Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I greet W7-X with a huge yawn. A reactor based on stellarators will still be very large and have very low volumetric power density. The beta is not good, so these would only work with DT, and suffer from the generic problems of all DT schemes.



Right. It is fun to keep plasma hot for a long time, but literally none of the fusion projects being worked on can ever lead to production of so much as one solitary erg of commercial power. Cost will necessarily be much more than for fission. Fission is far from competitive today, and falling farther behind daily.

There is a bare possibility of eventual usefulness for spacecraft propulsion. And, some spinoff might come out of a newfound ability to handle lots of hot plasma. Maybe for sewage treatment?


What makes tokamaks so much better at power density? After all it's the exact same setup, just shaped differently and without the center coil?


I didn't say that. Both tokamaks and stellarators on DT will have lousy volumetric power density. Indeed, any DT scheme will suffer in that respect.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: