Nuclear fusion: China's surprise announcement, first country to harness solar power?

Nuclear fusion: China’s surprise announcement, first country to harness solar power?

Chinese scientists have expressed their desire to master nuclear fusion within six years.

Powerful, clean, safe and indescribable. Nuclear fusion, which powers the Sun, is the ultimate energy Holy Grail. A true advance for mankind, after which many nations are running, never for a moment fully attaining it.

No team in the world has yet been able to build a nuclear reactor that produces more energy than is needed to produce a fusion reaction. If the Korean Tokamak KSTAR recently announced that it won Maintain the plasma at 70 million degrees for over 17 minutesProgress over the past 10 years has been difficult and limited.

But China made a surprising announcement earlier this month. The country wants to master nuclear fusion by the end of the decade.

Hybrid power plant

On September 9, Professor Peng Xianju from the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics confirmed that the Chinese government had approved the construction of the world’s largest pulsed power plant in the central-western province of Sichuan, Chengdu.Eurasian Times. It is a hybrid plant that combines nuclear fission and fusion.

The fusion energy produced by this installation will not actually be used directly to supply the electricity grid: it will be channeled to create a stream of fast particles that will hit the uranium that fuels the “fission” part of the power plant. .

A technique different from that chosen by the West would allow China to achieve a viable system much more quickly. Chinese officials expect technical mastery by 2028. Commercial use is planned for 2035.

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