User:Eekysam/sandbox

INGoT (Industrial Nuclear Gigawatt Tokamak) is a recently developed fusion power facility. Located east of the Boulder metro area, it is famous as the first reactor of its kind to produce power at a commercial scale.

Fusion Power
The use of atomic power has been common for almost a century but mostly in the form of fission. Fission uses the splitting of plutonium, uranium, or other radioactive elements to produce power. This process, however, produces many toxic / radioactive byproducts that must be safely stored for long periods of time. Fission reactors are also dangerous because of their tendency to go critical and explode. Fusion reactors produce power by fusing hydrogen atoms together. While this takes huge amounts of energy to accomplish, a large enough reactor can produce orders of magnitude more power than they require to start the fusion process. This start-up cost and size requirement made fission the only viable source of atomic power for over 70 years.

Past Tokomaks
Tokamaks were invented in the 1950s by physicists working in the Soviet Union. Over the following 60 years ever larger prototypes were constructed with the goal of building a reactor that would provide useful power.

ITER
Starting in the early 2010s, the international scientific community began work on ITER, a testbed for future fusion technologies. At the time of its completion in 2019, ITER was the largest reactor ever built. While the facility did not have the ability to generate electricity, the reactor did successfully produce more energy than it consumed when fusion tests were conducted in 2027.

DEMO
Based on the success of ITER, DEMO became the first fusion reactor to produce electricity. Initially completed in 2033, the plant is used primarily for demonstrations and scientific research.

History
The plan for a commercial, private sector fusion power plant was finalized in late 2036, shortly after the first successful tests of DEMO. This project, later to be known as INGoT, was expected to be completed in 2042 and start providing power to the Front Range by 2044. Despite the enormous funds granted to the project by its corporate backers, the 2039 financial crisis forced INGoT to look for public funding. As part of its campaign, INGoT attempted to appeal to younger generations with the slogan "Get the Meg Brag Zap Maker!", but abandoned it after protests accusing it of being patronizing. In the mid-2040s, the discovery of rare hydrogen isotopes on astroids prompted renewed investment in fusion power leading to INGoT's completion in 2048.

Design
INGoT's design is similar to that of other tokamaks but for its size. As a reactor's size is the biggest factor in its yield, INGoT is around 3 times larger than any previous reactor. INGoT also used new methods of cooling and assembly that allowed the cores of its superconducting magnets to be made from single pieces of metal. With the help of major AI researchers like Google, the HOLMES II computer was designed to run the INGoT facility.

Impact
Fusion power was long sought after because of its enormous potential. Unlike fission reactors, fusion reactors produce relatively safe helium and lithium isotopes as byproducts and cannot cause large scale industrial disasters. The huge amount of clean power produced by fusion reactors also allowed new kinds of technologies to be invented. INGoT alone has been credited with starting the great rocky mountain industrial boom and inspiring the creation of other fusion reactors would wide, which now provide over 40% of the world's energy.

Dangers
While fusion reactors are quite safe from a distance, especially when compared to older fission reactors, the close proximity of INGoT to workers and civilians presented some possible dangers. The project was also criticized for starting operation before its effects on newer technologies had been fully tested.

Plasma
The plasma inside of a modern tokamak reactor can reach temperatures in excess of 100,000,000 °C. Reactors keep this plasma contained using powerful magnets, but if it were to escape, the high temperatures could cause major damage to anything (or anyone) nearby. Fusion reactions also produce very high energy neutrons that can damage the inside of a reactor even with the magnetic shielding, though this problem had been previously dealt with by ITER and DEMO.

Vacuum
Like with all large vacuum vessels, any flaw in the structure of the vessel walls could cause them to collapse inward. Because the walls of the INGoT tokamak are so complicated to assemble and surround such a large volume, there was worry that such a flaw could easily derail the project.

Magnents
The powerful magnets used by the reactor have a record of injuring workers who dressed incorrectly.

Heating
Some opponents of the project were worried that the neutral beam injection system used by INGoT could leak high-energy particles into the surrounding area but tests of DEMO's similar systems reviled no such radiation. The electromagnetic radiation produced by dielectric heating however, is a major danger with modern reactors because of both the biological effects and the effects on computational devices.

Traditional silicon-copper based logic systems and more recent processor designs can both be affected by the enormous radio output of INGoT's heating systems due to the sensitivity of the microscopic elements that they are made of. This has resulted in the establishment of a small exclusion zone within the plant where networked objects are forbidden. The outside of the plant is well shielded but under pressure from investors and the public, INGoT issued a disclaimer warning that  androids and people with augmentations such as the  Feed should avoid spending too much time in the surrounding area.