In a towering building just outside of Princeton, scientists, policymakers and Princeton University administrators walked among twisting pipes, countless valves, massive control panels and lofty catwalks to see the newest "star on Earth" — an enhanced fusion energy device that produces plasma at temperatures that exceed those of Earth's sun. The National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U), a spherical tokamak housed at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory on Princeton's Forrestal Campus, was dedicated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) May 20 following a four-year, $94-million upgrade funded by the DOE Office of Science. The NSTX-U now stands as the most powerful spherical torus fusion facility in the world. NSTX-U will allow researchers around the world to explore how to create fusion reactions, wherein light elements collide and fuse together, releasing enormous amounts of energy. Fusion reactions power stars and occur within the high-temperature state of matter plasma. Fusion energy could provide society with clean, reliable, safe and abundant energy that uses seawater as fuel. It would greatly reduce or eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels or manage nuclear waste, and curtail the accumulation of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere. https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S46/40/28M92/index.xml?section=featured
There has been promises of fusion power for quite a few decades. I will believe it when there is a report of a commercially usable device. Has any device yet produced more power than the amount input?
Possibly the Chinese machine, which Princeton seems to be copying, has. See: http://news.yahoo.com/china-close-to-creating-artificial-sun-that-104504777.html A contained plasma (if HD) for 102 seconds at 50million K degrees* would make a great deal of fusion energy release. Certainly much more than the input energy used during those 102 seconds, but probably not than the total energy input from "turn on" to the end of the 102 seconds. I doubt if they used H and Deuterium. I doubt there ever will be a "commercially usable" fusion device. There is just too much capital tied up in these machines. Even current commercial electric power production, which is very much less costly in capital to make the machines produce power is at least 80% capital cost, but some of that is the cost distribution system, which could be equally well used if the power source were fusion. * I forget the lowest temperature which makes enough fusion energy release to sustain the thermal losses but it is less than 15million K. The fusion power production is strong non-linear function of the temperature. 50Million K, I would guess, must make more than 100 times that self sustaining energy release rate.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Above is the Chinese machine. Below is Prinction's, which is called a " Spherical Torus " but China's is much more spherical. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Hot Plasmas know dozens of ways to escape (instabilities). I fear this machine may have one that grows in the larger volume.
This link, more recent than my earlier one, states the Chinese machine has confined a 90million K plasma for 102 seconds. We will wait and see if Prinston can catch up to what China has achieved.
At the rate that fusion devices are being developed, I expect that solar panels will 'cover the earth' and provide adequate power [along with other solar, such as biofuel (your sugarcane), hydroelectric, wind, etc.].
