[lnkmails]

It doesn't say how many watts of power this machine would produce and what is the cost to produce per watt? It would be interesting to compare numbers and see if this machine would ever see mass production in next few decades.

[furyg3]

My understanding is that this reactor is just a test to see if this can contain plasma for longer periods of time (from the current 6.5 minutes to a potential 30 minutes). It will not show a net-gain in energy, as it is not designed to produce energy, just a proof of concept.

[ju-st]

Zero watt. It's a research reactor. And they don't want to use tritium (which is apparently needed for power generation) because it would cause radiation. And radiation is bad when you want to do research on the reactor. Source: German wikipedia

[creshal]

> And radiation is bad when you want to do research on the reactor.

As in, you want to partially disassemble and tweak the reactor regularly. Neutron activated metals will be radioactive enough after a while, no need to make things worse by adding tritium to the mix.

[legulere]

Probably because it's not a power plant but a research reactor and is not producing electricity.

[Frenchgeek]

According to wikipedia :

"The purpose of Wendelstein 7-X is to evaluate the main components of a future fusion reactor built using stellarator technology"

So I'm guessing it can't produce power as it is.

[InclinedPlane]

It's a research reactor, it doesn't have power extraction systems, it's all about studying burning plasmas as well as plasma confinement.