China’s new announcements indicate that it has taken one step further in that direction.
Nuclear fusion is based on the idea that energy can be released by forcing atomic nuclei together rather than separating them, as in the fission reactions that powers the existing nuclear power plants.
In what could be a significant breakthrough, a Chinese research team claims to have created the world’s first power plant capable of converting fusion energy into electricity without disrupting the power system, South China Morning Post reported.
This development comes a few months after China’s experimental advanced superconducting Tokamak (EAST), HL-2M fusion energy reactor had run for 1,056 seconds at 70 million degrees Celsius.
According to Xiang Kui, chief engineer of thermal systems at the China Energy Engineering Group Guangdong Electric Power Design Institute in Guangzhou, converting the heat into electricity is challenging because the reactor must take a 20-minute break every two hours.
Xiang and his colleagues stated in a report published in the domestic peer-reviewed journal ‘Southern Energy Construction’ that this frequent interruption can create pulse energy that “will cause huge damage to the power grid.”
The entire world is chasing nuclear fusion technology, with a facility in France called International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), where experiments take place with the assistance of a world consortium with the EU, the US, Russia, and even China being members.
They hope to make a breakthrough by the second half of this century. READ MORE...
China's "artificial sun" has set a new world record after superheating a loop of plasma to temperatures five times hotter than the sun for more than 17 minutes, state media reported.
The EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) nuclear fusion reactor maintained a temperature of 158 million degrees Fahrenheit (70 million degrees Celsius) for 1,056 seconds, according to the Xinhua News Agency. The achievement brings scientists a small yet significant step closer to the creation of a source of near-unlimited clean energy.
The Chinese experimental nuclear fusion reactor smashed the previous record, set by France's Tore Supra tokamak in 2003, where plasma in a coiling loop remained at similar temperatures for 390 seconds. EAST had previously set another record in May 2021 by running for 101 seconds at an unprecedented 216 million F (120 million C). The core of the actual sun, by contrast, reaches temperatures of around 27 million F (15 million C).
"The recent operation lays a solid scientific and experimental foundation towards the running of a fusion reactor," experiment leader Gong Xianzu, a researcher at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a statement.
Scientists have been trying to harness the power of nuclear fusion — the process by which stars burn — for more than 70 years. By fusing hydrogen atoms to make helium under extremely high pressures and temperatures, so-called main-sequence stars are able to convert matter into light and heat, generating enormous amounts of energy without producing greenhouse gases or long-lasting radioactive waste. READ MORE...
