Author: Tianya loves science
On September 26, Song Yuntao, vice president of the Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Institute of Plasma Of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with the Beijing News that their team has begun to work on the engineering design of future nuclear fusion power stations, hoping that with the strong support of the state, the demonstration project of nuclear fusion power generation can be built within the next 10 years. Song Yuntao is currently the host of the EAST (All-Superconducting Tokamak Nuclear Fusion Experimental Device, also known as the "Oriental Super ring", commonly known as the "Artificial Sun") project.
With global warming becoming more and more serious, and carbon neutrality becoming the mainstream hot word today, the world has never been so eager for the emergence of new energy sources, and nuclear fusion power generation is considered to be the ultimate energy source for human beings. The principle of nuclear fusion is actually very simple, the process of two lighter nuclei (mainly the isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium) coalescing into heavier nuclei while releasing huge amounts of energy.
How tempting is fusion power generation? One liter of water can refine 0.03 grams of deuterium, and its fusion reaction releases the same amount of energy as burning 300 liters of gasoline or burning 336 kilograms of coal. And there are about 40 trillion tons of deuterium in the seawater, so that the seawater on the earth can be used by humans for hundreds of millions of years. Moreover, nuclear fusion power generation is safe (can be terminated at any time), pollution-free (the production is helium), so it is not an exaggeration to say that nuclear fusion power generation is the ultimate energy source for mankind.
Although the principle of nuclear fusion is simple, how difficult is it to generate electricity? Nuclear fusion in nature currently occurs only within the Sun, where the core of the Sun is warmed at more than 15 million degrees and at pressures exceeding 300 billion atmospheres, under such extreme conditions, hydrogen can only polymerize into helium and release a lot of heat. But on Earth, it is impossible to reach such a large pressure, and scientists have proposed a method of "not enough pressure, temperature to make up". Hence the International Thermonuclear Fusion Experimental Reactor (ITER) project. The core device of this project is tokamak (TOKAMAK), the Russian abbreviation for the words "ring", "vacuum", "magnetism", "coil", which suspends the charged fusion plasma in a vacuum by cleverly constructing a magnetic field, thereby constraining it to maintain a very high reaction temperature. It can also be seen from here how advanced the Russians were in this technology.
How good is China's level of nuclear fusion?
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China has been studying nuclear fusion for more than half a century. In the early 1990s, Russia gave China a set of decommissioned superconducting tokamak devices. (Some people say that it is a free gift, but in fact, it is exchanged for a large number of commodities and materials.)
After the device was unloaded and transported to China, Chinese studied the device to the end, and after redesigning, in 1994, the Plasma Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences successfully built the HT-7 superconducting tokamak device, which made China the fourth country to have such a device after Russia, Japan and France. On this basis, China's research has gradually overtaken, and in 2007 it assembled the world's first all-superconducting tokamak device, the "Oriental Super ring (EAST)," commonly known as the "artificial sun". It is the world's first tokamak device with both horizontal and vertical coils for superconducting coils. The behemoth is 11 meters tall, 8 meters in diameter and weighs 400 tons, and has as many parts as five Boeing 777 aircraft combined. Chinese this weapon has not only been running stably for 15 years, but also repeatedly broke the world plasma operation record, on May 28, 2021, "artificial sun" in the new world record, successfully achieved repeatable 120 million degrees Celsius 101 seconds and 160 million degrees Celsius 20 seconds plasma operation, from 100 million degrees of operation 1000 seconds of commercial operation targets another step further.
4-storey Chinese "artificial sun"
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According to statistics, in the nearly 10 years from 2007 to 2016, China ranked third in the world in the annual number of articles published in the field of nuclear fusion, and the number of papers grew rapidly, approaching the United States in 2015 and surpassing the United States in 2016! Judging from the publications of major institutions, the Chinese Academy of Sciences ranks second in the field as a whole (the first is General Atomic Corporation of the United States), and the largest number of articles published in the subordinate research institutions is the Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Science and Technology of China.
In addition, the increase in the number of Chinese employees in the International Thermonuclear Fusion Experimental Reactor (ITER) project also shows China's strength. When China first started participating in the project, the number of Chinese employees was the lowest among the 7 participants, and now (as of January 2020), of the 929 regular employees of the ITER organization, the Chinese regular staff is 87, accounting for 9.4% of the total number, second only to the host EU, ranking first among the other six parties, which is also the number of Chinese hired under the restrictive conditions of foreign parties. In addition, there are 25 ITER Project Partners (IPAs) working at ITER headquarters.
China's rapid development and strength in controlled nuclear fusion have even raised concerns in other countries. Reference News quoted the South China Morning Post as saying on December 9, 2016, that the other six participants in the ITER project – Japan, South Korea, Russia, the United States, India and the European Union – even discussed kicking China out because they feared that China would use the knowledge gained from ITER to speed up the construction of China's own nuclear fusion power generation, and if China became the first country to commercialize fusion technology, it would gain an economic and geopolitical advantage. What will make western countries, including the superpower, the United States? It's just that now China's role is irreplaceable in the project, and without China's participation, ITER will not even be able to support it. Professor Steven Cowley, dean of the Corpus Christi School at oxford and former director of the Centre for Fusion in Callum, UK, said the best option for other countries was to accept or even support Chinese-led fusion research (Professor Steven Cowley... said the best choice for other countries was to embrace, and even support, China’s leadership in fusion research.。 Note that his wording is "led" by China. Professor Cowley is a British theoretical physicist and an international authority on nuclear fusion and astrophysical plasmas, having served as Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory at the U.S. Department of Energy since July 1, 2018.
Researchers at the Institute of Plasma research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, almost all young people, real small fresh meat.
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Superconducting materials are used to generate magnetic fields and are key materials for TOKAMAK devices. China's total output of superconducting materials in the first 10 years of 2010 was only 100 kg to 150 kg, and now driven by the research and development of the national big scientific device of "Oriental Super Ring", Chinese can produce more than 1,000 tons, and the output is more than 10,000 times that of the previous one. Hangke Technology Company alone has an output of 600 tons, and plans to produce more than 2,000 tons in the future. With the significant increase in production, production costs have been significantly reduced, and the selling price has also decreased. Now, even 60%-70% of foreign superconducting materials have to be imported from China. In the ITET project, China's superconducting conductor performance far exceeds that of international counterparts, achieving 100% localization, 100% one-time qualification, and 100% on-time delivery. In addition, the 10% procurement package task undertaken by China also includes various tasks such as power supply and diagnostics, which are the most difficult, but in turn, each of these tasks has led to the emerging strategic industries in China, thus promoting the development of the industry to the international frontier.
France International Thermonuclear Fusion Experimental Reactor (ITER)
How far is China from nuclear fusion power generation?
At present, the international competition for nuclear fusion power generation is very fierce. Although China has achieved a world record of 101 seconds running at 100 million degrees, the maximum temperature that can be reached is still far from the international maximum, and Japan's nuclear fusion reaction can even reach a high temperature of 520 million degrees, which is said to produce 25% more energy than the energy consumed, and seems to be close to commercial applications. The United States proposes to pilot nuclear fusion power plants to generate electricity between 2035 and 2040, while the United Kingdom proposes to commercialize fusion energy by 2040. According to the current technical situation, Song Yuntao said that it is very possible to complete a nuclear fusion power generation demonstration project within 10 years, after all, it is now possible to polish matches and ignite the big briquette of nuclear fusion.
Perhaps in the near future, human beings will be able to eat steamed buns made of synthetic starch, sit in a spaceship powered by nuclear fusion power generation, and start the journey of the sea of stars.