>>13856571>What does SPARC know that literally the best minds in plasma physics don't?SPARC IIRC bets on:
1) The fact that if you use stronger magnets you need less volume
In this case instead of Niobium–titanium which give 6-15 Teslas they plan to use much more modern Yttrium barium copper oxide magnets which can easily go to 15-20 and set World record at 32 Teslas. I heard that the scaling is something like ^4 so even 50% increase in magnetic field will give massive returns.
1.5) Not only are magnets supposed to be stronger, they also "work" at higher temperature, meaning much less parasitic energy loss to keep something cool.
2) Spherical tokamaks have advantages over more standard D torus. Not a big specialist here.
3) The much lower output they want in general -- "producing 50-100 MW of fusion power"., with much lower then not only DEMO proposals but even ITER. It's basically to show, "see with modern tech we can get a lot of energy from plasma in machine smaller then TFTR/JET, please give 1-2B and we'll make a small powerplant"
Don't forget, ITER is literally 20+ year old design. Things that were lab curiosities back then are now usable products.
