In Prague, the state of tokamaks is uniquely equipped to produce safe and secure energy
OFatm it’s just a big, six-meter-wide circular tunnel in the concrete floor of the hall. But it is very runo around n. Run here workers, construction scientists, let’s move the material up the idol, the construction is in full swing. For many years, a device has been operating here, from which humanity promises a practically unlimited source of safe, secure and inexhaustible energy – the so-called tokamak.
the state of plasma physics of the Academy of Science and Technology here, to the delight of the Slovaks, began to be built in 2018, and should even be ready in 2025. However, this does not mean that it will start producing energy. This tokamak, called Compass‑Uje, is designed for scientific purposes, on which they will also catch flies in thermonuclear fusion, even if tokamaks work.
“See that circle down there? It shows where we will place the active reactor,” state editor Radomr Pnek points to the engrossed crowd as he points to the overhang, where the six-meter-high, eight-meter-wide reactor will accommodate the 400-ton reactor. And when it starts, due to the very high magnetic field inside, a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius is created. For comparison, it is many times more than in the sun.
“When the temperature is so extremely high, of course, a thermometer won’t do it, so we’ll have it with lasers. We’re building a ground for them over there,” Pnek points out, creating a special beech that will form a room for lasers at the base of the entire complex.
day of iron, which would destroy magnetism
The building itself for the Czech tokamak is very specific, everything must be adapted so that the device works as it should, without disturbing its magnetic field. Instead of the classic iron structure, the concrete floor is reinforced with fiberglass, and for it there is a circular screw of non-magnetic stainless steel.
A bunch of his colleagues say that outside the area, where the excavator is clearing the place for the construction of a hall for red generators, they will be powered by a tokamak. “We will need 200 megawatts of power in the form of several watts. Of course, we can’t take it public, that would bring down the whole of Prague. We have to gradually accumulate energy through our own generators and then use it for the experiment,” explains Pnek.
However, the consumption of electricity is one of the disadvantages of a tokamak. The powder and plasma heat still require a large amount. In order for the death to pay off, i.e. for things to be produced, not consumed, it is necessary to build a large tokamak that will generate a large amount of energy. But this is how it is done outside of France.
Tokamaks work on the principle of nuclear fusion, i.e. the nucleus of an atom, which is the opposite of the nuclear core with which nuclear power plants work at the same time. With nuclear fusion, there is no long-lasting radioactive waste or risk of explosion. Fze is completely safe. “In addition, the fuel for fusion is completely safe – we only need deuterium, which is a component of water, atricium, which will be melted into lithium outside the reactor itself. The first disposal of radioactive fuel and the safety of the entire process are the main advantages of nuclear fusion. That’s why humanity invests so much in its research,” continued Pnek, leading us to a cell where the cells are covered by a monitor system. This is where the actual experiment takes place, observing how the plasma reacts to various conditions.
and they are once the land of stokamak
Thanks to the tokamak, which is now being built in Slovakia, scientists have, among other things, to investigate how to transfer the generated energy from the plasma to the outside. For example, the team is working on the technology of liquid metals, which can take energy from the extremely hot plasma without the danger of damaging the material and send it to be used outside the reactor.
The project is being implemented through extensive international cooperation, notably the contribution of the European Union, which sent one billion crowns from the Operative Research, Development and Development Program. Another eight hundred million crowns goes to the rest of the budget.
Compass-Uzdaleka is not the first domestic tokamak. On the contrary. “Czech Republic, what is called a nuclear power plant, is built completely apart from Western and Eastern Europe, and it even represents one of the main players in this field in the whole of Europe,” added Pnek proudly.
Nuclear power has been widely studied since the 1960s. years, when the first concepts of operating reactors began to be developed. Since then, several different tokamaks have gradually been created in the plasma physics AV R, the predecessor of the current one was Compass, which was recently dismantled to make way for its first successor. Czechia is even one of the few holy countries that can construct a tokamak. The fact that Czech Republic is one of the largest nuclear fusion power plants in Europe proves that the first Czech country could be one of the candidates for the location of the Demo project – a planned European project for a prototype fusion power plant, which would be connected to the sub-electric distribution station.
“The European project Demo should be built at the end of the 5th century, so I would be very happy if the first Czech Republic became its host,” says Pnek.
Esk tokamak will not interest, for example, the Americans. A few years ago, the Samaritan Ministry of Energy signed the status of the cooperation agreement, which according to our implementation. This happens, for example, at the National Laboratory of Plasma Physics in Princeton.
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The first word moves a certain energy
The main human-made project for nuclear fz experiments is the ITER tokamak in France. One of them is the international project of St. In addition to the European Union, which is financially responsible for 45 percent, it is also being built by Japan, the USA, India, Korea and Russia. The construction of the ITER tokamak, which is a complex comparable in size to, for example, the Temeln Nuclear Power Plant, will cost 20 billion euros, i.e. 487 billion crowns, the reactor alone is as big as a five-story building. By researching our tokamak, the Czech Republic succumbed to the realization of ITER, that scientists, for example, completely wrote off its design. ARadomr Pnek, acting as chairman of its Technical Advisory Panel, presents Europe to its highest scientific committee. “Actually, I commute between ITER in France, the European agency Fusion for Energy in Barcelona and Prague,” laughs Pnek. Of course, even this project is not intended for commercial use, it will never be connected to the energy system. It is just an experiment, its main goal is to prove that all technologies work together and produce at least 500 MW of energy from the reaction.
For example, when mankind lights up the first house, they will move a certain energy from the faucet, at Pnkov’s tv vn. “We don’t know for sure at the moment, because it depends on a lot of factors, including financial ones. It is everyday research that will be read by five generations. In the summer of 2012, the European Commission approved the full inclusion of the nuclear phase of the energy industry around 2050, and we are trying to proceed accordingly,” k. “However, from a physical point of view, we cannot exclude the problem that the reactor function based on the tokamak principle could not work,” indicates the future of the whole of the Pnek project.
The article was published in a special issue of HN Energy independence.