PR: OpenStar launches formal collaboration with MIT ... in quest to build New Zealand's first fusion energy device.

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://openstar.substack.com/p/openstar-launches-formal-collaboration

OpenStar launches formal collaboration with MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center in quest to build New Zealand’s first fusion energy device.

OPENSTAR TECHNOLOGIES
OCT 29, 2024

Here at OpenStar, we’re working toward fusion energy using a novel design concept and have signed a collaboration agreement with the MIT Plasma and Fusion Center (PSFC).

OpenStar is the only company developing a levitated dipole reactor for commercial purposes, and this collaboration is the next step on our mission to revolutionise renewable energy by harnessing fusion - the same process powering our sun.

The twelve-month agreement will see researchers at both MIT and OpenStar use advanced physics simulations to test methods of overcoming a core hurdle: heating a plasma to a hundred million degrees in order to initiate a fusion reaction.

“The collaboration will allow us to lean on some of the best brains in the business, and for this first phase, will give us essential insights into how we build the larger version of our reactor,” said Dr Darren Garnier, OpenStar’s Director of Plasma Science and a visiting scientist at the PSFC.

…

https://substack.com/home/post/p-148287666

OPENSTAR TECHNOLOGIES
Junior - OpenStar's Fusion Magnet
Ahead of our team's attendance at ASC, read up on what makes our fusion magnet so unique.

OPENSTAR TECHNOLOGIES
AUG 30, 2024

From September 1-6, members of the OpenStar team will head to Salt Lake City Utah, to present at the Applied Superconductivity Conference (ASC).

Junior - OpenStars Fusion Magnet
(Video available at link.)

OpenStar Technologies

OpenStar Technologies is building a Levitated Dipole Reactor (LDR), uniquely integrating novel power supplies and leveraging High-Temperature Superconductors (HTS) onboard a levitating electromagnet. This half-tonne device, affectionately named Junior, houses a complex arrangement of systems unlike anything else in the world.

For more traditional fusion machines, a plasma is confined inside a fixed configuration of superconductors. For the levitated dipole, the superconductors are contained within a donut-shaped magnet with field lines emanating outwards, confining a plasma around the magnet in a dipole shape. We can observe this same shape in nature with Earth’s magnetosphere.

Though our founding in 2021 came from modern innovations here in New Zealand, it would not have been possible without the foundations laid by institutions such as MIT, Columbia University, and Tokyo University. MIT, alongside Columbia, began their Levitated Dipole Experiment, or LDX, in 1998 and officially ceased research in 2014. Over this time, they studied the quirks and benefits of Low-Temperature Superconductors for Dipole application and successfully confined a plasma. The University of Tokyo began experiments on RT-1, another levitated dipole device using HTS, in the early 2000s and they continue to extract findings from its operation today.

…

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. :"heating a plasma to a hundred million degrees in order to initiate a fusion reaction."

C or F? There's a difference, you know.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Yes, there is, but...

If we’re talking about 9 figures, is the difference “significant?”

For what it’s worth, I believe the 100 Million was more of an expression of magnitude than a precise figure. This story, uses a different threshhold:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/08/climate/nuclear-fusion-energy-milestone-climate/index.html

To generate fusion energy, the team raised temperatures in the machine to 150 million degrees Celsius — around 10 times hotter than the core of the sun. That extreme heat forces the deuterium and tritium to fuse together and form helium, a process that in turn releases enormous amounts of heat.

[OAITW r.2.0]

3. How do they build a container to withstand that kind of temperature?

What materials?

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. That's a whole science in itself

https://news.mit.edu/2024/more-durable-metals-fusion-power-reactors-0819

More durable metals for fusion power reactors
MIT researchers have found a way to make structural materials last longer under the harsh conditions inside a fusion reactor.

Nancy W. Stauffer | MIT Energy Initiative
August 19, 2024

For many decades, nuclear fusion power has been viewed as the ultimate energy source. A fusion power plant could generate carbon-free energy at a scale needed to address climate change. And it could be fueled by deuterium recovered from an essentially endless source — seawater.

Decades of work and billions of dollars in research funding have yielded many advances, but challenges remain. To Ju Li, the TEPCO Professor in Nuclear Science and Engineering and a professor of materials science and engineering at MIT, there are still two big challenges. The first is to build a fusion power plant that generates more energy than is put into it; in other words, it produces a net output of power. Researchers worldwide are making progress toward meeting that goal.

The second challenge that Li cites sounds straightforward: “How do we get the heat out?” But understanding the problem and finding a solution are both far from obvious.

Research in the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) includes development and testing of advanced materials that may help address those challenges, as well as many other challenges of the energy transition. MITEI has multiple corporate members that have been supporting MIT’s efforts to advance technologies required to harness fusion energy.

…

Typically, the “container” is a magnetic field, which keeps the hot plasma away from the metal walls of the reactor.


The other approach, “inertial confinement” does not attempt to maintain an ongoing reaction. “Thermonuclear weapons” were essentially the first use of “inertial confinement.” An “atom bomb” is used to provide the tremendous heat and pressure necessary to “fuse” the fuel, releasing a tremendous amount of energy. The challenge is how to harness that energy for practical use.

The much vaunted LLNL fusion device uses several powerful lasers simultaneously hitting a target from multiple directions, instead of an atom bomb to provide enough heat and pressure, to fuse a small amount of fuel.

Essentially, they’re setting off a tiny bomb, within the confines of a huge machine. The “National Ignition Facility” was never intended to be a power plant. Its intended purpose was to simulate a bomb. (It allows weapons testing, without testing weapons.)

It’s conceivable that this model could be used to produce electricity by driving a steam turbine, and companies are working on it.

[OAITW r.2.0]

5. Thanks for the response!

Amazing tech. I get the mag field control of the fusion process, but I still have to think there is a lot of energy/heat bleed into the vessel itself.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. No doubt about it!

(Hence the MIT work.)