Help Save the Future
When we think MIT, we think of people being brilliant. That is definitely what I saw on Tuesday when we went to visit the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT for a little field trip. At the same time though, who ever knew that we had a nuclear energy contraption right in our own backyard? It’s weird to think that students, okay MIT Ph.D. students, are working on something that could help change the world for good. You never think that people close to our age can do things like that until you actually see it.
Lately we have been learning about the concept of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion to better understand our environment, global warming, and what our energy could be one day. So, instead of having class this past Tuesday, we went to MIT to witness and learn about what their Ph.D. students and professors are doing to future our energy. First off, to get to this hidden little place (which is not so little in reality) it took us quite the hike, but it was worth it. Learning about and seeing some of the devices that the students have used there was interesting, but what made it even better where the 2 guys who took us around. They were both so passionate and interested in what they were talking about that it made it more interesting for me.
Once we got there we had a little bit of a background powerpoint presentation by Geoff, a 4 year Ph.D. student who has worked at the facility during his time at MIT. He showed us the basics of nuclear atoms and what happens depending on the molecule and the actions around those molecules. Besides the basics of fusion, which we had learned in class already, Geoff explained to us the problem that they at MIT, and essentially everyone attempting nuclear fusion is facing. This is the concept of confinement time. The first problem they had was the container in which to hold the plasma, which they fixed when they created the tokamak and placed the currents into the plasma, which allowed for them to control how the plasma moves within the Alcator C-Mod. This however led to that next problem of the confinement time, which is that the plasma has a confinement time of 1/1000 sec, where they need it to be one second. Essentially, they need to create a tokamak that will allow the plasma to stay heated at extremely high temperatures while moving around the tokamak to allow for fusion, without dispersing its heat to quickly.
This then led us to ITER. ITER is the newer, bigger, and essentially better version of the Alcator C-Mod at MIT. ITER will be built in France and will be funded by a multitude of countries, including the United States. It seems that they hope to have a confinement time of over one second, which will be an outstanding breakthrough for everyone and for nuclear fusion.
After Geoff was done explaining the background of the machine and nuclear fusion, another Ph.D. student, whose name escapes me at the moment, took us to the actual facility. Unfortunately, after showing us some pictures and explaining the machine some more, our tour guide realized that the actual machine is inaccessible at that point. It had to undergo routine maintenance, where they had to re-calibrate the lasers in the machine that detect the heat of the plasma.
Because of how sensitive this calibration is, people were not allowed into the actual room where the tokamak was. Instead we got to to see some of the graphs, information, and a visual of the inside of the machine where the plasma is, as well as a scaled replica of the bolts that they use to keep the tokamak in place. These bolts are huge and powerful, a space shuttle needs 2 of them to stay down, but the tokamak is so powerful that it needs 96. Because the Alcator C-Mod was inaccessible for the time being, he showed us some of their older experiments and projects. I did not catch the name of them, however, one of them had to do with levitation, which in itself is pretty awesome.
Towards the end of the tour, our guide informed us that sadly their fusion program will most likely be cut next year by the Obama administration. Because of the numerous budget cuts and the new ITER project (which we are partially funding), the funding for projects such as this has been minimized. As a result, they have decided to cut the one at MIT because it is mostly ran by Ph.D. and graduate students, rather than real scientists, like other programs around the country. This means that the Alcator C-Mod would be shut down, like the other 2 machines he showed us. They felt that it was more important to keep those programs going, even though the MIT one has invaluable information that helps the future of the energy world. Many of the results that these Ph.D. students extricate from the Alcator C-Mod are ones that can actually help to modify and better more powerful tokamaks, like ITER. He was very passionate about this and the fact that by this time next year, they may no longer have this facility and students like him will no longer have such an amazing opportunity to work on something this important. He also mentioned that their facility, although it is rather small in comparison to other ones, produces some of the most information for its size. It has the highest magnetic field of any fusion center around the world (and its smaller than other centers), which seems likea prime reason to keep it going in my opinion. It is such a tough time for our economy and our government in making decisions regarding budgets. Before the tour I can say with certainty, I would have never thought to fight for the students at MIT to have the program keep going, because I, like many other people think that this is not as important as other problems at this time. However, after our tour guide showed us the facility, what they do and essentially campaigned for the program to stay open I can see myself turning to their side.
To get mor information about their project and to udnerstand why we should help them keep this program running, go to http://www.psfc.mit.edu/index.html