Chinese Fusion Reactor Maintains Steady State For Almost 18 Minutes (charmingscience.com) 36
Longtime Slashdot readers smooth wombat and AmiMoJo shares a fusion energy breakthrough from China. Charming Science reports: China's "artificial sun," officially known as the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), has achieved a groundbreaking milestone in fusion energy research. According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), EAST recently sustained high-confinement plasma operation for an unprecedented 1,066 seconds, shattering the previous world record of 403 seconds, also set by EAST in 2023. [...] The 1,000-second mark is considered a critical threshold in fusion research. Sustaining plasma for such extended durations is essential for demonstrating the feasibility of operating fusion reactors. This breakthrough, accomplished by the Institute of Plasma Physics under the CAS, signifies a major leap towards realizing the potential of fusion energy. [...] The success of EAST's recent experiment can be attributed to several key advancements. Researchers have made significant strides in improving the stability of the heating system, enhancing the accuracy of the control system, and refining the precision of the diagnostic systems. Warning: the source originates from China Daily, an English-language daily newspaper owned by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party. It's rated "questionable" by Media Bias/Fact Check because of its association with the CCP.
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I found the warning amusing.
We are now at the point were we are spreading stories that may or not be factual but we're going ahead and doing it anyway because..... reasons.
Our species is broken.
Only applies to China? (Score:2)
We are now at the point were we are spreading stories that may or not be factual but we're going ahead and doing it anyway
Does this only apply to China, or might there be other countries where this happens? I am certainly reading quite a number of stories about one particular country where this is happening at the moment...
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"Now at the point"? Uh, we reached that point when we learned to put pen to paper. Err, I'm sorry, chisel to stone or finger in sand. You get the idea.
Everything is a lie except what you have witnessed through your own eyes. Except, for, you know, green screens and video editing and AI.
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And eye witness "reports" are notoriously full of errors even without any green screens and video editing and AI.
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Re: Is the warning really necessary in this case? (Score:1)
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We are now at the point were we are spreading stories that may or not be factual but we're going ahead and doing it anyway because..... reasons.
It's not "because ... reasons"; it's because "who cares if it's true as long as people see the ads"
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Do you want the latest (and greatest!) rumors or not? I can't wait to see the dumb look on your face when someone asks you a question about Taylor Swift's boyfriend and you don't know a single one of the top 3 suspected answers.
Nice, if true. (Score:5, Insightful)
But isn't that more on the commercialization side of things? Isn't the primary hurdle still that it produces more energy than it consumes during operation regardless of how long it operates?
Am I wrong in assuming that this is currently just an impressively large version of a plasma ball lamp?
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Getting more energy out requires solving a lot of other problems first. A lot of energy is needed for start-up, so being able to sustain it indefinitely is necessary.
This particular reactor has some major advancements. It uses superconducting toroidal and poloidal magnets for containment, and is able to control the plasma well enough for sustained operation. It's the closest anywhere in the world to a practical fusion reactor.
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It's the closest anywhere in the world to a practical fusion reactor.
I'd say: closest in the sense (being a bit over the top and flowery here) that the tallest person on earth is closest to being able to touch the sun.
That said: any real advance in fusion is fantastic news. Hats off to EAST.
Re:Nice, if true. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is one of those things that is both true and false at the same time.
There hasn't yet (I'm not sure about the china reactor) been a Tokamak operated that was designed or expected to be able to reach Q=1. However, if every other problem could be solved, then getting to Q=1 is trivial as Q increases as the reactor size increases so it just becomes "build it bigger"
JET got to Q=0.67 for 6 seconds. ITER is intended to reach Q>1 for 1000s. That's what you get from going from a major radius of 3m to 6m plus better understanding of confining the plasma. But even ITER is only another step to a commercial reactor. ITER could not produce more electrical energy than it will consume. (it's not going to generate any electrical energy at all)
Inertial confinement, as at the NIF is a completely different set of problems. IMO NIF is uncontrolled thermonuclear fusion testing disguised as an experimental power plant and I don't see any way for it to become net energy positive other than scaling up to thermonuclear bomb size but on energy delivered to the fuel metric, NIF already crossed the Q=1 threshold (but then so did the hydrogen bomb)
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FOSS Nvidia drivers may be coming faster ;)
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If they were able to make it run for 18 minutes, my best guess is the protective ablative layers got burned off the insides.
18 minutes is a long time and if you can run it for 18 minutes you should be able to run it for much longer, unless part of the machine gets expended during the run.
Re:EGGROLL TIME (Score:4, Insightful)
The REAL question is why the reaction was not sustained. Yes, I know how research works, and this is a step. But tell us what STOPPED that reaction of what failure mode disallowed CONTINUING that same reaction.
While it is conjecture on my part, it is probably one of two things. The area in which the fusion takes place such as it is, is a seriously tough environment. So probably mechanical failure.
Another possibility is that they ran out of energy to continue. We orgasm over it when they produce Qin to Qout of 1. And ignore Qtot, the total amount of energy in to energy out. That number is much much lower. I've said for years that the path to fusion needs a humongous fission reactor/generator, that can provide 100 times the power that we get out of the fusion itself, as well as provide the tritium needed. At present, we are something like Qtot of .01 .
Remember, a fusion power generator that works will have to bootstrap itself, and provide energy at the same time as a olde school fission setup. I'll let that up to others to figure out why we wouldn't just get the electricity from the fission reactor/generator.
Re: EGGROLL TIME (Score:2)
Everything else Chinese is made of plastic and breaks soon
I know hyperbole but I think people need to stop being stupid.
China is winning the race for electrification and for passenger EV, which is going to help them save oil for the key (military) purposes where it's properly hard to replace oil. All that without spending loads of money trying to control the middle East.
In the process they will make auto industry migrate en masse to China, leaving very significant industries in the West with very little to do.
The auto industry of this century is highly integrated
China Daily is biased :o (Score:2, Insightful)
"You have got to be kidding. There isn't one MSM company that isn't under the control of the state security apparatus. At least one embedded agent in each organization. Same with so-called social media companies. The only one still out of the l
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Musk literally is the government.
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Musk would most probably not have bought Twitter if the SEC hadn't gone after him. Musk would most probably not have endorsed Trump if not for all the lawfare emanating from the Biden White House. There's an old Chinese proverb that I'm about to make up: Be careful what you wish for – you might just get it.
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> Musk literally is the government.
Musk would most probably not have bought Twitter if the SEC hadn't gone after him. Musk would most probably not have endorsed Trump if not for all the lawfare emanating from the Biden White House. There's an old Chinese proverb that I'm about to make up: Be careful what you wish for – you might just get it.
While I doubt that Musk has as much dictatorial power as the butthurt are giving him, there is a certain level of truth to the reaction of his to what the Democrats have become.
Hopefully they will come to understand that they were just as interested in enforcing ideology as they claim the Republicans are. When your party strips a member of their cabinet appointments because he understands biology and does not reject it, and actively hates about half the population, and believes there is no need for half
So what (Score:5, Funny)
Fred Hoyle maintained steady state for over 60 years...
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Fred Hoyle maintained steady state for over 60 years...
This is a far more clever comment than a cursory, dismissive reading would suggest. I wish I had mod points!
"contained plasma" but did it fuse H to He at all? (Score:5, Informative)
1000 seconds is good and all, but... (Score:2)