MIT blog

Considering the class has yet to hear from Mr. Vales, but has already visited the labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it is going to be assumed that the assignments have gotten a bit shuffled of late. As such, this blog will be dedicated to our tremendous visit to the latter locale and all the lessons taught during our brief time there. Before going further, it must be mentioned how grand and stately the MIT campus feels; just walking from the Kendall Red Line station to our designated classroom, one becomes eminently aware of the history made and being made all around.
Once inside and protected from the dreary weather of the day, our hospitable hosts and lecturers instantly welcomed us and began their presentation. The topics being discussed were plasma, fusion processes and the potential they hold as a future energy supply. The first hurdle cleared by the class and our lecturer was the establishment of exactly what plasma is as a substance; most readily describe as the “fourth state of matter,” it is the result of superheating select gas samples. Just as solids give way to liquids and liquids to gasses as the energy is added to the particles, so to do gasses progress to plasma with sufficient heating.
This was certainly an educational lesson of itself, but just learning about plasma did little to connect our visit with the readings and curriculum studied thus far this semester by the class. Bringing everything together was the prospective use of plasma fusion as an alternative clean energy source. With fossil fuel supplies rapidly decreasing and the poor conversion rates of solar and wind power, MIT and other labs have high hopes that someday homes across America will be operate on the same energy supply as most of the stars in the universe. The technology has been in development simultaneously throughout the industrialized world for upwards of five decades, so it has been slow in coming, but a breakthrough is possible at any moment.
Without attempting to get into details that eclipse the understanding of this author, fusion power would operate similar to other sources, at least in principle. Just as with coal, the primary objective is to generate enough heat to transform water into steam and use that power turbines and create electricity. However, as simple as this process may sound empirically, in practice several insurmountable obstacles have been encountered, including how to manage the extreme heat of plasma as well as its electromagnetic tendencies.
While the entire afternoon was captivating, perhaps the most entertaining portion of the trip was the tour around the backrooms of MIT’s C-Mod facility. There we saw an operating control room replete with at-work scientists and a graveyard for discontinued projects. Included in this latter ilk were a couple of centrifuges estimated to cost approximately $300,000 a piece. Unfortunately, the most sobering message of the day was that budgetary constraints may force the closure of the entire C-Mod plasma fusion operation. As the scientists believe themselves to be close to finally solving the riddle of plasma energy, it would be a shame to see the Boston market lose a potential claim to fame.