Quote:
Originally Posted by mjohnson
I believe we'll get there someday - but the masses' belief that it's "clean" is a bit of a stretch. Those 14MeV neutrons from the DT fusion are pretty zesty and tend to interact with everything around them (that's kind of the entire reason that I even know/care about 'em). I wondered but hadn't deeply pondered on where they were going to get the 3H - based on my understanding of similar things I guess what I saw in the news makes sense because otherwise that's some of the most expensive stuff on the planet.
Somewhere I saw that LLNL's National Ignition Facility has decided that they were going to be just a neutron source as that proper/break-even ignition wasn't going to happen in that machine. A darn impressive place that I got to visit before they commissioned it though. Even got to walk into the chamber... They must have used up the world's supply of vacuum equipment for a few years, and they were so proud of their "lean" processes for changing out the many-hundred-kilobuck crystals in the beamline in seconds. Cool science - it also surely paid for a lot of condos in Lake Tahoe and engineers' sports cars but...
IDK how they build up the energy for their shots over there (flywheels?) but we recently replaced the rotor for our Magnetic Field Lab at LANL and it took special trucks and the removal of traffic lights and reinforcement of bridges to get it off of the mesa. Big science takes big toys. Allegedly we make the (very short) highest fields on earth, not sure why besides that we can? I am simple country metallurgist, not physicist.
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As usual, you are exactly on point with these comments. Production of tritium is an issue, IIRC. I think ITER is planning on lithium blankets embedded in the walls? This is really outside of my base of knowledge but I do know that tritium production is problematic.
And...you're right on the "cleanliness". My area of expertise is remote handling. ITER components are going to be highly activated.