> For fusion devices, you hope to produce more energy than the energy you have to inject to heat the plasma for fusion to happen.
Which Wendelstein can't do – for that, you'll need much more radioactive reactions (involving tritium), and Wendelstein isn't (and can't be) sufficiently shielded for those.
Wendelstein is a research reactor: It's covered in sensors in and out, and it can be easily disassembled or opened up for repairs and modifications, which you generally don't want to do if everything's covered in radiation activated materials.
If Wendelstein holds up to its plans, derivative designs can be used to build net-positive reactors involving tritium (and lots of shielding).
> Yesterday's event was not much about science, but rather about engineering. Building that machine was a gigantic work.
Indeed. Most of its design was finalized in the 80s and the project took 25 years to just get the funding, build the (first of a kind) components and build a working reactor out of them.
In programmer speak, you're essentially asking for how long will it take to implement some new feature (let's say collaborative text editor) in language unknown to you :P
This humorous answer for fusion is 50 years. Always another 50 years.
Realistically, there has been much more progress recently including several SV style startups with massive funding trying to get things to work. It probably is within 50 years this time with the amount of real money and research going into it.
Which Wendelstein can't do – for that, you'll need much more radioactive reactions (involving tritium), and Wendelstein isn't (and can't be) sufficiently shielded for those.
Wendelstein is a research reactor: It's covered in sensors in and out, and it can be easily disassembled or opened up for repairs and modifications, which you generally don't want to do if everything's covered in radiation activated materials.
If Wendelstein holds up to its plans, derivative designs can be used to build net-positive reactors involving tritium (and lots of shielding).
> Yesterday's event was not much about science, but rather about engineering. Building that machine was a gigantic work.
Indeed. Most of its design was finalized in the 80s and the project took 25 years to just get the funding, build the (first of a kind) components and build a working reactor out of them.