510 Million Degrees!?

[Christ]

How much energy do you suppose it takes to get Hydrogen isotopes up to 510 Million Degrees Celsius??

In doing some personal research about Reactive Fusion (plasma/laser cutting), I came across this "Overview" paper about PPPL (The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory), which apparently was designed to be a Fission Reactor.

In reading through this (rather interesting) 8-page document, I found that in 1995, The record for "highest temperature ever produced in a laboratory" went to PPPL's Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, which produced plasma gas at 510 million degrees.

This is apparently about 5 times more than what is required to produce a practical amount of energy from fusion reactors.

So, somewhere else in the paper, it says that Fusion has a payback ratio of ~450:1.

Obviously, the energy has to come from somewhere... so how exactly do you go about getting an isotope to a temperature that high, and then contain it?

Besides, if the payback ratio is ~450:1, per unit of energy installed, isn't that something in the realm of overunity? I think I'm missing something about this whole experiment in Sun-Technology.

Anyone with more information than I've found care to carry the conversation out?

PPPL Overview Paper

[UfoTofU]

Originally Posted by Christ

How much energy do you suppose it takes to get Hydrogen isotopes up to 510 Million Degrees Celsius??

A couple of atoms that's 510 million degrees Celsius can have less energy than my notebook at 0 degrees. Temperature is the average amount of vibrations of the atoms of an object. Ergo, if the object is larger, it contains more energy. Hydrogen isotopes are itty bitty