Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory has constructed a fusion reactor from parts it 3D-printed and bought off the shelf.
It fits on a kitchen table.
IEEE Spectrumpublished the storyof the miraculous reactor, which PPPL built last year.
A mockup of the planar coil stellarator, which was first developed at PPPL.© Art via PPPL Facebook.
Plasma-based nuclear fusion reactors have been around for a while, but theyve long been unwieldy.
PPPLs reactor is a glass vacuum tube coated in a 3D-printed nylon shell.
The hell holds in place 9,920 rare-earth magnets.
The shell-like structure is called a stellarator and its meant to contain superheated plasma.
Within the vacuum tube, directed by the magnets, atoms without electrons collide with each other.
When their nuclei fuse it releases massive amounts of energy.
One of the things thats so impressive about this reactor is its cost.
Building a fusion reactor often involves an enormous time and monetary investment.
The Wendelstein 7-X in Germany took 20 years to build at a cost of $1.1 billion.
Princetons machine cost $640,000 and the researchers built it in under a year.
But there are key differences.
The Wendelstein 7-X reactor is an enormous machine built to test the abilities of stellarator-style reactors.
Princetons kitchen-table sized reactor is a prototype, a proof of concept built to prove it could be done.
The future of energy is a huge deal.
Its contributed to the heating of the planet and making it miserable for all of us.
The lords of Silicon Valley know they cant power LLMs with coal plants.
So big tech has turned tonuclear energy.
Theyre still operating through fission.
What PPPL is pursuing is based on a fusion reaction.
Fusion reactions dont create toxic waste.
If theres an accident then theres no nuclear meltdown.
The components required to power it cant be repurposed into a nuclear weapon.
The worlds tech billionaires have their eyes on fusion reactors.
Its not a mature technology, but its one that people like Bill Gates are investing in.
What PPPL has done is impressive, but a fusion-based future is a long way off.
The U.S. Government is partnering with a company called key in One to build a stellarator-style plant in Tennessee.
Itll be the first of its kind.
It also wont be ready until 2029 at the earliest and it wont produce power for commercial use.
For now, we dream and live with the consequences of fission.
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