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This is the Sandia National Laboratories' Z machine discharging AFTER firing.It's basically a huge bank of capacitors, which all fire into a tiny cylinder of human hair sized wires.

It has an output power of about 290 trillion watts, which is for nanosecends, about 80 times the entire world's output of electricity.It has reached temps of 1.6 million°C(2.9 million°F), the surface temp of Sun is about 6000°C(11000°F).According to Sandia's website, it runs off "normal wall current".

It has also been used to propel a tiny plate of aluminum to over 76,000 MPH in less than a second, an acceleration of about 10 billion Gs.When the plate hits it's target, it produces a shockwave of about 217.5 million PSI.

There are plans for the X-1, a larger accelerator scheduled to follow Z, that should be able to produce more than 1,000 trillion watts of power, and temperatures of more than 3 million degrees.

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Wow... I wish I had that amount of money and time on my hands!

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Wow, seems like something that could be put to use for energy conservation or something.How do the components survive at 2.9million deg. F? Even if it is for an extremely short amount of time I would think it would destroy anything.

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That is sweet.

That is the idea. The magnetic field created when the metal explodes pulls the metal in, and the idea is that this will happen so fast the particals fuse, thus fusion and we would have and "endless" power source. I would think we could use the heat created to boil water and power steam turbines to drive generators, similar to what nuclear power plants do now. But we would not have nuclear waist to deal with.

~John

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CITE YOUR SOURCES CHEATER!!! F-

"In experiments with the basic vacuum hohlraum, the discharge of energy through the wires creates a magnetic field that compresses the exploded wire array at a speed equivalent to traveling 3,000 miles in one second. The vaporized particles, pushed inward by the magnetic field, collide with each other at the magnetic axis. The collisions produce intense radiation, enough to heat the surrounding walls of the hohlraum to 140 eV (approximately 1.6 million degrees). The X-ray radiation emitted from the walls is then used to study the properties of materials at high temperatures and pressures." -via sandia site\

http://www.sandia.gov/media/z290.htm

all i have to add to this thread, is RIGHT HAND RULE :)

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Power from fusion isn't really anymore endless than any other fuel, it's just far more efficient, second only to antimatter.

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But it wouldn't produce the radioactive waste like our current fission plants do. They are already building a Fusion Test reactor in France. I read up on it about a month ago, and it didn't sound like it was using anything like what this picture was. It was using some kind of donut shaped encloser with the fusion reaction inside it, andjust like John said, they put it in a huge tank of water and make a big old steam engine, which is exactly how fission plants work right now.

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I don't believe they're attempting fusion at this point, they're just perfecting the technolgy, so one day they can produce the 2-3 million degrees needed to initiate fusion.

I don't think fusion will ever be a good source of energy(not in our lifetimes at least), maybe propulsion systems and stuff like that, but no fusion power plants.While fusion might be an efficient release of energy, extracting any useful work from it is far from efficient.As far as I know, the only way to contain it at those temps is with a strong magnetic field, which itself requires huge amounts of energy, more than can be extracted from the fusion.

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http://science.howstuffworks.com/fusion-reactor.htm

That's where I read up about the ITER test plant in france, and how they are using a donut shaped enclosure for the reaction to take place inside. I guess I find it interesting since I currently work on fission plants. I think fusion plants would be sweet, but hopefully they don't pop up too quick or I will be out of a job!

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the donut's geometric name is a Toroid, just in case you want to sound super smart ;)

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Does the ITER even exist yet? Their website says 2016.Anyway, it could be decades before they even reach the break-even point, if they ever do.

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You're asking the wrong person. If you read that article, then you know as much as me. I was just curious on how far fusion research had came along, so I did a search on it about a month ago, and found that. So that's about all I know.

It also sounded like they were saying Fusion is also fairly safe as far as if it ever get's unstable if I remember right. Something like that if it does get unstable, the reaction will just die. That's kinda neat, no Spiderman out of control reactions sucking in an entire city!

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Yeah, fusion doesn't rely on a cascade reaction like fission.

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If you want to see more cool stuff, google "Farnsworth Fusor" or "IEC fusion" or "IEC fusor".These are small amateur built, extremely simple deuterium reactors, that can actually produce fusion at a point in the center of 2 electrodes(looks like a mini star).They can be built for as little as a few hundred dollars, with fairly common parts.Particles are accelerated towards the inner electrode from all directions, some collide in the center and fuse.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...or_running.jpg

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A good journal of a guy who built his own fusor: http://www.brian-mcdermott.com/brianfusor2.htm

What I don't understand is I thought fusing atoms created a LOT of energy. This is being done inside a regular stainless steel sphere.

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There a lot of math that I don't really understand, but here's what I make of it.First, in general, this is "just barely" fusion.Most of the ions either miss each other in the center and turn around to make a another trip towards the center, where they'll probably miss again.And alot hit the electrode, so what it amounts to, is very few ions actually fuse.Also, by nature of the design, considerable more electrons have to go into it(uses more power), than ions it can accelerate.Considering that, and the fact most of the ions don't fuse, it will always consume much more energy than it can produce from fusion.Finally, fusion produces neutrons, which can't be contained by IEC because of their neutral charge, so most of the fusion energy is radiated away.Their only real commercial purpose is as a neutron source