Why STELLARATORS are the future of Fusion Energy
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Why STELLARATORS are the future of Fusion Energy
The tokamak has been the dominant design for fusion reactors for the past few decades, but recent advances in stellarator technology may soon relegate it to history.
Stellarators have several advantages over tokamaks, and many experts believe they are the future of fusion energy. Watch this video to learn more about the science behind stellarators and why they may be our best hope for a clean and sustainable source of energy.
Software Used:
Blender 3.x
Apple Motion
Final Cut Pro X - Věda a technologie
![Stellarators - The Future of Fusion Energy [2020]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qKTePWmHRQw/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm a fusion scientist who enjoys this channel and unfortunately this is a very misinformed view. Small physics inaccuracies I can accept, but directly comparing the size and cost of Wendelstein to ITER is bonkers; Wendelstein's performance is likely to be less than 1% of ITER's. In the fusion research community it is generally accepted that stellarator-based fusion power plants would be larger and more expensive than their tokamak counterparts. You should have your videos reviewed by some people with more experience, your Blender modules and video production are great and spreading good info would be extremely welcome.
May I ask you for how is like to work in fusion research? I am very interested about it, and I love in electromagnetism, instrumentation and control engineering. However, I have read articles and thesis, and it seems too much theoretical to me, most of them are about computer simulations, although I must say I have mostly read a profesor from my university, who mainly publies about MHD, and I guess there are way more topics, but I barely found any "practical" stuff related.
I am more into "design" / engineering than "theory" / high level physics, and I am not the kind of person who would like to spent all the day in front of the computer, so... Would you think I would like it?
@@JaviReinaLara I spent much of the past years in your position, though now I'm doing much more theoretical work since I got fixated on something (and I like computers so). Depending on the institution you are involved with, I would say engineering and design are the major push at this point. If you do a PhD or Postdoc at Princeton, you will likely be doing some pretty advanced plasma physics theory. If you go to MIT there is theory (I'm doing it), but the majority of people are doing technology work. If you work at a private company, of course, relatively few people are expected to know plasma physics at all. If you're designing instruments and diagnostics, you're gonna need to know a lot about tokamaks, though. I found you can do this while skipping most of the physics, just thinking about how pieces fit together.
@@ameliacavallaro8067 Thank you so much for the answer!
I am glad to know there is engineering work about it.
My main issue with Fusion is that is seems a much to make a mini sun on earth only to use it to boil water more efficiently to turn a turbine really fast.
Surely theres a better way for us to gain access to the raw energy being produced and if so, then how?
@@Archangel657 There is a lot of literature on this. The standard operating procedure in designs right now is to assume a Helium or Supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle, which is still turbines but has large efficiency of conversion of thermal energy to electricity.
Some fusion approaches can consider non-thermal energy conversion, but it is generally not worth discussing until the technology has been demonstrated (there are many methods applicable in different situations).
The Stellarator would fit just as well in an art gallery as it would in a research institute. The strangely intricate wavy curves look arbitrary and organic, yet they all serve some rigorous mathematical purpose. In my opinion it is the singular most futuristic-looking piece of current technology we have.
It reminded me of some Sci-fi movies where they also used organic designs ( e.g. Buckaroo Banzai and 12 Monkeys ).
looks lke a slinky on the perfect dose of lsd, or anything on dmt.
@@Sagittarius-A-Star Stellators could totally be working inside of an giant art gallery. Like Wendelstein stellators are just so beautiful and transpire so much aptitude. Modern art galleries on the other hand would need to bury stellators to the basement because it would totally reveal their grand illusion.
the design came out after years of calculating on a supercomputer
I think "the most futuristic looking piece of 20-year-old technology that we have" is probably more correct and also slightly more profound
I think that something a lot of people may miss after watching this video is how much we have learned while pursuing tokamak reactor designs. The people who decided ITER would utilize them were not stupid, and it was a good decision at the time. Additionally, the budget for these reactors is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Our nations can easily afford these projects dozens of times over, and that they consistently choose not to is telling.
No spending 2 trillion$ on a war is definitely better than some spare change on cool science stuffs. And we can get rid of our depleted Uranium by actually shooting it around war zones.
agreed, what we can learn from ITER is worth it, along with the building of international relations in the fusion sector
Yea, this video is pretty biased and obviously trying to say stellerstors are better.
@@crackedemerald4930 I mean he provides an argument i agree with, im just saying there is still value to be gained from ITER
"The people who decided ITER would utilize them were not stupid, and it was a good decision at the time"
Nope because there were several major design problems before construction was started. The team just ignored them & pressed on with construction. ITER is not an energy program, its a jobs program.
Neither reactor will work as Stellarators have not solve the plasma stability problems. Nor is either going to be cost effective. A commercial Magnetic confinement reactor (if it did work) would cost 10 times more than a fission plant for the same amount of energy output. Fission power is already too expensive, and most of the world is phasing it out.
The issue with stellarators is that they are designed for only one mode of operation.
Tokamaks are general and can operate in many different modes so they are much better for research.
The consensus among the physicists I talked to is that once we find the best mode of operation in tokamaks, we can then mass-produce these specialized stallarators for that mode.
What are these modes your physicists speak of?
I also wonder what these different modes are
@@nickholloway5086 @p0xus If I'm not wrong, I believe he his talking about the optimal shape of plasma confinement. I forgot the names but you can have 2 rings one of top of the other, you can have a triangle shaped plasma ring etc, etc, etc. These shapes are made by adjusting and controlling the magnetic fields confining the plasma. Some shapes are very hard to maintain without help of an AI for example.
That was my thought too. From what I understand stellarators are quite sensitive to getting the complex shape of the coils just right. Tokamaks have a greater number of simpler, independently controlled coils, so there are a lot more options for fine tuning the operating parameters in software after the reactor is already built. Pretty handy if you're trying to improve plasma physics models.
Another potential issue is maintenance of internal shielding. One of the major goals of ITER is to test if the interior of the reactor can be effectively shielded from the intense neutron flux, and how well this shielding can be maintained, replaced, and used for tritium breeding. Any reactor design without such shielding would only ever be good for short research runs. Since stellarators have narrower internal spaces and more complex geometry, I imagine such maintenance would be much harder. (On a side note, omitting this shielding is an easy way to artificially inflate the performance of "prototype" reactors.)
it is correct that tokamaks are much more flexible with respect to the magnetic configuration, but ITER will run with ONE magnetic configuration as well. It is the task of the smaller machines to check wether some other plasma shape (diferent triangularyty, negativ triangularyty, single null divertor, double null divertor, supper X divertor, snow flake divertor, wapor box divertor, liquide metal divertor, metalic wall, liquide mettal wall, ...) is better for plasma confinement.
Wendelstein 7-X is a lot less powerful than ITER, so the cost comparison isn't fair. Also, the budget is largely blown up because it is a cooperation. Let's hope Wendelstein will show promising results, so that a bigger machine can be built within next 20 years.
I would go and say that the size and mass comparison are the most irrelevant of all these.
Yes, the W7X isn't designed to be a net gain machine and a stellerator designed to reach >1 gain will need to be similar in size to ITER (using traditional superconducting magnets). A smaller net gain machine could be built using HTS magnets but this applies to Tokamaks as well.
Like for 20 years joke :)
Even this size can produce that much energy it could light up Berlin easelly
The plasma volume is 840 m^3 vs 30 m^3.
Although the stellarator can fix some of the hurdles behind reactor design, I still get why ITER is using a tokomak design. Beyond just the lack of research into stellarators over the years, ITER's biggest purpose is to achieve net-positive output from a fusion reactor.
Even with the tokomak's drawbacks, we are still extremely close to optimizing its design to break this barrier. We need to know how the plasma will behave under self-sustained fusion. Considering how much has already been put into the technology, this is the most understood way we have of doing it. Rather than building from the ground up, we have enough data already on tokomaks to make fine adjustments throughout the experiments. And although stellarators can be cheaper to set up and run, tokomaks still hold the edge on what will get us to net-positive output the fastest. From there, we can use the data to optimize stellarators to get over that threshold faster
Your salary comes from tokamaks, right?
We can breed Thorium into U233 right now in Molten Fluid Fission Reactors, while you guys tinker around.
#Aloha
@@jimrobcoyle Fluid fission reactors have their own challenges. Their development stalled in the 60s since they couldn't be used to produce plutonium. The main challenge now is develop the right allows for them that can resist the heat and the corrosion effectively.
IMO, we need all these technologies. They're all better in some ways, and the research into each one will certainly have a other uses.
ITER is a joke and is already obsolete. It won’t even put useable power on the grid. SPARC/ARC is the future of fusion. ARC will put electricity on the grid before ITER even builds a second plant.
so just yeet more money till we get it?
but the stellarator still looks cool as f*ck
Scientists decided to go in direction of Tokomak instead of stellarator not just because it's simpler to design, just check the design of any tokamak. They decided to go that way because it is a quicker way to test if fusion is viable. There is tons of project around fusion and we are only at the beginning of this technology 😅 we'll see
"it is a quicker way to test if fusion is viable"
In other words: it's simpler to work with, or _simpler to design_ as they say.
I'm starting research in a plasma physics lab... definitely going to run a sim on a stellarator if I get the chance after seeing this 👀
@@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk No, it's more versatile to study
I like the video except for the fact that you compare the mass of the systems without talking about the output. You can create a massive stellarator that is even larger than ITER, does its mere existence suggest all stellarators must be massive? There should be a bit more explanation as to the scaling of each system in regards to input energy vs theoretical output.
You didn't catch the fact that Tokamaks needed to be bigger to be more viable.
@@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk Ok, how much bigger? for how much output? It wasn't stated in any way. There are small tokamaks too, but they are not net positive, so I was saying that the breakeven point should be declared to show how the stellarators are more viable as they are able to have net positive output with less energy input therefore can be smaller due to requiring much less cryo cooling, energy for magnetic coils etc. These are true facts and are the great thing about stellarators, so they should be addressed!
@@Dem0nshade oh, yeah you're right
@@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk Since neither is viable at the current time and we have no idea if either will be viable your argument makes zero sense.
@@thomgizziz yeah, you sound like you know a lot more about this stuff
/s
You really should make a few of your renders available as wallpapers. They look AMAZING
This is hands down my favorite video you've ever made now. From 6:00 on is just so aesthetically pleasing, both visually and auditorily. You've grown so much as a content creator and your skills are showing. I love it!
This is the first time I've heard of a Stellertator.... and going by this one point of view it seems like a much better way of approaching fusion.... BUT, like I said.... this is just ONE PoV... I have to learn more...
But THANK YOU for opening my eyes to it :D
Well, one thing that Tokamaks have an advantage over Stellarators is that, apparently, they are more flexible as a vessel for fusion research than a Stellarator, while Stellarators are purpose built to be power generators first and foremost.
My jaw (literally, not figuratively) dropped at the quality of the animations while illustrating such a complex design. Thank you for the video.
Exceptionally well done video, the animations and transitions are really terrific!
This is my first exposure to your channel and wow, bravo, instant subscribe
Your videos are seriously next level. Nice job.
Your quality is outstanding mate! Amazing video, as always!.
I don't understand how you don't have the whole world subscribed i have been watching the videos for a while and the work put in is just incredible
OOO finaly a video about stellarators! thanks as always!
You put a lot of work in this one again! Fantastic! Will share!
I recently visited the Paul Schärer Institut and if I am not mistaken they have a stellarator aswell. I didn't have to check it out but I did evaluate their SULTAN facility which is the wolrd's largest testing machine for superconductors, which is used for among others testing magnets for fusion reactors.
PSI does not have a stellarator. They are involved in fusion research though, in superconductivity of course and I think also on the plasma side of things. SULTAN is amazing to see, I visited PSI last month for a work trip of the research group I do my PhD in. An alumnus of ours is working in one of PSI's superconductivity groups. Little detail, SULTAN is not used to test the magnets, but used to test the cables themselves specifically in SULTANS high magnetic field. In our group we has a long history of testing those cables as well. If I'm not mistaken SULTAN will test some samples of ours in the next few months also.
Incredible work with the video, SZS!
Let's give him a 100,000 likes for this!!!
Recently found this channel, and i love how you don't dumb things down too much. Really explaining how these things work is a refreshing change of pace.
I agree. I think we've all seen a hundred videos about fusion power and every single time the producer has to explain it, and it was really great this time to get through that in 45 seconds instead of seven and a half minutes.
I think the developments with the MIT SPARC reactor are also very interesting. A much smaller and cheaper reactor, that while not quite as powerful as ITER, would still in theory be much more powerful then any other Fusion reactor made so far aside of it.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC_(tokamak)
Developing their much stronger magnets to full technical maturity will allow various projects to in future use much smaller reactor designs, thus vastly reducing the cost and weight issues. Which ultimately means that it becomes possible to more quickly iterate on prototype designs, as well as make it possible to run more fusion projects at the same time. One can but imagine what this could mean for future stellerator research as well.
It's one of the developments making me hopeful that Fusion progress can in future go more quickly again.
They are doing good work as well as tokomak UK and helion who have a different take
Two years later and you are definitely on another level with your design. Great work!
i love your animations. i've amused myself trying to make a stellarator in Blender several times and never got it looking half as good as you have
I LOVE stellarators. They're so cool. Learned about them a while back but thus gave me some more insight into them.
Fantastic video, thankyou! 😎
Amazing video quality! Really impressive
Great video! Thank you for all the effort! It really shows and makes a difference!
I LOVE the blender models and renders you make, astonoshing and good to know about this revisions of technologies, thanks for the content
I still like the polywell fusor. It has a special place in my heart as the reactormthat got me obsessed with nuclear energy. Thank you Bussard.
I also like focus fusion. I like the idea of a power plant in my garage powering my world.
And the Spark reactor is also cool.
I think ITER, DEMO and the W9 are all worthy projects that should get continued funding but I don't expect them to be the end-all in Fusion reactors.
Your 3D skills are just amazing man! that stellarator is looking fine AF.
the fact that im starting to see fusion related videos and adds everywhere means that fusion is indeed the future
finally ... a video on fusion reactors that has new information in it.
When trying to digest, advanced subjects such as this, for someone with purely a basic understanding, a soundtrack that is delivered at such levels is beyond distracting. An adjustment of, 20/30% woul be welcome. Great topic, thanks for sharing.
Great video. Thoughtful content. Groovy music.
Gorgeous and informative graphics!
Agreed; you have really been mastering you craft, and it should. You have my “like” and acknowledgement!
I need to learn more about fusion!
Fantastic video 👍🏼
This video is peak subject zero. models on point, music on point and really intresting subject
man, your videos are amazing! Are you on Nebula?
The best thing about this channel is that we can watch the high-quality videos for free.
Rafael, you're the f****** man! Another masterpiece of graphics and stellar content!
One part of stellarator vs. tokamaks is that by definition, stellarators are steady state, compared to tokamaks which will always be pulsed, which induces fatigues in the machine, and is hard to add to the grid
great animations dude
Always top notch
Very well prepared session, very clear and very helpful... Thank u very much
Yay a new upload
Amazing video!
The music in the background was especially fitting too!
Any chance you could link them?
Wow, it is really interesting. And the video is awesome
I didn't get the notifications :( Thank god youtube recommended this relatively soon because if not I would've missed out on a true gem
I love the audio design of your video, how do you find these audios or are you making them yourself?
The most beautiful CGI I’ve ever seen
Great choices of music
6:25 the animaltion of your logo is too cool to describe 😮
The like is well deserved - for the artwork alone. I too am a Stellarator supporter. To fully enter the collective consciousness, it needs a good T-Shirt. If only we knew someone who: 1-sells T-shirts & hoodies; and 2-has crafted an awesome Stellarator picture...😉
yeah it should be Subject Zero
nice, i have been up close to one
Nice graphics, you are right. It is interesting to see the comparison between ITER and W7X.
Well done! Thank you.
Although it is not quite a fair comparison, because the ITER in Caderache is a first attempt at a commercial Fusion power plant, while the Stellarator in Greifswald is mire at a similar stage as the JET in Oxford.
It would also have been nice to portray the current state of W7X operation. there is an infrequent annual or biannual newsletter of the Max Planck Institute for Plasmaphysik (MPP) team detailing the progress of the W7X project.
We'll see how the W7-X Stellarator performs soon this year, as for Tokamaks they have proven to be reliable candidate for fusion energy due to more time spent working with them and more promising results as of late regardless of similar drawbacks. ITER has exponentially more funding and could be the direction we most likely will go for a few decades before a promising Stellarator is produced to have net-positive return in energy and is self- sustaining.
Never stop making videos
These videos are so so good
Hi, nice movie, but ... as somebody who is working in fusion, I have a few points to trow in.
Quenching is when superconductive conductors lose the superconductivite. It can happen in tokamaks as wel as in stellaratos as wel as in CERN, and it is always an isue.
W7X is generally one genaration behing ITER. It is more fair to compare it to the JET tokamak. Even thou W7X is a bit smaller than JET, it is expected that W7X will have better results than JET. We were able to build the JET in 1980s, but it was possible to start to buid the W7X in 2010s.
Generally, if we expect to produce electricity with stellarators, we will still have to build either the machine in the siye of ITER, or build it with strongel magnetic field like the ARC should have.
Also, since the heat load of the plasma facing components, mainly the divertor, is much larger that the heat load of the space shuttle during the landing, we still have a lot of work to do to push this to the powerplant, does not matter if we talk about the tokamaks or the stellarators.
but thank for a nice movie and cool animations.
looks awesome - gj
Great stuff. keep it up.
Such an underrated channel !
Hey Subject Zero, do you have a link to your theme song for your intro? I could listen to it all day
Well this is a beautiful video
You deserve a million likes! You got mine!
Amazing video
Great video I hope I can work on a stellarator one day
Been a Stellarator fan since before the W-7X was finished, so like, 2013 maybe? I've always been a big fan of plasma based fusion, and Stellarators just look so much cooler..
I’m so fascinated by plasma fusion technology and the future value it’s research and application bring.
Great sound)
great video
Before I watched this video I've had the crazy idea that maybe the plasma in Fusion reactors needs to be compressed into a specific shape to maintain stability. And for no actual reason I wondered if a mobius strip would improve the plasmas characteristics. Now I'm convinced this is true.
That's brilliant 👏
Love the original intro tune
Where did the song at 5:15 come from? It's amazing!
such a nice video :)
Your productions are next level....I hope you would make a decent amount of money to keep it up on frequent
Thank you so much for busting out the explanation of fusion power in 45 seconds. Anyone with any interest in this has already seen hundred videos on the progress of this technology, but somehow ever video always spends somewhere between five and ten minutes doing the exposition of how it all works and I think I speak for us all when I say, we are bored to tears with that sht. Thank you for being speedy about it!!
Also really great video!! amazing progress with your graphics!
Please, which musics did you use ?
oh yeah your model work has really improved!! not that it was bad before tho ahah!! wayyy better than what i could do in blender!!
Well, that title is unfortunate.
Edit: to future viewers, the author labled this video as stellarators are the "MASTER RACE" of fusion reactors. Just lol.
Have you consider to have a newsletter? Would love to receive newsletters about fusion and similar topics. Asionemetry, Sinocism or Semianalysis are great but they dont talk about fusion and the future of the energy.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for skipping the “how fusion works” section!
Can. Not. Wait.
The most beautiful video I have ever seen on youtube, Btw the recent advancement in quantum computing sounds quite promising , presuming somehow in the near future we will be able to make enough Qbits which will allow us to make a practical quantum computer, we could do some serious chemistry, We might be able to build some incredible super-conductors and that just might be the key to confine plasma for energy production, We might be standing a chance after all.
There should be as many approaches to fusion as possible because creativity should be valued.
Epic Video
Hi, you previously made a video about the problems carbon nanotubes and graphine may present . Can you re apload it? I can't find it .
Without tokamak, there would be no stellarator. ITER was always research and development project
fundamental research with no goal of ever producing energy (except to break through the net profit barrier) or monetary profits.
We learned so much from it and it's incredibly important knowledge about fusion, how plasma behaves etc. and fundamental physics.
okay but what is the song you used from 4:18 and onward? It's super catchy and i need it in my playlist
I always hit like on vids from subject zero
2:00 I've never seen anyone even mention waste removal, which will certainly poison the reaction.
lets go another video
Just premium content as always
i find it intersting to see photos of my work from 15 Years ago. The cable of w7-x gave me a lot of trouble, the blueprints just remebering this let my brain hurt.
Great video, very impressive! W7X has been completed for some years now, has it achieved fusion yet? Someone gave me a tip a few years back that fusion is demonstrated when there are neutrons created. A lot of focus recently is about reaching a temperature where fusion should start but for me the test is neutrons! I'm happy to wait for practical ways to get energy out of the system after fusion is demonstrated.