Science Question! Please assist!

[Jewrean]

Doing a little research, I won't comment for what purpose but:

Have a look at this link and maybe take a gander at the first video:
http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2010/12/13/how-fusion-power-works-and-where-fusion-research-stands-today/

Basically my question is about Fusion. From what I can tell from the video, there is a ring/torus-shaped tube (similar to the Synchrotron / Hadron Collider, or perhaps I'm mildly retarded and their nothing alike... anyway) which super-heats Hydrogen atoms to the point that they change into Plasma and join with one another. This gives off a massive amount of energy.

To do this, they have to heat up the tube to 150 million degrees Celsius (or there-about). A nice quote at the end of the video is that one bath-tub of water can power one persons life for 30 years using this technology.

Awesome right? So my question is:

What would happen (in the worst case scenario), if this tube blew up or began to leak? Obviously no one is in the area... but I mean what sort of damage could it cause at that temperature?

Cheers! Thanks!

PS: My captcha said = "for sure"!

 

[Jewrean]

No one answered this one.

Oh well, relevant update:

It's all good! Found a creative way around this area of the... research.

 

[chronicfc]

I believe the technical term for if this were to take place would be "Shit done got fucked up, son"

 

[Hoplon]

The answer is nothing much, they can't explode since there is nothing to well... explode. Worst case scenario is a plasma leak which would be pretty localised and not leave any radioactive material or anything.

Also nothing like a particle accelerator. No acceleration at all, the magnetic fields are there for containment not acceleration.

 

[Byere]

I'm no expert (duh...) but wouldn't a tube/bathtub of water have completely evaporated if heated to 150 million degrees C... considering water's boiling point is 100*C...

As far as I'm aware, the tube breaking would just allow the steam/water vapour to escape. Obviously you wouldn't want to touch it as it would pretty much melt flesh and most softer substances in an instant.

 

[Jimmy Sylvers]

I'm not an expert but I was talking to a physicist about this a couple of weeks ago and he gave me the impression that the reaction would stop as soon as any part of the plasma touched another surface because it would cool it all too much.

That said I didnt ask this question specifically and he was talking about smaller reactors so really ive been no help....lol

 

[Mazza35]

The worst that can really happen, if the reactor failed, I believe would be a localized explosion, nothing worse than a coal/gas fired boiler exploded, no radiations or anything.
Pretty safe

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

We are gonna read about you in papers soon, aren't we?

 

[Pinkamena]

There are many ways of achieving fusion, and the use of super strong magnet in a toroid shape is one of them. Inside the toroid are extremely hot (but very low pressure) plasma. It is kept away from the walls by the magnets, so that it won't melt its way through the walls of the toroid. In case the magnets were to fail, the plasma would quickly start destroying the toroid walls, and once there is a breach, air would be sucked into it due to the very low pressure inside. The plasma itself is not dangerous (except for being pretty hot), and the cold air would absorb the energy of the plasma, which would then form stable hydrogen atoms. The event would likely not be very dramatic, but the torus would be scrap metal.

 

[Pinkamena]

The worst that can really happen, if the reactor failed, I believe would be a localized explosion, nothing worse than a coal/gas fired boiler exploded, no radiations or anything.
Pretty safe

There wouldn't even be an explosion due to the very low pressure inside the toroid.

 

[Sexy Devil]

If the reactor screws up then the plot of Spider-man 2 happens. And I don't think there's a real-life Spider-man to save us from Otto...

 

[Mazza35]

The worst that can really happen, if the reactor failed, I believe would be a localized explosion, nothing worse than a coal/gas fired boiler exploded, no radiations or anything.
Pretty safe

There wouldn't even be an explosion due to the very low pressure inside the toroid.

True, I'm thinking of the other equipment, because it all powers a boiler, to run turbines
Bolier booms can be BAD. 1km radius bad >.>

 

[Thaliur]

The worst that can really happen, if the reactor failed, I believe would be a localized explosion, nothing worse than a coal/gas fired boiler exploded, no radiations or anything.
Pretty safe

Not exactly like a gas boiler, but pretty close. A fusion reaction need to be actively maintained. As soon as the containment field or the housing fails, the reaction breaks down as well. The huge difference to fission reactions is the inherent unlikelyness of an uncontrollable chain reaction (fusion bombs need a fission bomb to ignite, without that, they're just dense hydrogen balloons.).

[edit]I just realised you were probably referring to power plant sized boilers. In that case, I think your analogy is pretty much correct. Fusion reactors do contain unstable nuclides (tritium) which might cause concern in many people, but since tritium undergoes beta decay, it's about as dangerous as standing in front of a CRT screen.

 

[bojackx]

I would think it's not THAT dangerous since the hydrogen itself isn't radioactive and so we wouldn't have no Chernobyl scenarios occuring. There may possibly be an explosion, or the super hot stuff would melt everything in the near vicinity, but I think fission poses more danger, considering fission reactors need to have more and more neutrons being released to work, which basically means (without control rods) the reaction would just keep happening, whereas in Fusion it'd pretty much stop after leaking.

 

[Vivi22]

There are many ways of achieving fusion, and the use of super strong magnet in a toroid shape is one of them. Inside the toroid are extremely hot (but very low pressure) plasma. It is kept away from the walls by the magnets, so that it won't melt its way through the walls of the toroid. In case the magnets were to fail, the plasma would quickly start destroying the toroid walls, and once there is a breach, air would be sucked into it due to the very low pressure inside. The plasma itself is not dangerous (except for being pretty hot), and the cold air would absorb the energy of the plasma, which would then form stable hydrogen atoms. The event would likely not be very dramatic, but the torus would be scrap metal.

This dude knows the score. Fusion reactions on the scale we operate at aren't self-sustaining. The reactor would be toast (no pun intended) and I wouldn't want to be standing next to it when the plasma hit the containment wall, but the reaction will just die rather unimpressively and quite safely.

 

[wintercoat]

No one answered this one.

Oh well, relevant update:

It's all good! Found a creative way around this area of the... research.

Notice how nobody responds to your thread until you make an update stating you found a workaround? Aren't forums just the most helpful places ever?!

 

[Pinkamena]

Also, if fusion interests you, you could check out the homemade cold fusion machines. It is relatively easy to achieve fusion, but very difficult to get it self-sustainable, i.e. getting more power out than you pump in.
These homemade fusion reactors works by accelerating electrons from a spherical shell towards a metallic spherical net in the center of the outer shell. The electrons pass through the net, continues out the other side, and is then accelerated back into the center. This keeps going until the electron eventually collides with the net. Inside the center cathode, there will be a very high concentration of electrons, hence a virtual anode, which is used to accelerate hydrogen ions to the kind of extreme velocities required for fusion. It has been built by some amateurs, and they do get fusion, but not enough to sustain the itself, since energy is required to maintain the strong electric field (often over 8kV), and the continuous flow of electrons. This sort of fusion is called cold fusion since it does not use high temperatures to obtain the velocities needed for fusion. It's also much simpler, so simple that a person with a bit of technical knowledge and access to high-voltage equipment, a vaccuum pump and a metal workshop can make it.

Video:

 

[Thaluikhain]

If something went wrong, it would be an absolute total disaster. For a few weeks until the media found something else to talk about.

In general terms, not much else would happen. 150 million sounds impressive, and it's not bad, but release that into the atmosphere...well, double the volume and you have to halve the energy. By the time it spreads out over a large area, it'd be diffusive enough not to worry about.

Now, it'd not be fun being there when it happen, but that's just saying it's not fun being on the site of a major industrial accident.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Ladies stand back. I have science!

AFAIK (just speaking from my high school knowledge since in college I learned only about fission) there wouldn't be much damage.

Fusion is combining light elements to create energy. But since the product of the combination is still a light and stable element and not a heavy, radioactive element, the damage wouldn't be really big.

But fusion rectors, even tho the focus of modern nuclear science, still don't produce any electrical energy.

I know this isn't much. I was interested in nuclear physics in high school, but lost interest when I got into college and started with programming. Hope to see some really interesting responses to this threat. Gonna follow it.

EDIT:
I reread my post and I noticed I didn't really make it clear.
Point is, all the damage that would be done would be localized and wouldn't have any long term effects. It wouldn't be pretty to watch (well, probably would from a safe distance, but you got my point), but compared to fission reactors, it's nothing.

 

[Heronblade]

It couldn't possibly explode. The Tokamak type of fusion reactor you were describing is not physically capable of producing an explosive reaction. Unlike with fission, the moment a plasma based fusion reaction is interrupted, it stops producing energy, and what you are left with isn't much more dangerous or difficult to get rid of than something as commonplace as molten steel.

If it leaked, someone standing right next to it would be lucky to only suffer third degree burns, and a fair amount of equipment in the room will be damaged, but nothing more. No radiation leaks, no destroyed cities, no planet of the apes scenario.

If the reactor screws up then the plot of Spider-man 2 happens. And I don't think there's a real-life Spider-man to save us from Otto...

Your average fusion scientist isn't an utter moron like Otto. Attempting to literally recreate a star in miniature like he did is incredibly stupid, even if it was possible, not least due to the gravitational problems.