China's 'Artificial Sun' Fusion Reactor Just Set a New World Record (scmp.com) 90
The South China Morning Post reports that China "has reached another milestone in its quest for a fusion reactor, with one of its 'artificial suns' sustaining extreme temperatures for several times longer that its previous benchmark, according to state media."
State news agency Xinhua reported that the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak in a facility in the eastern city of Hefei registered a plasma temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds on Friday. It also maintained a temperature of 160 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds, the report said...
The facilities are part of China's quest for fusion reactors, which hold out hope of unlimited clean energy. But there are many challenges to overcome in what has already been a decades-long quest for the world's scientists. Similar endeavours are under way in the United States, Europe, Russia, South Korea. China is also among 35 countries involved in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) megaproject in France...
Despite the progress made, fusion reactors are still a long way from reality. Song Yuntao, director of the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the latest results were a major achievement for physics and engineering in China. "The experiment's success lays the foundation for China to build its own nuclear fusion energy station," Song was quoted as saying.
NASA notes that the core of the Sun is only about 15 million degrees Celsius.
So for many seconds China's fusion reactor was more than 10 times hotter than the sun.
The facilities are part of China's quest for fusion reactors, which hold out hope of unlimited clean energy. But there are many challenges to overcome in what has already been a decades-long quest for the world's scientists. Similar endeavours are under way in the United States, Europe, Russia, South Korea. China is also among 35 countries involved in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) megaproject in France...
Despite the progress made, fusion reactors are still a long way from reality. Song Yuntao, director of the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the latest results were a major achievement for physics and engineering in China. "The experiment's success lays the foundation for China to build its own nuclear fusion energy station," Song was quoted as saying.
NASA notes that the core of the Sun is only about 15 million degrees Celsius.
So for many seconds China's fusion reactor was more than 10 times hotter than the sun.
Tatooine (Score:2)
Call me when they launch it into orbit so Earth can be like Tatooine. I like those sunsets.
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That sounds like great progress! (Score:5, Funny)
I guess this means that practical fusion reactors are only, what, about 20 years away now?
Re:That sounds like great progress! (Score:4, Informative)
I guess this means that practical fusion reactors are only, what, about 20 years away now?
No, of course not. Construction of ITER began in 2007 and will be completed in 2025. So even if we had the design of a practical reactor ready to go (we don't), it would take 20 years to build it.
It will take many more years to get to a sustainable reaction. Then more years to get to energy-breakeven. Then more years beyond that to get to cost-effectiveness. Then a few years to design a commercial reactor. Then, after all that is done, we will be ready to spend 20 years building it.
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Nuclear fusion has always been [ft.com] 20 years away. Except when it is 30 years away [discovermagazine.com].
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One of the main ways to tell apart bullshit sellers from actual scientists, is that actual scientists usually say that it's 50 years away.
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One of the main ways to tell apart bullshit sellers from actual scientists, is that actual scientists usually say that it's 50 years away.
Yep. They will point out that the reactors produced now prove some of the science. The next versions, which will take 10, 20, or 30 years to build and collect data, are to prove the engineering. Then comes the commercial prototypes to prove the economics. That means 50 years is perhaps a best case scenario.
With nuclear fission we were able to prove the science during World War II, where funds into research would flow more freely. Then came the Cold War to fund the engineering for warships and vital civ
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Just as an additional data point there, the comparisons to the sun as a fusion power source are quite misleading. The sun uses proton-proton fusion (hydrogen ions, the standard form of hydrogen in space) and protons, being electrically charged, repel each other, so the process is phenomenally inefficient, about the same energy production per unit volume as a compost heap. The only thing that makes it work for the sun is the vast scale it's done at.
So while you can say a lot about whatever fusion source w
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Which is why they are shooting for such high temperatures because at that energy level proton proton becomes more viable and you don't have to dick around with tritium with all it's issues around handling and production.
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ITER's goal is to do Q=10, which means 10 more energy out than in.
It takes about 50 MW of heating to create and sustain the plasma and the goal is to get 500MW out. It will, however, not put electricity on the grid.
So, yes we still need to build a commercially viable reactor and this may indeed still take 20 years. But validating fusion as a commercially viable source of energy is the goal of ITER, which includes of course making sure that a favorable the energy balance is achievable.
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> It will, however, not put electricity on the grid
What are the scientists doing with the surplus 450MW, do they all buy Teslas and charge the heck out of it? Or there's a huge resistor in the garden and they barbecue day in day out?
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They are dissipating it via big cooling installations. Normally that is what you would do with the rest thermal energy after converting the useful part into electricity via a turbine.
The difference is maybe not as big as you would imagine since most of the time the heat transfer is done via steam turbines which never have a very high efficiency.
The nuclear powerplant close to where I live has a thermal efficiency of 33% which means that 2/3 of the heat still needs to be dissipated.
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LOL @ ITER. They won't be first to hot fusion. More likely-than-not, they'll be the last.
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I guess this means that practical fusion reactors are only, what, about 20 years away now?
22.1
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I'm surprised that some China basher hasn't accused Chinese scientists of stealing the Sun's IP yet . . .
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Just like it was 20 years ago.
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More like 9-10.
What happens after 101 seconds? (Score:3)
How come I never hear about what happens to the reactor after these time records are broken?
And a better question is what happens after 108 seconds?
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And a better question is what happens after 108 seconds?
Reverse China Syndrome. Instead of coming out in China it would come out somewhere around Toledo, Ohio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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it would come out somewhere around Toledo, Ohio
Pedantic nitpick: The antipode of Hefei is about 200 km northwest of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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Actually I thought the artificial black holes would be orbiting the Earth's center of gravity some small distance below the surface. At least until the surface collapsed.
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That can't be right. As they vacuum up mass the momentum has to remain the same (the mass they pick up isn't moving) so the speed should go down. No elliptical trajectory.
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Pedantic nitpick: The antipode of Hefei is about 200 km northwest of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I was only 5500 miles off ;^)
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Alternatively, it burns a hole to the center of the Earth and lets out all the monsters.
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You stop it and repair the damage. Those temperatures do damage. A lot of damage.
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It cools down. Seriously.
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How long? (Score:3)
Re:How long? (Score:5, Informative)
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Oh holy unmitigated fuck. NO HIGH PRESSURE NOT NEEDED! Temperature, Density, Time. The three necessities of Lawson Criteria for breakeven fusion
I'm not a nuclear physicist so I could be way off here; but where, prey tell, does that density come from when you're dealing with very limited quantities of matter at millions of degrees? Easy to maintain in a planet the size of the Sun - maybe not so easy to maintain in a reactor unless you have high pressures to force the density?
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Think.
Now how does fusion start when a star is cold?
Mmm?
Compression until density at temperature for long enough.
Fusion.
Same here.
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sun-like pressures, which is several billion atmospheres more pressure than we have the technology to contain
I seem to recall the pressure at the sun's surface is considerably less than than of Earth's.
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Re:How long? (Score:5, Informative)
If for fusion energy we need it to be as hot as the sun, why are they going for 10 times or even more hotter?
1. The core of the sun is under immense pressure. The plasma is not. So much higher temperatures are needed.
2. The energy density of the sun is about the same as a backyard compost heap. The surface is hot only because it has a volume of roughly a quintillion cubic kilometers. The fusion reactor is smaller, so it needs a higher energy density to produce useful power.
Re:How long? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, in the core of the sun hydrogen hardly fuses at all, a cubic meter of the core averages 0.3 watts per meter (often near the very center is quoted as a higher 280 W per meter).
But both replies missed a thing about hydrogen, we can't use it.
With our puny reactors we'll never be able to use pure hydrogen, energy yield would be insignificant. So heavy hydrogen or other more readily fusable fuels will be used.. if we can make a fusion power plant at all, we might not be able to. Maybe we can't confine a fusing plasma long enough.
Then we'd just have to use the fusion reactor in the sky and storage systems. The sun puts out more energy than a thousand Earth civilizations could use.
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forgot I was on slashdot, trying to use notation for cubic meter can get clobbered. When are the developers going to support the minimum for a tech site? Well, they're Perl developers, so lazy and useless.
Re:How long? (Score:5, Informative)
With our puny reactors we'll never be able to use pure hydrogen, energy yield would be insignificant.
To put a sharper point on this - the energy yield would be a true zero. The reaction that drives fusion in the sun, proton-proton fusion, is so slow that it has never been observed in the laboratory at all, and probably never will be. We understand it from theoretical calculations alone (but with the simplicity of the system involved, the calculations work very, very well).
In stars an extremely slow reaction is an essential feature, as we want them to last a long time. In fusion reactors on Earth we want it to burn up very fast, since heating the fuel is energetically expensive, and the volume of our fusion reactors small.
It is somewhat misleading to say that we are using "the Sun's power source" since the actual reactions used are insignificant sources of solar energy. The actual reactions in the p-p cycle (which produces 99% of the Sun's output) are:
p+p -> D + 1.442 MeV
D+p -> He-3 + 5.493 MeV
There are four possible He-3 consuming reactions:
He-3 + He-3 -> He-4 + D
He-3 + He-4 -> Be-7 (+ e) -> Li-7 (+ p) -> 2 He-4
The net reaction is of 4 p -> He-4 releases 26.73 MeV so the rate limiting p+p reaction only releases 5.4% of the total energy released in the final reaction sequence.
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we do collide protons with accelerators much harder than that though
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> So heavy hydrogen or other more readily fusable fuels will be used
Can you explain to a layman why a Mr Fusion wouldn't work? (No, seriously. Kind of, at least...)
Since the "fuel" is basically going to be turned into plasma anyway by that insane heat, why can't you just use water or something for it?
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That might be true, but until we find an efficient way to store it then we are going to have to find alternatives. Also The sun doesn't always shine where we might need energy so having alternatives that don't cause more pollution would be nice.
Until we find a "much better battery" wind and solar energy will never be able to replace power stations.
On a side note - look up "TV pickup" in the UK, it's hilarious and typically Briti
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There are a few conditions at the core of the sun that are different than the ones you're sitting in right now. Temperature is the easiest to duplicate. So we make up for the lack of things like 4 trillion PSI by upping the temperature a bit.
Why so hot? [Re:How long?] (Score:4, Insightful)
If for fusion energy we need it to be as hot as the sun, why are they going for 10 times or even more hotter?
Because in the sun, the average time between fusion reactions for a hydrogen ion is 10 billion years.
For a practical fusion reactor for Earth, you'd want a little faster rate.
(also, the density of the core of the sun is 150 g/cm^3, with gravitational compression. Since a terrestrial fusion reactor can't come anywhere near that density, the temperture has to be higher).
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Because in the sun, the average time between fusion reactions for a hydrogen ion is 10 billion years.
I think you need to qualify this, because it sounds impressive, but only because the wording is ambiguous.
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15 MK is an estimate for the Sun's core temperature. The other factor is pressure. There are also magnetic fields. Unless you replicate these conditions, you need a much higher temperature to achieve fusion.
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If for fusion energy we need it to be as hot as the sun, why are they going for 10 times or even more hotter?
In a star, the force of gravity pushes the nuclei together to cause fusion. Nothing like that pressure can be achieved in a reactor. Instead, the nuclei are made to move faster, so they smash into each other hard enough to cause fusion. Particles moving faster means higher temperature.
please stop with the Celsisu (Score:5, Funny)
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Are the measurement instruments really precise and accurate enough to make that 273-unit distinction at a temperature of 120 million units?
Re:please stop with the Celsisu (Score:4, Funny)
Absolutely right!!! The article should have said 120,000,273 for goodness sake!
Whatever happened to accuracy in journalism!
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These temperatures are kelvin, not "degrees Celsius".
So it instead of 100,000,000 C, they should have said 100,000,273 K?
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What is that in football fields?
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Thirteen blue whales plus 0.013 Rhode Islands, if I got my stoichiometry right.
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Surely you mean to ask what that is in Gas Mark [wikipedia.org]?
Re:please stop with the Celsisu (Score:5, Funny)
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How many car exhausts would it take to generate that much heat?
Re:China Rules... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't get too excited. It's deuterium - tritium fusion, which releases the lion's share of energy as neutrons. You can get past "break even" if you count that energy as "output", but it's output that we don't know how to harness yet, and creates serious long term problems for any possible continuously running power plant.
As for diversity, China with nearly 20% of the world's population can become a dominant tech and science power on the strength of its native population. The US, with less than 5% of the world's population cannot. If we want to remain a *dominant* tech and science power we need immigration. Immigration is how we became a scientific and tech power; native born Americans of course contributed to that, but there weren't enough to establish the kind of overwhelming dominance the US enjoys today. It started with a wave of immigrants, many of them refugees, in the lead up to WW2: Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, John von Neumann, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar... the list goes on and on. If you look at a list of American Nobel laureates, an astonishing number of them are "something-hyphen-Americans", and many of the native-born ones are children of immigrants.
And the immigration of these people was bitterly opposed by people who feared that immigration would lower America's collective IQ.
Re:China Rules... (Score:4, Insightful)
Andrew Grove, one of the founders of Intel, was a nobody who didn't speak English when he arrived as a refugee from Hungary. He worked his way through engineering school as a bus boy.
People who have the initiative and guts to uproot their lives and travel across the world to a country where they don't speak the language aren't ordinary people. They're exceptional. Speaking Intel, a full 83% of finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search are children of immigrants.
The problem with the H1b program isn't that it's a foreign worker program, it's that it's not an automatic path to citizenship. The capitalist's plan for the program is to bring people in, train them, then kick them out to a low wage country where they can offshore work. If you take the premise of the program seriously -- that these people bring skills that the US needs, then it makes no sense to have a program where you kick them out at the end.
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The bulk of migrants should be rejected since capitalists are using them to drive down wages.
You should stop the "capitalists" from driving down wages regardless of immigration in the first place. Immigration creates jobs, not just dilutes the job market.
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The new Uyghur pellets (Score:1)
They have the record (Score:1)
Until the paper gets retracted
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I was talking about the temperature, there are many Chinese papers that get retracted
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Unlike AI or cancer research, results from a freakin' fusion reactor is not something that can be as easily faked as you think it seems to be.
Objoke (Score:2)
"NASA notes that the core of the Sun is only about 15 million degrees Celsius."
That's the reason we'll land during the night.
Good that China is doing fusion research (Score:2, Troll)
Kudos to these Chinese researchers for what seems to be a significant new achievement in fusion research.
Now if we the rest of the world could force China to stop monkeying around with virus DNA and doing gain-of-function research on deadly pathogens, and instead concentrate on more useful stuff like fusion, maybe in the future we will be spared of global disease pandemics like the one we just went through.
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If that were true, "all hell" would break loose at communities serving military bases in the United States long before anything went wrong in China or India. Unless you're suggesting that "modified immune systems" somehow don't cause problems in the United States.
Or various places in Europe (specifically Germany).
Or Japan.
Or anywhere else American servicemen/women are stationed.
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Mmm very well.
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Now if we the rest of the world could force China to stop monkeying around with virus DNA and doing gain-of-function research on deadly pathogens,
Then you should stop paying them to, not that there's any evidence that is what happened, other than journalists cherry picking facts to form a narrative and ignoring non-supporting facts.
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Kudos to these Chinese researchers for what seems to be a significant new achievement in fusion research.
Now if we the rest of the world could force China to stop monkeying around with virus DNA and doing gain-of-function research on deadly pathogens, and instead concentrate on more useful stuff like fusion, maybe in the future we will be spared of global disease pandemics like the one we just went through.
The United States has more than 200 biological laboratories around the world. What are they doing? What's more, is it because of the lung disease caused by e-cigarettes in the United States that Fort Detrick closed last year?
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The United States has more than 200 biological laboratories around the world. What are they doing?
I totally agree with you that United States should also stop all virus gain-of-function research. Actually you know what? The Obama administration became so concerned with the potential for a worldwide virus pandemic arising from an accidental release at a lab, that the White House banned all virus gain-of-function research in the United States. Yeah. I'm not a fan of Obama, at all... but this is one thing that he did right. I applaud him for that.
Oh and the same Obama administration was informed by a team
Re:REALLY, editors ? (Score:4, Informative)
The corona doesn't matter, it's tenuous and not what heats the Earth, only a millionth of the energy of the Sun's surface. No, it's not hotter than Sun's core, corona is about 1.7 million kelvin while core is 27 million.
ITER is a waste of time and money (Score:1)