In Germany, starts working nuclear fusion reactor "bizarre"

The Technological Innovation
Germany connect bizarre nuclear fusion reactor
Reactor estelarator

After nearly 10 years of construction, German engineers have linked the first time the strange fusion reactor Wendelstein 7-X.

In the first trial operation, the staff able to generate the first helium plasma within the reactor, which has an appearance quite different architecture and operating system of the Tokamak, as what The Project Team International ITER, for example.

The Wendelstein 7-X is the largest fusion reactor of the type estelarator the world and aims to demonstrate that this architecture is suitable for energy production.

Unlike a tokamak, which is powered by a plasma stream that needs to be magnetically insulated from the walls of the reactor, a reactor of the type estelarator has no power, ready eliminating the problem of plasma instabilities.

In addition, a estelarator can run continuously, not in pulses, as tokamak.



General view of the construction of the fusion reactor type estelarator before its final closure.
Helium Plasma

Of course the estelarator has its own problems and challenges, but the team now more keen to overcome them by demonstrating that it all started working as expected: the internal vacuum, cooling system, heating system, the superconducting coils and its magnetic field, the measuring system and the control system.

In the first test, with the magnetic field inside the isolating woven chamber, which was under vacuum, the system injected about one milligram of that helium plasma chamber. A pulse microwave heating was 1.8 kilowatt enough to generate the plasma, which lasted a tenth of a second and reached a temperature of 01 million degrees Celsius.

"We're starting with a plasma produced by the noble gas helium. We will not change for the real test object, a plasma of hydrogen, before next year," said Thomas Klinger, Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, responsible by the Wendelstein 7-X project.




Plasma hydrogen

In these initial tests with helium, the team plans to increase the duration of plasma, discovering little by little the most suitable parameters of microwave pulses to produce it and keep it, and carefully check that he's really isolated from the outer walls by fields magnetic.

All being well, next year the team will start the experiments with hydrogen plasma, the element will fuse into helium in nuclear fusion experiments.



In other words, the dream of dominating the energy of the stars still shining, even if they are fleeting flashes as the most distant st