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by XorNot 1343 days ago
Yes. The ITER successor is DEMO which is larger and meant to be the production power plant design. The idea is ITER proves out the plasma control physics and scaling laws for fusion, so you can then build DEMO, get the predicted results and say "right, this is how a fusion plant looks". ITER will do Q=10 if we're right anyway, but the scaling laws are all volume based: the real trouble with fusion is that building gigantic vacuum vessels is very hard to do, but we're at the limits of magnets (unless MIT can get HTSCs working, but even then, you still benefit from volume).

[1] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/175830/nuclear-f...

1 comments

Tokamaks scale with the square of plasma volume but the fourth power of magnetic field strength. The REBCO used by CFS should let them get ITER-level output from a reactor a tenth as large.