It’s a newly proposed fusion reactor prototype. It’s a stellerator type reactor. Together with the Tokamak type reactor these two are the currently most promising types to achieve fusion and generate more energy than they take to operate. While the tokamakak type looks more symmetrical to the human eye the stellerator types have adopted very weird looking shapes where the symmetries are more hidden. The pictures are from this paper by mostly people from the institute who created the to date biggest stellerator type fusion generator Wendelstein 7-x. Their proposed prototype ‘Stelaris’ is a lot bigger than the 7-x.
Bonus (with little context):
And heres a shematic view oft how it would look like from outside. Just like a donut.
The largest stellerator currently operating in the US is. HSX at UW-Madison. The copper magnet coils had to be explosively formed. The coils were delivered one at a time. At one point one was stolen off the loading dock. This caused a lot of panic, as the budget was spent. There was no way to replace the stolen coil.
Something like a day later the sheriff called the university asking the if they were missing a hunk of copper. The thieves took the coil to a scrap yard for scrap value. The yard figured there was no way this bonkers shaped thing wasn’t made to a particular purpose so they played along long enough to call the cops to find the rightful owner.
It’s worth recognizing stellerators since HSX have all been periodic, that is every coil isn’t unique. The designs used to be even more insane.
Damn amateur methhead copper thieves. Don’t they know the first rule of something like that is to break into into unrecognizable pieces or melt it down prior to taking it to the scrap yard?!#