China Could Be Turning On Its 'Artificial Sun' Fusion Reactor Soon (newsweek.com) 109
"China is about to start operation on its 'artificial sun' -- a nuclear fusion device that produces energy by replicating the reactions that take place at the center of the sun," writes Newsweek.
schwit1 shared their report: If successful, the device could edge scientists closer to achieving the ultimate goal of nuclear fusion: near limitless, cheap clean energy.
The device, called HL-2M Tokamak, is part of the nation's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak project, which has been running since 2006. In March, an official from the China National Nuclear Corporation announced it would complete building HL-2M by the end of the year. The coil system was installed in June and since then, work on HL-2M has gone "smoothly," the Xinhua News Agency reported in November. Duan Xuru, head of the Southwestern Institute of Physics, which is part of the corporation, announced the device will become operational in 2020 at the 2019 China Fusion Energy Conference, the state news agency said.
He told attendees how the new device will achieve temperatures of over 200 million degrees Celsius. That's about 13 times hotter than the center of the sun. Previous devices developed for the artificial sun experiment reached 100 million degrees Celsius, a breakthrough that was announced in November last year.
schwit1 shared their report: If successful, the device could edge scientists closer to achieving the ultimate goal of nuclear fusion: near limitless, cheap clean energy.
The device, called HL-2M Tokamak, is part of the nation's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak project, which has been running since 2006. In March, an official from the China National Nuclear Corporation announced it would complete building HL-2M by the end of the year. The coil system was installed in June and since then, work on HL-2M has gone "smoothly," the Xinhua News Agency reported in November. Duan Xuru, head of the Southwestern Institute of Physics, which is part of the corporation, announced the device will become operational in 2020 at the 2019 China Fusion Energy Conference, the state news agency said.
He told attendees how the new device will achieve temperatures of over 200 million degrees Celsius. That's about 13 times hotter than the center of the sun. Previous devices developed for the artificial sun experiment reached 100 million degrees Celsius, a breakthrough that was announced in November last year.
Good luck with that (Score:5, Funny)
BTW, why doesn't the sun go to college?
It already has a million degrees.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Informative)
TFA's claim that this replicates the sun is inaccurate.
This reactor uses normal DT fusion, just like ITER and NIF.
Fusion in the sun is proton-proton fusion [wikipedia.org].
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Interesting)
Simply pedantic? Hardly. Since the tritium for deuterium-tritium fusion is almost entirely sourced from working fission reactors, it means that large scale fusion would remain enitrely dependent on large-scale fission reactors. It means that this kind of fusion, despite promises, is still not "clean" energy due to the dangers of harvesting uranium and of running the reactors for _that_.
As far as this reactor is concerned, it stil has no way to _harvest_ energy any energy even if it hits the "break-even" point of generating more energy than it consumes creating the fusion reaction. And it has no way to refuel to generate energy consistently rather than as a single event: basically, it may be able to create energy, but won't be able to create _power_, or energy per unit time.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Informative)
Since the tritium for deuterium-tritium fusion is almost entirely sourced from working fission reactors, it means that large scale fusion would remain enitrely dependent on large-scale fission reactors.
Commerical fusion reactors can breed tritium from lithium.
Lithium-6 can breed tritium from thermal neutrons.
Lithium-7 can breed tritium from fast neutrons, without consuming the neutron (this was discovered accidentally when Castle Bravo [wikipedia.org] was detonated).
Naturally occuring lithium is over 90% li-7.
it still has no way to _harvest_ energy
Molten lithium can act as the thermal transfer fluid as well as the tritium source. So you surround the reactor with a blanket of molten lithium in zirconium pipes, extract the tritium, and then run the molten lithium through a heat exchanger to generate steam to run the turbines.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Informative)
> Commerical fusion reactors can breed tritium from lithium.
This one cannot. It is a D-T fusion reactor, with no capacity for lithium harvesting, which would make it that more difficult to build and maintain. Tritium is also _quite_ dangerous to handle on its own, it has a half-life of 12 years. It's a very dangerous nuclear fuel.
> Molten lithium can act as the thermal transfer fluid as well as the tritium source.
It can never be "the tritium source". D-T fusion normally produces only one neutron, which even at 100% efficiency could only trigger one lithium isotope to produce one tritium atom. It cannot it cannot generate more fuel than it consumes, so there is _always_ a need for fresh tritium for the primary D-T reaction in such designs. This also creates a neeed to constantly be replacing the lithium, which is consumed by the reaction to generate helium and tritium. Many proponents of this approach neglect to note that this reaction _consumes the lithium_.
Lithium based generation of tritium can help reduce the need for dangerous and expensive tritium to be transferred to the fusion reactor. But it certainly does not eliminate the need for fresh tritium from other sources.
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This one cannot. It is a D-T fusion reactor, with no capacity for lithium harvesting
Can you please explain? The reactor obviously generates neutrons, which would immediately pass out of the magnetic confinement. So why can't those neutons activate lithium?
Tritium is also _quite_ dangerous to handle on its own, it has a half-life of 12 years.
Tritium decays by low energy beta decay into He3. The generated electron is only 5.7 keV. A few mm of air or your dead skin cells are enough to stop it. Just avoid eating it, and you are fine.
It can never be "the tritium source". D-T fusion normally produces only one neutron, which even at 100% efficiency could only trigger one lithium isotope to produce one tritium atom.
DT fusion produces a fast neutron. That fast neutron enters the lithium blanket and reacts with a Li7 atom. This produces He4 + T + N. THE N
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>> This one cannot. It is a D-T fusion reactor, with no capacity for lithium harvesting
> Can you please explain?
In theory, it's an engineering problem. Even if you harvest the gaseous tritium, you need to store it and present it as pure fuel to the fusion reactor. These are unsolved engineering issues which have never been done at such a scale and which this reactor is _not_ designed to handle.
In theory, many things are "merely engineering problems" that have never yielded a practical solution. Fus
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In case I was unclear: the leakiness of tritium makes harvesting it hazardous. It normally combines chemically with oxygen to form "tritiated water", which is accidentally ingested very easily.
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This engineering problem is being solved in the internationally created ITER project and it will also produce more energy than it consumes.
First plasma is planned for 2027 and the project seems well on track.
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I suspect that there are lots of implementation inefficiencies that your analysis doesn't cover. Probably, at least for the first few generations of design, there would need to be an auxiliary source of Tritium. I also suspect that's not a real problem. Waste from existing nuclear reactors would probably suffice as neutron sources for several centuries.
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Maybe THIS reactor does not have the capacity to do it but it is certainly possible. In fact that is what they are planning to do in the ITER project link [iter.org]
The problem of consuming more energy than it consumes will also be solved by it as it aims for Q=10, meaning that it will produce 10 times more energy than it consumes (50MW in, 500MW out). This device is well on course to reach first plasma in 2027.
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> Maybe THIS reactor does not have the capacity to do it but it is certainly possible.
If, and when, you can ever point to a reactor that manages all these other technological marvels, do publish a notice. If basic engineering limitations and thermodynamic costs did not prohibit us, we'd be refining deuterium and tritium wholesale from sea water, and paying for the plant with extracted gold and platinum while providing fresh water for the poor nations of the world. It's exciting to mention technological
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If you must know the details: in ITER [iter.org] (the project I referred to before) they are building and will test the creation of Tritrium on-demand from Lithium which will give them a tidy bit of extra energy as a bonus.
For the next step: an actual DEMO reactor that will produce electricity on the grid, they are looking at creating Tritrium on-the-fly in the plasma (Tritrium breeding).
So, yes it's not here today. But no, it is not some inpossible imaginary dream...
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Yes, using Li-6 is exothermic. It absorbs a neutron, and does not produce a new one for continuing the process. Double-checking the process, the neutron freed from Li-7 breakdown doesn't have enough energy to fuel the endothermic reaction of splitting the next Li-7. If it were exothermic, it might be possible to chain-react Lithium. I shudder at the thought of household Lithium batteries as nuclear reactors.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Informative)
TFA goes further than a simplistic analogy for scientific illiterates. It says the reactor is "replicating the reactions that take place at the center of the sun." That is not true.
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Nor would you want it to be. Fusion in the sun is incredibly slow. Per unit volume, it produces about as much energy as a compost heap [wikipedia.org] - only 276.5 Watts/m^3. A candle puts off nearly 400,000x energy (about 100 Watts in 1 cm^3). The reason the sun is so hot isn't because it's a fusion powerhouse. It's because it's so big that every square meter of its surface has 232 million m^3 of volume und
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Why is 6, afraid of 7? (Score:2)
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I see you've escaped from the Hoover Institution. Errr...any chance you'll be re-admitted shortly?
Re: Princeton & the DoE (Score:1)
Cue the canonical Two Stupid Remarks (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone posts them them whenever the subject of fusion tech comes up.
1. "Fusion over unity is ten years away. It always has been."
2. "We already have a perfectly good fusion reactor, located in a safe place. We don't need concentrated energy sources of our own."
Re:Cue the canonical Two Stupid Remarks (Score:5, Funny)
You can tell fusion is getting closer because the pundits have whittled it down from "thirty years away, always has been" to ten.
Re:Cue the canonical Two Stupid Remarks (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Cue the canonical Two Stupid Remarks (Score:1)
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No. On the ITER site [iter.org] the timeline for DEMO is set for 2040...
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And they're moving the goal posts. You know you're getting close when they do that!
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What do you mean by "ten"? A *prototype* reactor *might* operate in 2033...if everything goes well. Which it probably won't.
Because this time, it's China. They don't screw around. They Just Fucking Build It.
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Re: Cue the canonical Two Stupid Remarks (Score:1)
Re:Cue the canonical Two Stupid Remarks (Score:5, Insightful)
These points always come up because they are true. China is making progress, but we still a long way from energy-breakeven and much much further away from money-breakeven.
Grid-scale solar PV is at 3 cents per kwh and falling. It is implausible that fusion will get anywhere near that for decades, if ever.
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that is the cost of production when the sun is shining
Actually, it's the average cost of generation over a long period.
When you add the cost of storing energy and backup gas plants, it becomes much more expensive.
The cost of storing energy and backup gas plants is not counted into that because those are entirely different facilities. And they're not generally counted into this because they're not strictly necessary. Most of PV-generated electricity can be directly consumed, meaning that the cost of storing electricity has only a fractional impact on this kind of generation and can't be adequately quantified without knowing what specific grid you're tal
Re:Cue the canonical Two Stupid Remarks (Score:4, Informative)
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>technocratic government
How is China a technocracy when they are a one party system ripe with corruption, censorship, and Xi as leader for life who reshaped the politburo to fit his needs?
Seriously, I do not understand. Who in the Politburo are the scientists and technologists? Or are they in the politburo because of their party affiliations and acceptance of Xi? Once upon a time you could argue the percent of engineers was enough but not anymore.
The only thing technocratic of their government is that it
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2. "We already have a perfectly good fusion reactor, located in a safe place. We don't need concentrated energy sources of our own."
Ah, but remember the old proverb:
"A sun in the hand . . . is worth two ~150 miles away in the bush."
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1. "Fusion over unity is ten years away. It always has been."
Sooner than humans on Mars 20 years from now (for the past 50 years).
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1. "Fusion over unity is ten years away. It always has been."
Sooner than humans on Mars 20 years from now (for the past 50 years).
In both cases the statements are true and have been true all along, as long as you add the qualifier with which they were originally made "...if you agree to fund this project". Given that the politicians keep not agreeing to fund the project the date keeps getting pushed back.
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In particular (1.) is staggeringly stupid. No involved scientist ever claimed that. I recently listened to a podcast with the two lead scientists on the Wendelstein X-7, and while they were pretty sure this will eventually work and were proud of the advances made, they said that significant engineering and plasma Physics advances are still needed and that these would at least take several decades and that building a working prototype may take as long after that. So, significant progress is made, things are
Re: Cue the canonical Two Stupid Remarks (Score:1)
Re:Hotter than the Sun? (Score:4, Informative)
Really hope that is trolling.
If those plasmas exit confinement they would just cool off really fast and probably damage something in the reaction containment vessel.
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Besides which, in a Tokamak, the plasma spins parallel to the Earth's surface, so containment failure would send the plasma out into the atmosphere as opposed to straight up or down.
What happens when... (Score:1)
This think inevitably goes south. Do we end up becoming the sun ? Or does it just melt into the center of the planet? Fall into the ocean and cause massive ocean warming?
Glad it's happening in China though, I mean it's not like the lie cheat and steal. They can be really honest about when stuff breaks as well right... RIGHT....
I welcome our sun controlling, magma based, overlords. And might I say, not a one of us on this planet can take the heat, so yeah...
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Re:What happens when... (Score:5, Informative)
However, the fusion reaction also creates a lot of fast neutrons, which will turn the reactor structural materials into radioactive materials. Those materials tend to be shorter-lived than fission waste, but the extent to which this energy can be really called "clean" is disputable.
Re:What happens when... (Score:5, Informative)
However, the fusion reaction also creates a lot of fast neutrons, which will turn the reactor structural materials into radioactive materials.
True, but this problem can be minimized. Lithium can be used to absorb nearly all the neutrons, and lithium does not produce radioactive products other than tritium which is fed back into the reactor.
The lithium can be contained in zirconium pipes, and those pipes can be relatively thin since neither the reactor nor the molten lithium needs to be pressurized. Zirconium has a very small neutron cross-section, so nearly all neutrons emitted by the reactor would pass through the pipes and into the lithium.
There would be some long-lived nuclear waste, but way less than what a fission reactor produces.
Re:What happens when... (Score:5, Insightful)
This think inevitably goes south.
Keeping a fusion reactor running is like keeping a candle lit in a category 5 hurricane.
Believing there is a plausible risk of it getting out of control requires an astounding degree of willful ignorance.
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To be nitpicky, I believe that there is a plausible risk of it getting out of control. It's just that the result would be less of a problem than a mine collapse. It would still be likely to cause millions of dollars worth of damage.
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What do you think the typical cost of a mine collapse is? On an open cast mine (where you're either digging stuff out, or moving stuff aside before you dig out the stuff below it), the mining process is controlled manage collapse of the walls. A collapse would be an inconvenience to be moved aside in the normal course of work
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Believing there is a plausible risk of it getting out of control requires an astounding degree of willful ignorance.
Before you read my reply, I want you to know that I am in complete agreement with you. With that said...
Then we both agree that the general population hold the position that this will inevitably go south. :)
Re:What happens when... (Score:5, Informative)
Fusion "going south" just means that it snuffs out like a candle. It is not a runaway reaction like fission is. 100 million degrees sounds scary. But the moment you lose containment of the plasma, the fusion reaction dies.
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Interestingly, the moment you remove the water from a fission reactor, the fission reaction stops....
Which is not the same as saying the heat goes away. Just the fission....
Re:What happens when... (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly, the moment you remove the water from a fission reactor, the fission reaction stops....
No. This is wrong. First, many fission reactors are not water-moderated. For those that are, removing the water slows the reaction, but does not stop it. There is also plenty of heat generated by continued decay of fission daughter products, which can continue for decades, and this heat alone is enough to cause a meltdown.
Fission reactors can't simply be turned off.
Fusion reactors can.
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They can't be turned off, but well designed ones should be able to be turned so far down that they stop being a problem.
Unfortunately, most of the reactors in operation could not reasonably be called "well designed" by modern standards. And the new designs haven't really been tested. Most of them haven't even had pilot plants built.
Then there's the problem of "spent fuel". This needs to be addressed. Possibly the promise that the molten salt Thorium reactor can consume that as part of it's own fuel is c
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With the first Hydrogen Bomb test, they did _not_ know whether they would ignite the atmosphere. The pushed the button anyways (the nuclear fanatics are utterly crazy). Later, they found out that there was no risk of that happening.
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It was the eggheads themselves that were not sure. The Physics needed to be sure was not available They did consider it unlikely.
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Not an "artificial sun", nor "clean" as fission. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the basic problem with fusion power: humans can't produce the densities of regular hydrogen found in the Sun, so projects like this Chinese one attempt to make up for that by using a reaction of deuterium and tritium which occurs at much lower energies. So it's not an "artificial sun" at all; it runs on an entirely different reaction -- one that no doubt happens in the Sun, but is not where the bulk of the Sun's energy comes from.
And there's problems with that D-T reaction. When people talk about reactors producing a net gain of power, they're counting the 80% of the reaction output that is produced as useless neutrons . We might well be able to generate net power in a fusion reactor some time in the next decade, but nobody has any idea how to get from there to producing net electricity. And those neutrons are worse than useless; they'd quickly turn a D-T fusion power reactor operating at production capacities into a pile of radioactive scrap. For a given power output, a D-T reactor would produce over 25x the neutrons that a fission reactor does.
Choosing D-T as a fuel contributes to that illusion of a panacea almost within our grasp. it lowers the bar to achieving net positive power at the cost of most of that power being unusable waste. It's doubtful that D-T fusion will ever produce a working power plant, and if it does, it probably won't be a *clean* power plant. However, research like this could be a stepping stone to anuetronic fusion, which could be clean but requires much higher power inputs.
In any case we are not going to see a working fusion plant in the time we have to affect the course of climate change. Fusion is fine as basic science, but we'd be much better off working on advanced fission reactors if we're hoping for practical results.
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Well let's not waste those neutrons! It's easy! Just line the fusion reactor with U-238 and harvest tons of energy from those pesky neutrons!
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We probably shouldn't be breeding plutonium from U-238, if the goal is to transition from fission to fusion.
That was the whole point of the joke. =P
Re:Not an "artificial sun", nor "clean" as fission (Score:5, Informative)
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D-T is used for research as it is easier to ignite than Deuterium alone. It is not the end-goal, it is a stepping stone.
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Nope, Putin's Poodle is Russia's pre-emptive strike.
Re: Pre-emptive Strike (Score:1)
Meanwhile, in the USA... (Score:2)
...millions of people have bought into the the curly-cue CFL light bulb equivalent of energy production, namely wind and solar.
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What do you mean "goal"? We already have that! (Score:1)
What goes on in the minds of such people? Anything? How do they even manage, day in, day out, to so completely ignore the single most massive figurative elephant in the room there *literally* ever was:
The giant, MASSIVE, five BILLION year fusion reactor in the sky!!
You know how much it would take, to power the entire world with that?
A 400x400 km patch of solar power plants in the desert.
And even if we didn't use it it would be produced. And even if the entire planet woud be covered in solar cells, we'd onl
Re: What do you mean "goal"? We already have that! (Score:1)
Power Too Cheap to Meter, Again. (Score:1)
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We also need better storage, for the occasional situation of having calm winds and cloudy weather at the same time. Or at least for bridging the night during calm winds.
AFAIK, right now that is a bigger problem than having enough production capacity for renewables.
Re: Power Too Cheap to Meter, Again. (Score:1)
I wonder what will happen (Score:2)
I'm expecting an earth-shattering kaboom.
China takes sustainability seriously (Score:2)
Supernova? (Score:1)
Would be great (Score:2)
Then we could steal it, implement it ourselves, and use some of the profits to make some restitution to all the firms and individuals that China has stolen ideas, technology, and information from.