122254 experiment! At 21 o'clock on April 12, China's fully superconducting tokamak nuclear fusion experimental device (EAST), known as the "artificial sun", set a new world record, successfully achieving a steady-state high-confinement mode plasma operation for 403 seconds, which is of great significance for exploring the frontier physics of future fusion reactors, improving the economy and feasibility of nuclear fusion energy, and accelerating the realization of fusion power generation.
"A dazzling white light rises from the end of the mountain range..." In the science fiction novel "The Three-Body Problem", the spacecraft's nuclear fusion engine emits light like the sun. Using technologies such as nuclear fusion, human beings have gone out of their home planet and become a true space civilization.
Everything grows by the sun. The sun shines because of the nuclear fusion reaction inside. The raw materials of nuclear fusion energy are extremely abundant on the earth, and the emissions are pollution-free, and if a "sun" can be created to generate electricity, mankind is expected to achieve energy freedom.
However, to create a practical "artificial sun", plasma of hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius, continuous operation time of more than 1,000 seconds and plasma current of 1 trillion amperes are extremely challenging. To this end, scientists around the world have been working for more than 70 years.
Shaped like a "giant furnace", a "hot fire" surges in the chest. As a major national scientific and technological infrastructure, EAST has a nuclear fusion reaction mechanism similar to the sun.
On April 12, Gong Xianzu, the general director of the EAST physics experiment, looked at the data after the successful experiment. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Duan
On the evening of April 12, after more than ten years of concentrated research, EAST successfully achieved a steady-state high-confinement mode plasma operation of 403 seconds, breaking the 2017 world record of 101 seconds, and the experimental site was jubilant.
“Shot:122254。” The numbers on the screen of the EAST control hall show that this is the success of more than 120,000 experiments.
"The main significance of this breakthrough is the 'high constraint mode'." Song Yuntao, vice president of the Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Institute of Plasma Physics, said that the temperature and density of particles in the high confinement mode have been greatly improved, "which lays a solid physical foundation for improving the power generation efficiency of future fusion power stations and reducing costs." ”
On April 12, researchers celebrated the success of the experiment in the EAST control hall. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Duan
It is reported that the EAST device has more than 200 core technologies and more than 2,000 patents, bringing together cutting-edge technologies such as "ultra-high temperature", "ultra-low temperature", "ultra-high vacuum", "ultra-strong magnetic field" and "ultra-large current" in one furnace, with a total of millions of parts working together. This successful breakthrough is inseparable from the upgrading of plasma control, heating, wall treatment, advanced diagnosis and other technologies and the improvement of the internal vacuum chamber.
At present, the next generation of "artificial sun" China fusion engineering experimental reactor has completed engineering design, aiming to build the world's first fusion demonstration reactor in the future.
Text reporters: Xu Haitao, Dai Wei, He Xiyue
Source: Xinhuanet