On Wednesday, we went out in the morning to the Technical University of Munich to visit the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. We met our physics graduate student Alex who gave us a very nice lecture on the basic issues related to fusion power generation. We then went over to see the flywheels, control room, and fusion reactor. Since it is not radioactive, we were able to stand 30 feet from the reactor in the same room. Alex talked a bit about the ITER tokamak reactor they are building in France. The IPP just completed a "stellarator" design on the Baltic sea. But still, fusion power is at least 20 years away, as it has been for 50 years...
After the IPP, we had lunch at the TUM cafeteria and tried to use the slides at the TUM Math building, but they were locked up. Their math building has slides from the fourth floor to the ground floor, usually open to anyone. After TUM, some students went to the soccer stadium and some went to the Chinese Tower in the English Garden.
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