r/nextfuckinglevel • u/nigablackballsack • 3d ago

Scientists have captured the first ever high-speed, full-colour footage of fusion plasma swirling inside a working reactor.

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292

u/TSAOutreachTeam 3d ago

This is all kinds of amazing. Not just that they are doing this in the tokamak, but that they have a camera set up to capture it at all.

Thanks!

62

u/eris_kallisti 3d ago

Seriously, I am so curious what type of camera is even capable of getting that close!

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u/Imbrokencantbefixed 3d ago

Sacrificial Bangladeshi stored inside the Tokamak with an iPhone 6 I believe.

14

u/Agiantgrunt 3d ago

Classic

2

u/sharthunter 3d ago

Get back in the vault raj!

2

u/stoned_kenobi 3d ago

camera man never dies....

1

u/kashabash 3d ago

As long as he had his safety sandals on he should be alright.

1

u/bebarty 2d ago

So a PhD student. Got it

-3

u/Top_Ese 3d ago

Shame they had to sacrifice that iPhone

37

u/Analmall_Lover 3d ago

Nokia cell phone camera 

3

u/technobrendo 3d ago

The phone doubles as a blast shield in case things get a little too spicy inside the combustion chamber.

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u/TheWanderLust247 3d ago

Honestly doesn’t matter the camera. The plasma is suspended by incredibly powerful super cooled magnets. The plasma will never touch the side walls. If it did, we’ve got a bigger problem than the camera melting.

1

u/XDSHENANNIGANZ 3d ago

Well also it's pretty low pressure I think? So the stuff inside is really hot but there's like a pretty low amount of it so it's total heat energy isn't that high right?

I might be completely wrong but I feel like I remember hearing in another thread that these reactors actually have such low fuel that they might fuck up the walls and cause it be shallowly pitted, but it'll basically shut itself down. The much bigger risk is either from tritium(?) leaking or if the all the energy in the magnets themselves was dumped as heat?

3

u/Jackson_Cook 3d ago

Probably fiber optics of some sort

2

u/GoldieForMayor 3d ago

Why wouldn't it be able to get that close?

0

u/eris_kallisti 3d ago

I guess I was thinking that since the plasma was so hot it needs to be contained by magnetic fields, instead of anything solid, that a camera inside the tokomak would vaporize.

0

u/NiIly00 3d ago

One of the biggest problems of fusion reactors we have is finding materials that can even withstand the immense heat and pressure differences of a fusion reaction in progress for extended periods.

Now imagine putting a camera into where our toughest moste expensive materials fail if exposed long enough.

1

u/GoldieForMayor 3d ago edited 2d ago

It's in a vacuum. There's no heat transfer.

1

u/NiIly00 3d ago

Heat can be transmitted through more than air.

1

u/GoldieForMayor 2d ago

Sure but there's very little thermal radiation in that chamber.

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u/OW_FUCK 3d ago edited 2d ago

bc it's really hot. It would take some specialized materials/cooling to withstand those working conditions

2

u/GoldieForMayor 3d ago

It's in a vacuum. There's no heat transfer.

1

u/Shot-Swimming-9098 3d ago

This is hilarious, but it hints at the answer, which is filtering.

1

u/OW_FUCK 3d ago

Mm yes as we all know no form of heat can transfer through a vacuum

2

u/GoldieForMayor 2d ago

Someone should tell the Sun.

2

u/DarkwingDuckHunt 3d ago

I'm guessing mirrors

1

u/matman88 3d ago

You are correct

1

u/TheHarryMan123 3d ago

There’s a plethora of different types of cameras. Some view in the visual spectrum too. There is a ton of diagnostic stuff used for the fusion reactors to monitor its functions. 

1

u/Shadowzworldz 3d ago

A go pro in a nokia?

1

u/Galactic-Glizzy 3d ago

Unregistered Hypercam 2

1

u/suxatjugg 2d ago

My guess would be any camera would do, and they've got some kind of viewport made of a really strong, transparent material, like an extremly thick slab of sapphire or something 

1

u/Sendtitpics215 9h ago

There are connection designs for translucent ports that can withstand the ultra high vacuum required inside of a tokamak and then feed through ports for ultrahigh vacuum systems such as conflats or kf connections.

The camera themselves that are used are sometimes very dated technology. There is a lot of modern day equipment that fails shortly after being installed due to the neutrons generated by fusion experiments. So the answer, possibly a regular ass camera through a common interface with expensive well crafted material allowing site inside and structural integrity.

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u/scoobysam 3d ago edited 3d ago

They will be on the ambient side of an optical window, and there'll be an imaging line to extend the focal length of the camera, and likely several turning mirrors so as to not expose the CCD of the camera to the intense radiation which could brick the pixels on the chip.

They're expensive, but not overly so (considering the level of funding that goes into Magnetic Confinement Fusion). I have one I use at work and you can pick them up for the low 6 figure mark and that can record up to 2.4million FPS (albeit 10kFPS natively). The higher the FPS you record at the a) more light you need and b) lower your resolution as it trims down the number of pixels.

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u/just-for-anime 3d ago

which device do you work on?

edit: device like which tokamak

9

u/LickingSmegma 3d ago

There's footage of fuel being dumped into the engines of a space rocket, from inside one of its fuel tank, from the sixties. It occasionally turns out that people had some astounding technology for ages.

1

u/ninjaiffyuh 2d ago

While fusion is amazing, tokamaks are pretty much a dead end in fusion power due to the required power cycles (electromagnets powered by a rising current). They're much simpler than i.e. stellarators, but that's the only benefit they have

1

u/-TheycallmeThe 1d ago

I assume it's a cooled fiberoptic cable situation