Talk:DEMOnstration Power Plant

message: DEMO is the name of a proposed fusion reactor, so i chose to create a page here. This unfortunalty ment removing a redirevt page to Demo (comics). I hope no one is bovvered. mastodon 23:50, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The redirect should never have been to the article on the comics anyway. It should have been to the DAB page at demo. The hatnote covers this. Andrewa (talk) 02:57, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Redirect

message: Is the project famous enough to deserve its own article? There are no references of any kind. --Elonka 16:19, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hopefully I have corrected this problem and the notability tag can be removed. I will not remove it myself, however. --Ben Best 07:46, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To bolster the argument, you may want to check "What Links Here" for this page  --Ben Best 07:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I removed the notability tag and added a link to a presentation of the EFDA activities which include research related to DEMO - ClaudeSB 13:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Notability

message: The ITER article says that ITER is designed to run for 500 seconds (and in another place: 'for 8 minutes' - or 480 seconds).  This article says 400 seconds.  I'm going to assume the ITER article is correct and change it to 500 here.  If anyone has knowledge that 400 is indeed the right number then they need to fix the ITER article as well as this one. SteveBaker 18:45, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  400, 480 or 500 seconds? 

message: Presumably somewhere in Europe (France?), but where and by who is it to be built? And c14 years design then c9 years construction so it is a long-term project! Hugo999 (talk) 01:50, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Have you a source for this? It's a very interesting claim. The unprecedented degree of international cooperation that was necessary to build ITER was motivated entirely by the enormous cost. Several countries have built fusion reactors on the general scale of JET, but there's only ever expected to be one ITER. I'd have thought that similar considerations would have meant that there will only be one DEMO. Andrewa (talk) 05:44, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: China seems keen to have its own DEMO ahead of Europe/Japan. - Rod57 (talk) 02:44, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who and Where? 

message: It's rather speculative. The article currently reads DEMO is intended to be the first fusion reactor to generate electrical power. Nobody is saying how much electrical power this might be. The first fission reactor to generate electrical power was Experimental Breeder Reactor I in 1951. Four light globes' worth in fact, see the photo. It's not recorded exactly how much electrical power was being consumed by the reactor's pumps etc. at the time AFAIK, but it was a lot more than the electrical power required to light those four light globes. 
And that's the result DEMO is promising. ITER in operation will consume considerable quantities of liquid nitrogen and liquid helium, providing 1,300 kW and 75 kW of cooling respectively (in addition to the 450 MW water cooling system). DEMO will consume far more of these liquid gases, the 15% bigger is linear dimension and is a minimum, so it will be at least 1.5 times the size in volume with 1.3 times the surface area, and it will run hotter, and most important it will operate continuously, rather than in bursts of up to 8 minutes maximum which is the goal for ITER. Providing these liquid gases will consume a considerable amount of energy, which along with the energy needed to maintain the enormous magnetic fields will all come from the electricity supply.
So DEMO, like ITER, will consume a great deal of electrical power. Unlike ITER it will produce some too, but only a token amount compared to its electric input. Or at least that is the plan when you cut out the weasel words such as prototype commercial. That phrase to me implies that a series of plants similar to DEMO might be commercially viable. Not a chance. DEMO won't even produce a net amount of electricity.
Electrical break-even will be achieved by the plant after DEMO, at best. Andrewa (talk) 06:00, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Many DEMO presentations (eg Technical challenges on the path to DEMO. Stork. Sept 2011 suggest >2GW generation of which ~1GW used by DEMO and >1GW available to grid - but intermittent (eg 8 hr pulses). - Rod57 (talk) 23:13, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

text: Interestingly - it implies DEMO will need a 1GW feed (from the grid?) to form and ignite the plasma ? - Rod57 (talk) 12:47, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: How much electrical power will it generate

message: The Timeline section gives the dates presented in 2004. To what extent were the dates dependent on the progress of ITER and IFMIF (eg does the engineering design (due 2024) needs results from extended operation of ITER and IFMIF?) and has there been any later revision to the DEMO timeline eg due to delays in ITER ? - Rod57 (talk) 18:03, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Beyond ITER The 2004 timeline shows ITER and IFMIF operating from early 2015 and feeding into the engineering design of DEMO in 2022, 4 years after the start of D-T operation at ITER. ITER is hoped to start D-T tests in 2027 - so maybe the engineering design of DEMO will be delayed approx 9 years. IFMIF construction isn't planned yet - so what will replace that design input ? - Rod57 (talk) 21:54, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

text: Technical challenges on the path to DEMO. Stork. Sept 2011 seems to suggest a 7 year delay and slide 9 says system design can't start until 2029. - Rod57 (talk) 22:49, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I found the EFDA 2012 roadmap and used it to update the timeline section. - Rod57 (talk) 02:48, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Timeline updating 

message: It says nothing specific to DEMO and isn't worth reading - Delete the lot ? - Rod57 (talk) 02:54, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: still true. I'll separate the a few lines at the end based on the Stork 2009 document (142 slides) as Conceptual design ? - Rod57 (talk) 22:15, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Technical design section should be deleted 

message: Article currently reads in part both ITER and DEMO will produce their own tritium, dispensing with the fission reactor currently used for this purpose. The source given is archived here and reads in part Global inventory for tritium is presently around twenty kilos, which ITER will draw upon during its operational phase and later Certain modules in ITER will be used during later-stage operation to test tritium breeding concepts.
That's a long way from what the article seems to say. ITER will produce some Tritium, but not nearly enough to fuel itself. Perhaps not very much at all. Andrewa (talk) 01:04, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  National DEMO-phase machines are being developed, e.g., the UK STEP; there is no ITER consortium DEMO: the closest may be the CFETR, which does envisage tritium breeding. So... Johncdraper (talk) 09:06, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes... So? References? Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. Many hope that the Tritium supply will not be a problem, just as they hope that the radioactive waste will not be a problem. And we can report these hopes and cite the authorities who hold them. But at present we are reporting these hopes in Wikipedia's voice. That's the problem. Andrewa (talk) 08:01, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tritium supply