Tokamak vs. the Stellarator

Imbolc                                                                             Stock Show Moon

Friend Bill Schmidt found this follow-up to an earlier post about the stellarator. You may not recall it, but this is the next step toward a possible source of power generated by nuclear fusion. May it be successful.

Tokamak and stellarator are designs for fusion devices.

from earthlink.net.

GREIFSWALD, Germany (AP) — Scientists in Germany flipped the switch Wednesday on an experiment they hope will advance the quest for nuclear fusion, considered a clean and safe form of nuclear power.

Following nine years of construction and testing, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald injected a tiny amount of hydrogen into a doughnut-shaped device — then zapped it with the equivalent of 6,000 microwave ovens.

The resulting super-hot gas, known as plasma, lasted just a fraction of a second before cooling down again, long enough for scientists to confidently declare the start of their experiment a success…

Although there are about a dozen stellarator experiments around the world, including in the U.S., Japan, Australia and Europe, scientists say the Greifswald device is the first to match the performance of tokamaks.