Breakthrough in efficient powering of high temperature superconductor magnets
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ต.ค. 2024
- Tokamak Energy has recently announced a breakthrough design of cryogenic, or very low temperature, power electronics technology for the high-efficiency operation of its superconducting magnets. This will result in reduced costs of future fusion power plants - which is key to commercialising and scaling the technology.
The power electronics team at Tokamak Energy has developed a novel power converter inside a vacuum cryostat. Successful tests completed last month have demonstrated a 50% reduction in the power required for cooling HTS magnets.
No other commercial fusion research entity anywhere to my knowledge - and I pay very close attention - produces as regular or as thorough attempts at explaining to the public exactly what's going on at their facilities. It's appreciated.
Commonwealth Fusion in the US is doing a pretty good job at communication... I think they might be a little ahead of TE technically...
@@VAXHeadroom On the other hand, CFS are stepping up to SPARC, while TE has already ST40 operating. I vouch for both of them.
His explanation was super clear, and has the same character as internal discussions at my work. Really appreciate the insight into this one piece of the project!
One step closer to bringing fusion energy out of the realm of fiction and into reality. Very important and very cool.
I am also EEE enginnering student. I watch your video carefully in india. Good knowledge. l hope i will part of your company. Wish u happy chrismas . Mary crismas.
Knocking over the engineering problems, one by one. Awesome!
Theres been like 6 'breakthroughs' or understandings in the past 2 years that's getting us so close to neutral.
I think were going to get there!
So traditional HTS systems have to use DC so are you saying you have the AC to DC power supply inside the cryostat and therefore only have the AC supply leads on through plugs into the cryostat?
I always wondered about this but space and yolk constraints are problematic.
How many amps are you running and are you using 'current leads' between the first and second stage of the cooler?
Quite a handy feature to have less heating when changing the field. Are the magnets operated in persistent mode once the desired field is reached?
Would these high amp cryogenic power supplies have application outside fusion or are they pretty specialized, guessing the latter based on the intro. Also brilliant idea to have a multi-stage PSU going from room temp, to a balmy 70 Kelvin using regular high temp superconductors in the intermediate stage and finally down to the 20 K to run the main magnets properly.
Sounds like it would be useful for any application that needs a huge, powerful magnet. Though fusion is the only application I'm aware of. 🙂
@@alandpost probably one of the most prominent applications of superconducting magnets is in medical imaging - MRI.
Good. This is what MIT people has done with their Alcator C-Mode, using special cryogenic cables purposely design to pass large current and lower temperatures, to connect to the HTS magnets.
You know stuff is good, when there is no race for the first comment.
So, when is fusion going to be a practical reality? I think that once quantum computers are available and practical for optimization studies to solve fusion shortcoming issues, then fusion will be practical. I can't wait. Thank you so much for this video.
Fusion research is progressing rapidly despite not being ideal research conditions. Innovation and new technology together are solving the many years problems using common industrial computers.
@@paulvarn4712 thank you. This is good to know. We need to be free from fossil fuels ASAP. This would be a big plus for humanity and mother earth.
Tokamak fusion is not going to generate electricity any time soon. Maybe the DEMO reactor will be built by 2050, maybe not. Even then, the cost per MWh is insane, it's not even close to economical.
Why aren't you using high temperature superconductors in your magnet? Low temperature super conducts are old technology - like a horse and buggy.
If you run a high temperature superconductor colder, it can handle more current and higher magnetic fields.
Extremely distracting music here.
Go go China East!
@Eudaimonia Way the person is talking about China's artificial sun (a tokamak reactor) that reached 70 million degrees Celsius and ran for 17 minutes.
It's a daft thing to fund with public money. Millions of Kelvin plasma next to absolute zero magnet? It's just a dumb design.
Please, enlighten us with your wonderful ideas then... no? That's odd.
@@bluefernlove My pleasure. It's idiotic, a high school student can see it. ITER is a joke, if not a down right misleading of politicians by physicists. Q=10 is nonsense, it'd be Q=0.5 at best if it didn't vent the plasma into the atmosphere. We should give up on tokamak fusion, until we have superconductors at 1000K. Imagine what €50Bn funding would do for solar PV and grid scale storage research. Inertial confinement may have some promise.
@@luke.perkin.inventor but the superconductors are no way near the plasma so what are you talking about? There’s a wall and a vacuum in the way
@@Gomlmon99 It's simple to describe, yet so hard to engineer and build it. Just know that ITER doesn't demonstrate anything useful, zero generation. Its successor, DEMO won't be online until 2050. DEMOs output is pathetic and the cost per MWh is utterly insane. That's why I conclude It's a stupid line of research. The money should be spent or improving solar PV and grid scale storage technology. That's what we need today.
@@luke.perkin.inventor So what, research reactors aren’t commercially viable? Of course they aren’t, they’re research reactors. Thats not a reason not to do research.