TOKAMAKs

On account of some clients (some were even quite large), I did in the past certain analyses/forecasts on technologies & developments.

A few were quite correct , so I was asked for more.

Tokamaks could be a real game changer - why invest in inefficient wind farms, when mountains of cheap energy lay right behind the corner?

However, I have mixed feelings about Tokamaks; I admire the idea , but something tells me - not so soon. Why?

Ok :

Metric of existing terrestrial power plants dictates size of the heat source: upper limit is counted in thousands cubic meters - but not in thousands of cubic kilometers.

Lower limit is dictated by heat transfer surface area: be it water or liquid Pb, still these are hundreds of square meters , but not hundreds of square milimeters.

In Tokamak , plasma is held in EM-traps. EM is short-distance force, so magnets must be close to heat source - rather hundreds milimeters than hundreds meters. So, the thermal gradients are counted in milions centigrade per linear meter (it is for this instance secondary if magnets are cryogenic or e.g ceramic - magnitude remains). Devising a plasma/gas flow which could continously or quasi-continously handle such gradients , within a/m dimensional constraints seems next-to-impossible topological case. Perhaps I'm wrong, ITER will show....

This is a bit like keeping open fire under water: possible (e.g subsea welding) but rather useless as a source of commercial heat .We prefer boilers...

From engineering point of view , it would be much easier to use gravitational trap (instead of EM), a long-distance force - thermal gradients are much less steep , and collecting radiative heat becomes an easy task.

So , we have just invented Sun.

There is one point , however - God holds the patent....