings up thoughts of WW2 and the current far right extremism prevalent in so many countries. There are so many better ways to say something is “the best”
i'm just curious.. why are we not using space to create energy? an object in motion will stay in motion right ? so if you have a spinning magnet that just requires a start ( a freefloating magnet at rest but spinning ) will it not just continue to spin creating energy forever until the magnet and or the other tools waste away ?
There's another method out there that shoots the plasma into a compression chamber or chamber where ignition occurs in the plasma, can't find link to it at moment.
Have you consider to have a newsletter? Would love to receive newsletters about fusion and similar topics. Asionemetry, Sinocism or Semianalysis are great but they dont talk about fusion and the future of the energy.
Thank you so much for busting out the explanation of fusion power in 45 seconds. Anyone with any interest in this has already seen hundred videos on the progress of this technology, but somehow ever video always spends somewhere between five and ten minutes doing the exposition of how it all works and I think I speak for us all when I say, we are bored to tears with that sht. Thank you for being speedy about it!! Also really great video!! amazing progress with your graphics!
i find it intersting to see photos of my work from 15 Years ago. The cable of w7-x gave me a lot of trouble, the blueprints just remebering this let my brain hurt.
Hi for me my choice would be the stellarator it just seems right to me, but what do I know I'm a diesel fitter not a physics professor or nuclear engineer. Any how I get the basics of either but have never seen or heard how the spent fuel would be removed while injecting fresh without stopping
7:00 It is not a fair to compare ITER to Wendelstein 7X. The former wants to demonstrate net energy. The later is fundemental plasma physics research. You cannot even upgrade the Wendelstein 7X to do the same thing as ITER, because it is much too small (I asked the scientist who are working there). However, the Stellerator design might leapfrog the Tokamak design, for some reason that were mentioned in the video. It has not been decided yet, what technique will be used for the follow-up project, both of ITER and Wendelstein 7X, which is not even in its planning stage, called DEMO. However, knowledge of both projects, as different as they are, will flow into DEMO.
The Stellarator would fit just as well in an art gallery as it would in a research institute. The strangely intricate wavy curves look arbitrary and organic, yet they all serve some rigorous mathematical purpose. In my opinion it is the singular most futuristic-looking piece of current technology we have.
It reminded me of some Sci-fi movies where they also used organic designs ( e.g. Buckaroo Banzai and 12 Monkeys ).
looks lke a slinky on the perfect dose of lsd, or anything on dmt.
@@Sagittarius-A-Star Stellators could totally be working inside of an giant art gallery. Like Wendelstein stellators are just so beautiful and transpire so much aptitude. Modern art galleries on the other hand would need to bury stellators to the basement because it would totally reveal their grand illusion.
the design came out after years of calculating on a supercomputer
I think "the most futuristic looking piece of 20-year-old technology that we have" is probably more correct and also slightly more profound
I'm a fusion scientist who enjoys this channel and unfortunately this is a very misinformed view. Small physics inaccuracies I can accept, but directly comparing the size and cost of Wendelstein to ITER is bonkers; Wendelstein's performance is likely to be less than 1% of ITER's. In the fusion research community it is generally accepted that stellarator-based fusion power plants would be larger and more expensive than their tokamak counterparts. You should have your videos reviewed by some people with more experience, your Blender modules and video production are great and spreading good info would be extremely welcome.
@@JaviReinaLara I spent much of the past years in your position, though now I'm doing much more theoretical work since I got fixated on something (and I like computers so). Depending on the institution you are involved with, I would say engineering and design are the major push at this point. If you do a PhD or Postdoc at Princeton, you will likely be doing some pretty advanced plasma physics theory. If you go to MIT there is theory (I'm doing it), but the majority of people are doing technology work. If you work at a private company, of course, relatively few people are expected to know plasma physics at all. If you're designing instruments and diagnostics, you're gonna need to know a lot about tokamaks, though. I found you can do this while skipping most of the physics, just thinking about how pieces fit together.
My main issue with Fusion is that is seems a much to make a mini sun on earth only to use it to boil water more efficiently to turn a turbine really fast.
Surely theres a better way for us to gain access to the raw energy being produced and if so, then how?
@@Archangel657 There is a lot of literature on this. The standard operating procedure in designs right now is to assume a Helium or Supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle, which is still turbines but has large efficiency of conversion of thermal energy to electricity.
Some fusion approaches can consider non-thermal energy conversion, but it is generally not worth discussing until the technology has been demonstrated (there are many methods applicable in different situations).
Collaboration is key. You should insight information to the poster and he in turn should accredite you for your contribution to the science. Love light and unity my friend ❤
Do you have Instagram ?
I think that something a lot of people may miss after watching this video is how much we have learned while pursuing tokamak reactor designs. The people who decided ITER would utilize them were not stupid, and it was a good decision at the time. Additionally, the budget for these reactors is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Our nations can easily afford these projects dozens of times over, and that they consistently choose not to is telling.
No spending 2 trillion$ on a war is definitely better than some spare change on cool science stuffs. And we can get rid of our depleted Uranium by actually shooting it around war zones.
agreed, what we can learn from ITER is worth it, along with the building of international relations in the fusion sector
Yea, this video is pretty biased and obviously trying to say stellerstors are better.
@@crackedemerald4930 I mean he provides an argument i agree with, im just saying there is still value to be gained from ITER
"The people who decided ITER would utilize them were not stupid, and it was a good decision at the time"
Nope because there were several major design problems before construction was started. The team just ignored them & pressed on with construction. ITER is not an energy program, its a jobs program.
Neither reactor will work as Stellarators have not solve the plasma stability problems. Nor is either going to be cost effective. A commercial Magnetic confinement reactor (if it did work) would cost 10 times more than a fission plant for the same amount of energy output. Fission power is already too expensive, and most of the world is phasing it out.
The issue with stellarators is that they are designed for only one mode of operation.
Tokamaks are general and can operate in many different modes so they are much better for research.
The consensus among the physicists I talked to is that once we find the best mode of operation in tokamaks, we can then mass-produce these specialized stallarators for that mode.
What are these modes your physicists speak of?
I also wonder what these different modes are
@@nickholloway5086 @p0xus If I'm not wrong, I believe he his talking about the optimal shape of plasma confinement. I forgot the names but you can have 2 rings one of top of the other, you can have a triangle shaped plasma ring etc, etc, etc. These shapes are made by adjusting and controlling the magnetic fields confining the plasma. Some shapes are very hard to maintain without help of an AI for example.
That was my thought too. From what I understand stellarators are quite sensitive to getting the complex shape of the coils just right. Tokamaks have a greater number of simpler, independently controlled coils, so there are a lot more options for fine tuning the operating parameters in software after the reactor is already built. Pretty handy if you're trying to improve plasma physics models.
Another potential issue is maintenance of internal shielding. One of the major goals of ITER is to test if the interior of the reactor can be effectively shielded from the intense neutron flux, and how well this shielding can be maintained, replaced, and used for tritium breeding. Any reactor design without such shielding would only ever be good for short research runs. Since stellarators have narrower internal spaces and more complex geometry, I imagine such maintenance would be much harder. (On a side note, omitting this shielding is an easy way to artificially inflate the performance of "prototype" reactors.)
it is correct that tokamaks are much more flexible with respect to the magnetic configuration, but ITER will run with ONE magnetic configuration as well. It is the task of the smaller machines to check wether some other plasma shape (diferent triangularyty, negativ triangularyty, single null divertor, double null divertor, supper X divertor, snow flake divertor, wapor box divertor, liquide metal divertor, metalic wall, liquide mettal wall, ...) is better for plasma confinement.
Wendelstein 7-X is a lot less powerful than ITER, so the cost comparison isn't fair. Also, the budget is largely blown up because it is a cooperation. Let's hope Wendelstein will show promising results, so that a bigger machine can be built within next 20 years.
I would go and say that the size and mass comparison are the most irrelevant of all these.
Yes, the W7X isn't designed to be a net gain machine and a stellerator designed to reach >1 gain will need to be similar in size to ITER (using traditional superconducting magnets). A smaller net gain machine could be built using HTS magnets but this applies to Tokamaks as well.
Like for 20 years joke :)
Even this size can produce that much energy it could light up Berlin easelly
The plasma volume is 840 m^3 vs 30 m^3.
Although the stellarator can fix some of the hurdles behind reactor design, I still get why ITER is using a tokomak design. Beyond just the lack of research into stellarators over the years, ITER's biggest purpose is to achieve net-positive output from a fusion reactor.
Even with the tokomak's drawbacks, we are still extremely close to optimizing its design to break this barrier. We need to know how the plasma will behave under self-sustained fusion. Considering how much has already been put into the technology, this is the most understood way we have of doing it. Rather than building from the ground up, we have enough data already on tokomaks to make fine adjustments throughout the experiments. And although stellarators can be cheaper to set up and run, tokomaks still hold the edge on what will get us to net-positive output the fastest. From there, we can use the data to optimize stellarators to get over that threshold faster
Your salary comes from tokamaks, right?
We can breed Thorium into U233 right now in Molten Fluid Fission Reactors, while you guys tinker around.
#Aloha
@@jimrobcoyle Fluid fission reactors have their own challenges. Their development stalled in the 60s since they couldn't be used to produce plutonium. The main challenge now is develop the right allows for them that can resist the heat and the corrosion effectively.
IMO, we need all these technologies. They're all better in some ways, and the research into each one will certainly have a other uses.
ITER is a joke and is already obsolete. It won’t even put useable power on the grid. SPARC/ARC is the future of fusion. ARC will put electricity on the grid before ITER even builds a second plant.
so just yeet more money till we get it?
but the stellarator still looks cool as f*ck
Scientists decided to go in direction of Tokomak instead of stellarator not just because it's simpler to design, just check the design of any tokamak. They decided to go that way because it is a quicker way to test if fusion is viable. There is tons of project around fusion and we are only at the beginning of this technology 😅 we'll see
"it is a quicker way to test if fusion is viable"
In other words: it's simpler to work with, or _simpler to design_ as they say.
I'm starting research in a plasma physics lab... definitely going to run a sim on a stellarator if I get the chance after seeing this 👀
@@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk No, it's more versatile to study
I like the video except for the fact that you compare the mass of the systems without talking about the output. You can create a massive stellarator that is even larger than ITER, does its mere existence suggest all stellarators must be massive? There should be a bit more explanation as to the scaling of each system in regards to input energy vs theoretical output.
You didn't catch the fact that Tokamaks needed to be bigger to be more viable.
@@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk Ok, how much bigger? for how much output? It wasn't stated in any way. There are small tokamaks too, but they are not net positive, so I was saying that the breakeven point should be declared to show how the stellarators are more viable as they are able to have net positive output with less energy input therefore can be smaller due to requiring much less cryo cooling, energy for magnetic coils etc. These are true facts and are the great thing about stellarators, so they should be addressed!
@@Dem0nshade oh, yeah you're right
@@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk Since neither is viable at the current time and we have no idea if either will be viable your argument makes zero sense.
@@thomgizziz yeah, you sound like you know a lot more about this stuff
/s
This is hands down my favorite video you've ever made now. From 6:00 on is just so aesthetically pleasing, both visually and auditorily. You've grown so much as a content creator and your skills are showing. I love it!
You really should make a few of your renders available as wallpapers. They look AMAZING
This is the first time I've heard of a Stellertator.... and going by this one point of view it seems like a much better way of approaching fusion.... BUT, like I said.... this is just ONE PoV... I have to learn more...
But THANK YOU for opening my eyes to it :D
Well, one thing that Tokamaks have an advantage over Stellarators is that, apparently, they are more flexible as a vessel for fusion research than a Stellarator, while Stellarators are purpose built to be power generators first and foremost.
Recently found this channel, and i love how you don't dumb things down too much. Really explaining how these things work is a refreshing change of pace.
I agree. I think we've all seen a hundred videos about fusion power and every single time the producer has to explain it, and it was really great this time to get through that in 45 seconds instead of seven and a half minutes.
I’m a little disappointed with the information you decided to bring; you haven’t discussed the physics that makes tokamaks better than stellarators. There is a Q parameter defined as Fusion energy output over Energy input. This criterion is a powerful way to asses how close a particular fusion concept is to achieving the necessary conditions. There are mainly three things required for fusion energy: plasma density (n), plasma temperature (T) and energy confinement time (e).
Basically: T and ne giving Q => 0.1 is ready for fusion energy; Q lower than that is a physics experiment
The idea of stellarators is quite impressive since we get a very good plasma performance but as of today it’s very tough to engineer. Since they are difficult to work with, Q is very low. Some can say engineers have the duty to improve them since they are approaching relevant conditions but other might say it’d be better to push the engineering of tokamaks since they have performed the best (scientists managed to get Q near 1)
The tokamaks lead by a lot since they have demonstrated energy-ready performance, of course stellarators come next and will be interesting to watch
By the way I really love the graphics
My jaw (literally, not figuratively) dropped at the quality of the animations while illustrating such a complex design. Thank you for the video.
did you close your mouth yet?
i love your animations. i've amused myself trying to make a stellarator in Blender several times and never got it looking half as good as you have
I don't understand how you don't have the whole world subscribed i have been watching the videos for a while and the work put in is just incredible
I recently visited the Paul Schärer Institut and if I am not mistaken they have a stellarator aswell. I didn't have to check it out but I did evaluate their SULTAN facility which is the wolrd's largest testing machine for superconductors, which is used for among others testing magnets for fusion reactors.
PSI does not have a stellarator. They are involved in fusion research though, in superconductivity of course and I think also on the plasma side of things. SULTAN is amazing to see, I visited PSI last month for a work trip of the research group I do my PhD in. An alumnus of ours is working in one of PSI's superconductivity groups. Little detail, SULTAN is not used to test the magnets, but used to test the cables themselves specifically in SULTANS high magnetic field. In our group we has a long history of testing those cables as well. If I'm not mistaken SULTAN will test some samples of ours in the next few months also.
This is my first exposure to your channel and wow, bravo, instant subscribe
Two years later and you are definitely on another level with your design. Great work!
Where did the song at 5:15 come from? It's amazing!
I think the developments with the MIT SPARC reactor are also very interesting. A much smaller and cheaper reactor, that while not quite as powerful as ITER, would still in theory be much more powerful then any other Fusion reactor made so far aside of it.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC_(tokamak)
Developing their much stronger magnets to full technical maturity will allow various projects to in future use much smaller reactor designs, thus vastly reducing the cost and weight issues. Which ultimately means that it becomes possible to more quickly iterate on prototype designs, as well as make it possible to run more fusion projects at the same time. One can but imagine what this could mean for future stellerator research as well.
It's one of the developments making me hopeful that Fusion progress can in future go more quickly again.
They are doing good work as well as tokomak UK and helion who have a different take
OOO finaly a video about stellarators! thanks as always!
I still like the polywell fusor. It has a special place in my heart as the reactormthat got me obsessed with nuclear energy. Thank you Bussard.
I also like focus fusion. I like the idea of a power plant in my garage powering my world.
And the Spark reactor is also cool.
I think ITER, DEMO and the W9 are all worthy projects that should get continued funding but I don't expect them to be the end-all in Fusion reactors.
When trying to digest, advanced subjects such as this, for someone with purely a basic understanding, a soundtrack that is delivered at such levels is beyond distracting. An adjustment of, 20/30% woul be welcome. Great topic, thanks for sharing.
Exceptionally well done video, the animations and transitions are really terrific!
Your quality is outstanding mate! Amazing video, as always!.
Your videos are seriously next level. Nice job.
Rafael, you're the f****** man! Another masterpiece of graphics and stellar content!
The like is well deserved - for the artwork alone. I too am a Stellarator supporter. To fully enter the collective consciousness, it needs a good T-Shirt. If only we knew someone who: 1-sells T-shirts & hoodies; and 2-has crafted an awesome Stellarator picture...😉
yeah it should be Subject Zero
Great video. Thoughtful content. Groovy music.
We'll see how the W7-X Stellarator performs soon this year, as for Tokamaks they have proven to be reliable candidate for fusion energy due to more time spent working with them and more promising results as of late regardless of similar drawbacks. ITER has exponentially more funding and could be the direction we most likely will go for a few decades before a promising Stellarator is produced to have net-positive return in energy and is self- sustaining.
Amazing video!
The music in the background was especially fitting too!
Any chance you could link them?
Well, that title is unfortunate.
Edit: to future viewers, the author labled this video as stellarators are the "MASTER RACE" of fusion reactors. Just lol.
You put a lot of work in this one again! Fantastic! Will share!
How would quenching make it unsafe? at the very most it would result in melted wires, there is no chance of it creating a hazard for humans even if it could damage the machine
I am about to say something mean, but I hope you believe me when I say that I do not want to be mean spirited. I love your models/animations, they are nearly, if not the best, on this platform; the only other chanel I know that produces visuals that are comparable is branch education. However, I believe that there is a lack of deeper understanding in much of the material you talk about. It is surface level and sensationalized, like with the inherent unsafety of the tokamak design or with how the ITER weighs more than the Wendelstein stellerator. Of course it weighs more, it is a bigger project. I am also sure that the people behind ITER are not stupid and know what they are doing and just talking about the positives without explaining why the other types exist is doing a disservice. The informative value of your videos is subpar.
In my opinion, what is holding the channel back isn't the amount of work you put in, but rather the way in which you cover the topics. I think you like to cover cool topics, and a way I think you could do this while using your strong suit would be to do collaborations with other youtubers. Everyday astronaut and Markus House are two youtubers who know quite a bit about rockets and regularly cover new developments. You could reach out to them or some others and work on a model of some new system or something. Then your visuals could be paired with something that is more informative and better researched.
Once again, I do not intend to be mean... I love your work!
The heat generated by a quench will boil of the liquid helium coolant, which worst case scenario can make for a massive explosion. Also the insides of the reactor become radioactive due to continuous neutron bombardment, which potentially could spread.
@@WouterVerbruggen an MRI machine works on the exact same principle, not one has ever exploded
as for the insides of the reactor being radioactive, this is the exact same for the stellerator as for the toroidal fusion device... the whole video was about how the stellerator was better
@@michal5642 for an MRI the stored magnetic energy is much, much lower. Of course there are protection systems in place to prevent and/or detect and limit quenches. My professor always says "redundancy, redundancy, redundancy!", which really is a main concern in large superconducting systems. Still that doesn't make it cannot happen. That what "worst case scenario" means ;)
On your second point, that's irrelevant since I respond to your comment here, where you argue that there's no hazard in general.
@@WouterVerbruggen the total weight of the superconducting wire is about 600 tonnes for iter, with an energy capacity of 59E9 J. Assuming a heat capacity of around .5 j/(k*g), total supermagnetic collapse would raise the temperature of the wire by 200K, up to around room temperature. No wire would melt. As for the helium, I am sure it is not that difficult to design a venting system.
@@michal5642 If the entire magnet would lose superconductivity at once yes, but that is specifically not the case in a quench. If your quench protection is ideal and can propagate the quench through the entire magnet fast enough then there doesn't need to be an issue. Btw specific heat at cryogenic temperatures drop down significantly, numbers in the order of 10 mJ/(g*K) are not out of the ordinary. That especially makes the local nature of a quench very dangerous. Quench detection and protection is a huge topic in our field of applied superconductivity.
About the helium, a flash evaporation somewhere in the middle of an integrated magnet system can't simply be vented easily. Check the design of the ITER cables. There should also be plenty of videos to be found online of research magnets quenching where you can see some massive venting. Now keep in mind that those systems are in a bath of liquid helium and also have ample room for easy venting.
Your 3D skills are just amazing man! that stellarator is looking fine AF.
nice, i have been up close to one
Gorgeous and informative graphics!
100k is less you will get 1m
Love the video and this tech will be one more stepping stone for humanity
thank you for making this video
Hi, nice movie, but ... as somebody who is working in fusion, I have a few points to trow in.
Quenching is when superconductive conductors lose the superconductivite. It can happen in tokamaks as wel as in stellaratos as wel as in CERN, and it is always an isue.
W7X is generally one genaration behing ITER. It is more fair to compare it to the JET tokamak. Even thou W7X is a bit smaller than JET, it is expected that W7X will have better results than JET. We were able to build the JET in 1980s, but it was possible to start to buid the W7X in 2010s.
Generally, if we expect to produce electricity with stellarators, we will still have to build either the machine in the siye of ITER, or build it with strongel magnetic field like the ARC should have.
Also, since the heat load of the plasma facing components, mainly the divertor, is much larger that the heat load of the space shuttle during the landing, we still have a lot of work to do to push this to the powerplant, does not matter if we talk about the tokamaks or the stellarators.
but thank for a nice movie and cool animations.
Why would you use the term Master Race?
Been a Stellarator fan since before the W-7X was finished, so like, 2013 maybe? I've always been a big fan of plasma based fusion, and Stellarators just look so much cooler..
Imagine this, but with YBCO superconductors.
Yes, I was thinking that the whole time. I wonder if anyone is working on that. Either way, I feel like the world's supply of YBCO wire needs to be going straight to CFS for their SPARC project, but once that's proven to be viable it would be interesting to see if a more complicated stellarator design with YBCO superconductors could take things to the next level.
I LOVE stellarators. They're so cool. Learned about them a while back but thus gave me some more insight into them.
Good episode. Iter is just a research project is it not? I'm sure that if we got stellarators working, recycling iter into multiple setellarators would make sense
One part of stellarator vs. tokamaks is that by definition, stellarators are steady state, compared to tokamaks which will always be pulsed, which induces fatigues in the machine, and is hard to add to the grid
Seems to me that a Stellarator is just a more advanced and complex Tokamak. The Tokamak is the tool that we need to learn with and Stellarators will be the tool that will be used to produce power. You have to learn how to walk before you can run. 😃
Pretty much, but I wouldn't call a Stellarator a "more advanced and complex Tokamak", that's like calling an orange a "sweeter and more flavorful apple".
no, terrible attempt to sound educated on a subject you clearly don't understand. You can get away with BSing like this at a party with a few people but the more people that see your BS the more likely it wont work. Stop.
Let's give him a 100,000 likes for this!!!
Seriously using the term “master race”?
Please, which musics did you use ?
I feel using the term 'master race' adds an unnecessary and unpleasant taint to the whole point you are trying to make.
I know it's a meme, but some people are easily startled into mass flag campaigns over the most trivial of issues
You shouldn't be on the internet.
1:07
The TV garble sample is also used by Justice from their song D.A.N.C.E. If you guys know where this sample came from, please tell me.
Not related to the content of the video, but i really hate it when the term "master race" gets used for something. Its history is really not cool, i'd like to see that term gone.
Maybe its because im german and im more sensetive on that topic because of this, idk
Yeah same here. I would be totally fine with the term in a clearly ironic context, but since this is an educational video about something completely unrelated, I can just assume that he simply didn't know the origin of the term at all. But yeah, maybe we're just over-sensitive germans.^^
This video is peak subject zero. models on point, music on point and really intresting subject
Master race? Dude. You didn't think that out very much did you? Not cool.
Fantastic video, thankyou! 😎
Why do you use the term “master race”? This is science, why use such a loaded term that brings up thoughts of WW2 and the current far right extremism prevalent in so many countries. There are so many better ways to say something is “the best”
okay but what is the song you used from 4:18 and onward? It's super catchy and i need it in my playlist
Does the twisted design help keep it away from the sides
Hey Subject Zero, do you have a link to your theme song for your intro? I could listen to it all day
i'm just curious.. why are we not using space to create energy? an object in motion will stay in motion right ? so if you have a spinning magnet that just requires a start ( a freefloating magnet at rest but spinning ) will it not just continue to spin creating energy forever until the magnet and or the other tools waste away ?
Incredible work with the video, SZS!
Hi, you previously made a video about the problems carbon nanotubes and graphine may present . Can you re apload it? I can't find it .
There's another method out there that shoots the plasma into a compression chamber or chamber where ignition occurs in the plasma, can't find link to it at moment.
the fact that im starting to see fusion related videos and adds everywhere means that fusion is indeed the future
what do you think about spheromaks and Field-reversed configuration's ?
Have you consider to have a newsletter? Would love to receive newsletters about fusion and similar topics. Asionemetry, Sinocism or Semianalysis are great but they dont talk about fusion and the future of the energy.
I love the audio design of your video, how do you find these audios or are you making them yourself?
Thank you so much for busting out the explanation of fusion power in 45 seconds. Anyone with any interest in this has already seen hundred videos on the progress of this technology, but somehow ever video always spends somewhere between five and ten minutes doing the exposition of how it all works and I think I speak for us all when I say, we are bored to tears with that sht. Thank you for being speedy about it!!
Also really great video!! amazing progress with your graphics!
I know the iter blanket video was not that popular, but is there any chance part 2 will ever come?
So how does the flux capacitor work?
Agreed; you have really been mastering you craft, and it should. You have my “like” and acknowledgement!
I LOVE the blender models and renders you make, astonoshing and good to know about this revisions of technologies, thanks for the content
Are there two reactors you are comparing going to have the same projected power generation?
I didn't get the notifications :( Thank god youtube recommended this relatively soon because if not I would've missed out on a true gem
i find it intersting to see photos of my work from 15 Years ago. The cable of w7-x gave me a lot of trouble, the blueprints just remebering this let my brain hurt.
Never stop making videos
No info on Input to Output ratio with costs?
Hi for me my choice would be the stellarator it just seems right to me, but what do I know I'm a diesel fitter not a physics professor or nuclear engineer.
Any how I get the basics of either but have never seen or heard how the spent fuel would be removed while injecting fresh without stopping
Always top notch
These videos are so so good
7:00 It is not a fair to compare ITER to Wendelstein 7X. The former wants to demonstrate net energy. The later is fundemental plasma physics research. You cannot even upgrade the Wendelstein 7X to do the same thing as ITER, because it is much too small (I asked the scientist who are working there).
However, the Stellerator design might leapfrog the Tokamak design, for some reason that were mentioned in the video. It has not been decided yet, what technique will be used for the follow-up project, both of ITER and Wendelstein 7X, which is not even in its planning stage, called DEMO. However, knowledge of both projects, as different as they are, will flow into DEMO.
Hey, a question, where do you get your music from? It's very cool!
Artist
@@SubjectZeroScience Artlist? what song if you don't mind.
@@SubjectZeroScience please give us artists name and the song name, or link to source. I want this on my night drive playlist soo much!
How do they get the energy out?
man, your videos are amazing! Are you on Nebula?
Great video! Thank you for all the effort! It really shows and makes a difference!
Amazing video quality! Really impressive
great animations dude
Very well prepared session, very clear and very helpful... Thank u very much
Yo where can I get that sick violin solo at the beginning?
Can we get a full song for 0:38 ?
I liked the fonts used in this video.. can you name them...here.
Avenir
There should be as many approaches to fusion as possible because creativity should be valued.
Curious what a stellerator at the budget of ITER would look like in the near future
considering how long it took to build ITER, a next ITER would probably not happen in the "near" future.
Можно ли создать термоядерный реактор с центрифугой.
No sources in the description?
Fusion master race! ✊
what is the name of the music used in the intro?
The most beautiful CGI I’ve ever seen
Just premium content as always