Chapter 437 The Predicament of Spiral Stone

When the manuscript was sent across the ocean to Professor Kreber's mailbox, a very serious meeting was going on in the conference room of the Helix 7-X laboratory.

Sitting here are experts like Professor Ganser Heisinger, director of the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Max Planck Society, as well as leaders sent by the Helmholtz Association, as well as from PPPL laboratories, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IEAR ), the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other ITER project participants as visiting scholars.

If Professor Lazersson has not resigned from PPPL, he should be among those sitting here at this moment. As the He-3 atom probe technology plays an increasingly important role in plasma observation, the status of the "He3 project team" is also rising.

But now, it is not Lazersson who is sitting here, but his assistant, Laverne Bucher, a doctor who is only in his thirties. Sitting next to a group of bigwigs, this newcomer looked a little embarrassed and didn't dare to speak at the meeting.

As for why the atmosphere of the meeting is so serious...

Have to start from last month.

Just last month, Spiral 7-X finally completed the installation of the water-cooled divertor.

Originally, according to the plan of the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Max Planck Society, the water-cooled divertor will completely solve the problem of the temperature of the reaction chamber.

However, the result was not as ideal as expected.

The plasma heated to a high temperature of 100 million degrees was indeed confined within the electromagnetic field, and the water-cooled divertor did play a role, but the temperature of the first wall rose faster than the on-site staff expected.

As a large amount of thermal energy that is too late to dissipate is accumulated, the temperature of the first wall material continues to rise, gradually threatening the safety of the stellarator orbit.

In order to avoid a major safety accident, the staff had to turn off the equipment and terminate the test early.

In the end, after the installation of the water-cooled divertor was completed, the confinement of the high-temperature and high-pressure plasma lasted only 6 minutes.

Compared with the more than 100 seconds of the international mainstream research direction of the Tokamak device, this result is already quite outstanding.

But for stellarators, this result is not so beautiful.

Looking at the research report in his hand, Kleiber made a short report to the experts and scholars at the conference table.

"...the water-cooled divertor has been installed, but now the problem is that the confinement of the plasma is not as perfect as we thought."

"...According to the feedback data, starting from 227 seconds, a small amount of unbound plasma contacting the first wall became the main cause of heat accumulation, and finally caused the heat accumulation speed on the first wall material to exceed the cooling of the water-cooled divertor Efficiency also exceeded our expectations.”

After listening to Kleiber's report, Professor Udor from the Helmholtz Association suddenly spoke.

"You mean, the problem isn't the water-cooled divertor, but the plasma in the stellarator is out of control?"

Although the Spiral Stone 7-X laboratory is a research facility of the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics, the entire research facility including this stellarator was jointly built by the Max Planck Society and the German Helmholtz Association .

As the second largest scientific research organization in Germany after the Max Planck Society, the Helmholtz Association still has a considerable say in the field of fusion energy.

"It's not out of control, it's the natural divergence of the plasma. Even a star can't make every plasma run around in a regular manner. There will always be a few plasmas hitting the first wall, and this is Acceptable margin of error," Kleiber said emphatically in response to the questioning from the Helmholtz Association.

Professor Udor raised his eyebrows: "Just a few?"

Kleiber: "...This is just a metaphor, of course I can't give you a specific amount. I can only tell you that at least compared with the mainstream MacTok device, we have done a lot in magnetic confinement Excellent."

Seeing that the two were about to quarrel, Professor Heisinger coughed lightly, interrupting their argument.

"The problem is clear, what we need to do now is to solve the problem instead of continuing to argue about meaningless things."

After a pause, Professor Heisinger continued.

"We now have two options, one is to change the existing control scheme, one is to change our cooling system."

Either reduce the plasma on the first wall through more precise electromagnetic field control, or change to a water-cooled divertor with stronger performance to improve cooling performance.

"It may be difficult to improve the existing control scheme," Professor Kleiber shook his head. "If there is a better control scheme to replace it, we would have used it long ago."

Bucher, who had never had a chance to speak, tried to intervene: "What about replacing the water-cooled divertor?"

"This is unrealistic, even if it is modified on the existing basis, it is impossible." Professor Heisinger shook his head: "The crux of the problem now is that we have to honor the 30 projects we have made before 2020. minute commitment ... and we only have two years at most."

The atmosphere in the conference room was a bit heavy, and everyone stopped talking.

As Professor Heisinger said, timing is the key to everything.

A water-cooled divertor is not a refrigerator. This kind of millimeter or even micron-scale engineering is exaggerated in the difficulty of each step. It is not easy to reassemble, let alone redesign the device.

From 15 years to the present, it took them three full years to install the current water-cooled divertor on the Helix 7-X.

And now that 2020 is only two years away, they don't have time to spend another three years redesigning and assembling the water-cooled divertor.

To be honest, assigning a specific time to science is a pretty silly thing to do.

Even the most authoritative person in a certain field cannot predict in advance how long it will take to produce a certain technology.

It could have been born tomorrow, or it could be fundamentally wrong.

But if they don't, if they don't continue to paint the pie, no one will invest money in them...

...

When the time came to 12 o'clock, the meeting was temporarily dismissed, and it was arranged to continue after 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

Sitting in the dining room on the first floor of the laboratory, Kleiber ordered a cup of coffee, sat by the window, opened his work laptop, and checked his unread emails by habitually logging into his mailbox.

"Review invitation?"

Looking at the email lying in the mailbox, Creber raised his eyebrows with interest.

Strictly speaking, he is not a plasma physicist, but an engineer in the direction of plasma physics and fusion energy.

In addition, compared with the mainstream tokamak device, the stellarator is regarded as an "unpopular" research direction, and there are not many research institutions engaged in this research in the world.

The review invitation for a journal under the American Physical Society, he remembered the last time it was five years ago.

Originally, he didn't plan to use the break time between meetings to review manuscripts, but Kleiber still couldn't hold back his curiosity and clicked on the paper.

Although he is not considered a plasma physicist, he has worked in the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Max Planck Society for a long time, and he is not unfamiliar with theoretical things. He still has the ability and qualifications to review manuscripts.

Mathematical model of plasma turbulence?

Seeing the abstract of the paper, Professor Kleiber raised his eyebrows.

Only image model?

But it seems a bit different.

After reading the abstract, Professor Kreber continued to look at the main text. When he saw the large formula in the paper, his brows twitched violently.

As an engineer, knowledge of mathematics is essential, but these calculation formulas in the thesis are still beyond the scope of his knowledge reserves, and it makes his scalp tingle.

Speaking of it, it is just to build a phenomenological model. Does it need to use such abstruse mathematical method?

Just when Professor Kreber was confused about this matter, the "style" of this descriptive language, which can save money, suddenly reminded him of a person.

Turning directly to the position of the author of the paper, the corners of Kleiber's mouth twitched along with his eyebrows.

It really is this guy...

Smiling and shaking his head, Kleiber, who completely gave up, skipped those complicated calculations and looked at the mathematical model in the conclusion.

He admitted that he was a little hesitant at first.

But gradually, the more he looked down, the more serious the expression on his face became.

Suddenly, a look of joy flashed across his face, and he couldn't wait to take out the phone in his pocket.

"Iger, I will send an email to your mailbox in a while, and print out the paper for me!"

Iger is his office assistant, and he entrusts him with general scheduling, printing and other chores.

In principle, it is not easy to publish papers that have not been officially published in advance, but if it is only for internal communication, it is not a violation of the principle.

After all, for many reviewers, it is not uncommon for reviewers to exchange opinions with peers with good academic reputation if they see a particularly outstanding manuscript that happens to involve fields they do not understand.

Iger: "Okay sir, can I tell you roughly how many servings you need?"

"Just print as many copies as there are people in the afternoon meeting!"