How many tokamaks are there?

There are roughly 150 tokamaks around the world; the biggest one is under construction in France for $30 billion by an international consortium called ITER.

Why is it called a tokamak?

The term "tokamak" comes to us from a Russian acronym that stands for "toroidal chamber with magnetic coils" (тороидальная камера с магнитными катушками).

Is ITER obsolete?

With recent breakthroughs in the coating of new magnetic superconductors, the ITER has become obsolete before it has been completed.

What does tokamak mean in Russian?

A tokamak (/ˈtoʊkəmæk/; Russian: токамáк) is a device which uses a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma in the shape of a torus. The tokamak is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices being developed to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power.

How many tokamaks have been built?

There are roughly 150 tokamaks around the world; the biggest one is under construction in France for $30 billion by an international consortium called ITER.

What is a tokamak? And is a spherical tokamak different?

Is stellarator better than tokamak?

As such, the stellarators often operate at a higher density than tokamaks do. In the LHD, a super-dense core plasma (>1 × 10²¹ m⁻³) has been attained [23. H. Yamada, K.

Will ITER produce nuclear waste?

No long-lived waste

Fusion reactors, unlike fission reactors, produce no high activity/long life radioactive waste. The "burnt" fuel in a fusion reactor is helium, an inert gas.

Who is paying for ITER?

ITER is funded and run by seven member parties: China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.

How many MW will ITER produce?

ITER is designed to produce a ten-fold return on energy (Q=10), or 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of input heating power. ITER will not capture the energy it produces as electricity, but—as first of all fusion experiments in history to produce net energy gain—it will prepare the way for the machine that can.

Can a tokamak explode?

During operation, the ITER Tokamak chamber will contain only a tiny amount, less than one tenth of a gram, of hydrogen fuel at any given moment. If disruption occurs during a pulse, the reaction cools and ends. "A nuclear explosion in ITER is simply not possible," says Loughlin.

How hot do tokamaks get?

The temperatures inside the ITER Tokamak must reach 150 million degrees Celsius—or ten times the temperature at the core of the Sun—in order for the gas in the vacuum chamber to reach the plasma state and for the fusion reaction to occur.

How does a tokamak not melt?

Fusion powers the sun by forcing hydrogen atoms to combine into helium and releasing enormous amounts of energy. A tokamak uses strong magnetic fields to confine a plasma that is heated above 200 million ℃, maximizing the efficiency of hydrogen isotope fusion.

What do tokamaks do?

A tokamak is an experimental device that creates a nuclear fusion reaction, which in turn produces energy to heat water and produce steam that drives turbines to generate electricity.

How big is a tokamak?

830 cubic metres. The ITER Tokamak will be the largest ever built, with a plasma volume of 830 cubic metres.

Is ITER still under construction?

The ITER Project is currently under construction on a 180-hectare site in southern France. Thirty-nine buildings and technical areas house the ITER Tokamak and its plant systems.

Is Pakistan a member of ITER?

Talking to The Express Tribune a senior official of the National Centre for Physics (NCP), who wished not to be named, said that Pakistan has been trying to become an ITER member since 2003, but is still unable to secure a place in the group mainly because of shortage of funds and insufficient number of researchers in ...

What countries are apart of ITER?

The ITER Members—China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States—are now engaged in a collaboration to build and operate the ITER experimental device, and together bring fusion to the point where a demonstration fusion reactor can be designed.

Is cold fusion possible?

There is currently no accepted theoretical model that would allow cold fusion to occur.

How much does ITER cost?

ITER is now expected to cost at least $21 billion and won't turn on until 2020 at the earliest. And a recent review slammed ITER's management. The cost of the U.S. contribution has increased, too, although by how much has been unclear.

Can this $22 billion megaproject make nuclear fusion power a reality?

Race for clean energy heats up; this $22 billion megaproject aims to make fusion a reality. Scientists have been trying to replicate the power of the sun for years through fusion reaction. Unlike nuclear reactors that are powered by fission or splitting of atoms, fusion occurs when atoms are fused together.

Why are tokamaks donut shaped?

If you've heard of fusion energy, you've probably heard of tokamaks. These doughnut-shaped devices are meant to cage ionized gases called plasmas in magnetic fields while heating them to the outlandish temperatures needed for hydrogen nuclei to fuse.

Why is a stellarator twisted?

Stellarators use external coils to generate a twisting magnetic field to control the plasma instead of inducing electric currents inside the plasma like a tokamak.

What is AZ pinch?

In fusion power research, the Z-pinch (zeta pinch) is a type of plasma confinement system that uses an electric current in the plasma to generate a magnetic field that compresses it (see pinch).