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Blog
Fusion is back?
August 10, 2007
A few days ago an interesting press release crossed my desk, with the headline: "ITER Selects ANSYS Solutions for Design of Experimental Nuclear Fusion Facility." I'll admit that I didn't know what ITER or ANSYS were, but the thing about a nuclear fusion facility got my eye. I have been looking for interesting sources of power for a group of articles in our October issue on alternative power generation methods.
Nuclear fusion? I haven't seen anything about that since the last round of people who claimed they could create a reaction on their kitchen table. Maybe it wasn't quite that bad, but it did send me back to Google to look it up. Once you get past Cold Fusion computer software, there is some information available about what that is supposed to be. It would be great if somebody could make it work.
ITER is a truly international group which has banded together to build a working fusion reactor which is known as the ITER device. The construction will take place in southern France and is expected to take about eight years, meaning they expect to light the fire about 2016. This is not a cold process. In fact, plasma in the reactor will reach temperatures of 100 million °C. The working device is expected to generate 500 MW.
The control challenges of this are certainly mind boggling. Would it be better to use a thermocouple or an RTD to measure that kind of temperature? Which would melt first? Anyway, ANSYS is a simulation software company that is providing its package to the device designers. It might be an interesting exercise to research this and see who else is already on board to supply systems and hardware for this project. It's certainly not something you'd deal with every day.
Posted by Peter Welander on August 10, 2007 | Comments (0)