Posted on 12/04/2020 11:00:31 AM PST by Red Badger
Beijing has successfully powered up its “artificial sun” nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, China’s People’s Daily reported on Friday. It’s designed to be a clean energy source, similar to the real Sun.
Made to replicate the natural reactions that occur in the sun using hydrogen and deuterium gases as fuels, the HL-2M Tokamak reactor is China's largest and most advanced nuclear fusion experimental research device.
It is located in southwestern Sichuan province and was completed late last year. The reactor is often called an "artificial sun" due to the enormous heat and power it produces.
Men work inside a HL-2M Tokamak nuclear fusion reactor, dubbed as the "artificial sun," under construction in Chengdu, Sichuan province, China. Picture taken June 5, 2019 © Reuters / Liu Haiyun
The HL-2M Tokamak uses a powerful magnetic field to fuse hot plasma and can reach temperatures of over 150 million degrees Celsius, approximately ten times hotter than the core of the Sun.
“The development of nuclear fusion energy is not only a way to solve China’s strategic energy needs, but also has great significance for the future sustainable development of China's energy and national economy,” the People’s Daily reported.
The project is part of China’s involvement with the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), based in France.
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), a nuclear fusion reactor dubbed as "artificial sun," in Hefei, Anhui province, China November 14, 2018 © Reuters
The ITER is the world’s largest nuclear fusion project with a price tag of about €20 billion ($24 billion). It involves 35 countries and is expected to be completed in 2025.
Chinese scientists have been working on developing smaller versions of the nuclear fusion reactor, including the HL-2M Tokamak, since 2006.
A technician works on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), a nuclear fusion reactor dubbed as "artificial sun", in Hefei, Anhui province, China. Picture taken November 14, 2018 © Reuters
Fusion is considered the Holy Grail of energy and is what powers the Sun, but achieving fusion is both extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive.
By harnessing the power produced through nuclear fusion it is possible to tap into almost limitless clean energy. Researchers around the world have been trying to attain that goal for decades. The main issue has been finding an affordable way to contain piping hot plasma in one space and keeping it stable enough for fusion to occur.
Remember the " good ole days" when you dug in the beach sand,
and told others you were digging your way to China ?
Well now , China can burn their way through the center of the earth,
and come out somewhere in the South Atlantic Ocean.
At least the water is cleaner !
So, does that mean that they will stop dumping their garbage into their rivers, which dump into the Pacific and create that ball of crap swirling in the middle of the ocean?
Sooner or later, one way or another, intentionally or not, the Chinese will be the death of all of us.
They use it to heat up their bat soup.
The dude down on his hunkers in that last photo only needs his baseball cap on backwards to portray MY feelings about the article. Ten times hotter than the core of the Sun? Surrounded by flimsy stainless tubing and glass! I was born at night......
Democrats gave it to them; not necessary to steal our technology.
If China does that the water wont be clean for long.
II Peter chapter 3 comes to mind: “...the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth and all the works in it shall be burned up.....”. Except when THAT time comes, God will handle it Himself. He won’t need Xi Jinping’s help.
Not with hydrogen into helium. Other than massive amounts of heat, gamma rays and neutrinos are what’s emitted.
That in itself is theft, never mind treason.
While I addressed the Russian Tokamak approach, I preferred the laser implosion technology being studied at Lawrence Livermore.
Cut off the fuel source. Not like fission where all of the fuel is concentrated into a critical mass.
Those guys look like the are in an old Airstream.
You are conflating temperature and total energy. The Sun is not a point source, but in comparison to the Sun, this fusion reactor is. Note that most of the core of the sun is not undergoing fusion at any point in time and the energy released from the tiny percentage that is must heat up the rest, the idle rest, in order for fusion to continue. The fusion reactor the Chinese built only has to heat up a limited amount of fuel as it is fed in. All the released energy can be harvested rather than dissipated into the mass of the sun.
If they could make it last longer than tiny fractions of a second, they’d be crowing about it. If they could achieve net energy output, they’d be crowing about it.
That being said, the US should not fall behind whomever the Chinese stole this technology from.
Where’s Greta when you need her?
Its natural. Its the organic way the sun does it!
Fusion will never be practical.
Matter/Anti-Matter reactions .....................
It does not create energy but might be bright enough to make biden look brighter.
There’s not a whole lot of deuterium and tritium in the device. If it were to “leak” then the material would rapidly expand and dissipate.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.