So excited.
It was a grand experience to get to see the facility and the monstrous machine therein. Before we began our tours we were given what turned out to be a phenomenal presentation on fusion power by one of the mechanical engineers who has contributed to the project. I'll just quote a few of the most interesting things he told us:
- Imagine a bathtub half filled with water. Now imagine a little raft made of rubber duckies carrying a standard sized laptop battery. The amount of deuterium in the water and the amount of lithium in the battery can be used to create enough fusion energy to power the average Western lifestyle for one person for twenty years.
- More than thirty years ago the location of the JET experiment was a hotly debated topic among the participant countries; no one could agree on where to put it (much to the scientist's chagrin). How it happened to be in England is an interesting story: British SAS officers rescued an entire plane full of German tourists held at gunpoint by extremists and as a "thank-you" the Germans supported England as the location for JET.
- There is no threat of a meltdown in a fusion reactor; anything that does go wrong almost always results in shutting the machine off (I can explain more if you're interested). However, the way that this happens can sometimes be in the form of a "disruption" in which the plasma touches the walls of the machine and releases its (thermal) energy with a loud bang! They once had a disruption so violent that it moved the 2800 tonne machine 8mm! The concussion was actually picked up a considerable distance away by the seismology lab at Oxford, who then called up the CCFE in a huff.
Interesting, right? Probably not nearly as interesting as these!
I actually loved the chance to wear a hard-hat again. One of my Swiss colleagues was not so impressed.
The JET machine itself! Huzzah!
This is as close as we were allowed to the real machine, however the next pictures are of a full-scale model of JET built to allow technicians to practice remotely conducted repairs and installations.
This shows the full-scale model of JET's confinement chamber on the right, and the control center for a mechanical arm on the left, which is inserted into the chamber through the duct in the middle. The arm is used to repair, replace and install equipment inside the chamber.
Different angle of the same thing.
One of the mechanical arms.
Another picture of the arm. Somebody ate their spinach!
A neutron spectrometer (it's very big!)
Behind me is a view into the inside of the chamber of the scale model through a port cut in the side!
That's where the fusion happens in the real model! So cool!
This is me in front of a giant poster of the inside of the real JET experiment.
More models!
This is a cross section of one of the massive coils which create the magnetic cage to contain the plasma. It is made of solid copper - a fact that limits the performance of the JET experiment. The next step, ITER, will be made with high-temperature superconductors.
The scale model first used to design the JET experiment before all those fancy computers came out with their fancy modelling stuff.
Flags!
That's all for now.
...
Huzzah!
