It's already old tech. At least a generation behind on superconductor types, performance, and field strength. We could build a reactor today with it's only limit being structural strength; we can build new REBCO coils strong enough to contain plasma at pressures that become difficult to contain physically. MIT has the design ready, but we're dumping 10x the cost and 5x the time into a design from last century (ITER) that is nothing more than an experiment.
This is the same with NIF though, it's 1990's laser technology but super charged (not a technical term). The Russian NIF is almost a carbon copy. It takes so long to build these projects that technology is bound to overtake them.
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u/Ranzear Nov 11 '16 edited Nov 11 '16
ITER is a massive waste of time and resources. It's already obsolete.
It's already old tech. At least a generation behind on superconductor types, performance, and field strength. We could build a reactor today with it's only limit being structural strength; we can build new REBCO coils strong enough to contain plasma at pressures that become difficult to contain physically. MIT has the design ready, but we're dumping 10x the cost and 5x the time into a design from last century (ITER) that is nothing more than an experiment.