The so-called nuclear fusion refers to the process of two lighter nuclei synthesizing heavier nuclei to release huge energy, which hardly pollutes the environment and is the ideal energy model pursued by human beings.
The hydrogen bomb exploded
Nuclear fusion humans have long mastered, but what they have mastered is uncontrollable nuclear fusion, which can only explode directly. If these huge amounts of energy need to be utilized, controlled nuclear fusion must be achieved, that is, the fusion reaction process must be controlled to achieve a smooth output of energy.
Controllable nuclear fusion is an international problem, although it has been tackled for many years, but it has not been achieved, the industry has a self-deprecating sentence: the realization of controlled nuclear fusion will always be 50 years!
On February 9 this year, the European Union United Fusion Centre (JET) in Oxford, England, announced that it had achieved 59 MJ energy output in 5 seconds, breaking its own record of 21.7 MJ energy held in 1997.
JET inside
For the value of energy, many people may not be able to intuitively understand, let's convert it. 59 megajoules of energy are generated in 5 seconds, that is, an average of 11.8 megajoules of energy per second, which is equivalent to about 3.3 kWh of electricity per second, which can produce nearly 12,000 kWh of electricity in one hour, enough to supply tens of thousands of households.
Although the current plasma stabilization time is only 5 seconds, but for the time scale of nuclear reactions, this is already a long time, and the future realization of 5 minutes, 5 hours or even longer stabilization is no longer far away!
Tokamak device construction
The success of this JET experiment is undoubtedly a milestone, and its success paves the way for the imminent completion of ITER. Prof. Ian Chapman, CEO of JET, said: "Fortunately, the experiment was successful, otherwise we would have to worry about the future of ITER.
JET is currently the world's largest operational tokamak device and the world's largest nuclear fusion energy output maintainer, which is stronger than the continental Eastern Super Ring (EAST)?
EAST
Both the continental EAST and JET belong to the tokamak device, both ring descriptors that achieve controlled nuclear fusion through magnetic constraints, but their two sides have different emphases and should not be directly compared.
East is generally the world's leading level, using a similar heating method and bias filter structure to ITER, and is the only scientific research experimental device in the world that can fully demonstrate and verify ITER on the condition of 100 seconds.
In 2021, Continental East has achieved world records of 101 seconds at 120 million degrees celsius and 1056 seconds at 70 million degrees Celsius.
EAST controls the lobby
JET is the only experimental device in the world that can achieve the "tritium-tritium fusion" reaction, maintaining the record for the maximum energy output of nuclear fusion. EAST is more magnetically constrained and does not achieve nuclear fusion reactions because during east operation, there are only D nuclides (deuterium) in the plasma, and no T nuclides (tritium).
The significance of the EAST experiment is mainly to study how to stabilize the plasma for a long time, in order to provide experimental support for the ITER project and CFETRs participated in by the mainland, maintaining the fusion reaction, solving the problem of material irradiation, energy conversion, T retention problem, etc. are not its research priorities.
ITER project
Since the mainland announced its accession to ITER in 2003, the development of nuclear fusion in the mainland has progressed by leaps and bounds, although there is still a certain distance from the developed countries, but the mainland has its own characteristics. In particular, after the completion of the world's advanced level OFT, many scientific research achievements have been made and great contributions have been made to the development of controlled nuclear fusion in the world.
In addition to EAST, China is also preparing to build an independent CFETR, which is equivalent to 85% of ITER in size and will use about 70% of ITER technology accumulation. Although the scale is smaller than ITER, it will be able to make up for the shortcomings of ITER short time, tritium can not sustain itself, and cannot generate electricity.
The path for human beings to achieve nuclear fusion power generation
Compared with EAST, which is in its prime, the JET device, which was put into operation in 1983, is out of date. Jet's head of operations said it would shut down JET by 2023, but there will be another trial before that, hoping it will bring another breakthrough.
With the continuous breakthrough of controlled nuclear fusion in recent years, human beings are getting closer and closer to obtaining this new energy source, and it is reported that controlled nuclear fusion will be used for commercial power generation as soon as 2030, and human beings can look forward to the future!