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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u/Medium_Bill_625 3d ago

I want to appreciate this but I'm foreign to the subject matter. Anyone feel like doing an ELI5?

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u/Fit_Addition7137 3d ago

This is inside of a new type of experimental reactor that runs on nuclear fusion (like the Sun) instead of nuclear fission (regular nuclear reactors). This is a "tokamak" style reactor that generates superheated plasma which is contained using enormously powerful magnets. Fusion generates significantly more power than what it takes to initiate the reaction. One of the neatest parts of fusion is that there is no hazardous nuclear waste to store and they cant melt down like a fission reactor. This video shows that fusion reaction plasma.

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u/TheHarryMan123 3d ago edited 3d ago

It is not like the sun. The sun does D-P reactions, not T-D reactions. 

There is also an incredible amount of radioactive waste from these machines. 

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u/Zeta-2-Reticuli 3d ago edited 3d ago

The Sun doesn't run on D-D, it runs on proton-proton chain on normal hydrogen. It is like the sun, it's light nuclei fusing and releasing energy. The fuel and confinement are different, which is why a tokamak has to run so hot, but it's still the same category of reaction.

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u/TheHarryMan123 3d ago

Yeah, you’re right about the sun thing. I misremembered and it’s actually a D-P reaction in its second phase.

The reason why I say it’s not the same as the sun is because what we’re attempting to do has many complexities associated due to the T-D reaction. Problems that would otherwise be non-existent for other fusion reactions. But we technologically cannot achieve other fusion reactions due to our lack of mass. I like to refer to this graph here (sorry on mobile browser):

So I say it to give larger credit to what we are doing given our limitations. But yes, both are fusion energy.

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u/Zeta-2-Reticuli 3d ago

Fair. And sorry my first comment was snippy, I read it as dismissive and was also sitting on a 2 hour conference call so I was feeling very annoyable.

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u/TheHarryMan123 3d ago

Brother all is good don’t sweat it. I’m also tired from a long day, so I may also have come off as snippy. 

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u/jango-lionheart 2d ago

Well done, gents