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Southeastern China’s Jiangxi province is going to build a fusion-fission power plant for more than 20 billion yuan (US$2.7 billion), with a target of continuously generating 100 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

Jiangxi Electronic Group, a state-owned enterprise, said in a statement on Tuesday that Lianovation Superconductor and CNNC Fusion (Chengdu) Design and Research Institute signed a cooperation framework agreement on November 12 to jointly build a fusion-fission reactor in the province. 

Lianovation Superconductor is a unit of the Jiangxi Electronic Group. CNNC refers to the China National Nuclear Corp, also a state-owned-enterprise. 

Chinese media said the fusion-fission reactor will be built in Jiangxi, instead of in a fusion energy hub such as Chengdu or Hefei, because Lianovation Superconductor is located in the province, which is famous for its copper resources.

Copper is a key metal for making superconductor materials, such as yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO), that are used to make coils of magnets in reactors. Superconducting materials create no resistance for electric current to pass through at an absolute zero temperature (minus 273.15 degrees celsius).

According to Lianovation Superconductor’s website, the company is developing high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets that can operate at 20 degrees Kelvin (minus 253.15 degrees celsius).

Technology experts say HTS magnets will be commonly used in fusion reactors in future.

“The implementation of the project will be of great national strategic significance and is also a key measure to win the global future energy competition,” said the Jiangxi Electronic Group.

“The success of future projects will fundamentally solve the core problem of clean energy supply for the country, and will give birth to a new strategic emerging industry with epoch-making significance.”

The company did not provide a timetable or investment details for the project but it said it will target to achieve a Q value of more than 30 in this project. Presumably this value of Q applies to the fusion reactor part, which supplies neutrons to the fission process in the combined fusion-fission device. 

The Q value, or the fusion energy gain factor, refers to the ratio of thermal power output to input in a fusion reaction. If Q equals to one, the reactor achieves plasma energy breakeven.

For example, if Q is more than 10, an injection of 50 megawatts of heating power into the burning plasma will produce a fusion output of at least 500 megawatts.

Last December, the US Department of Energy (DOE) and its National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) for the first time achieved a net gain of energy using laser fusion, by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to a target to produce 3.15 MJ of fusion of energy output.

Prior to this, the Joint European Torus (JET), a tokamak reactor in the United Kingdom, achieved a Q value of 0.67 in 1997 by using 24 MW of thermal power to produce 16 MW of fusion power.

Fusion-fission hybrid

In a fusion-fission hybrid reactor, the high-energy neutrons produced by the fusion reactions are absorbed in a “blanket” of fissionable material, where they trigger fission reactions. The favored blanket fuels are the plentiful isotopes uranium-238 or thorium-232.

A major advantage of the hybrid reactor is that each fusion neutron can trigger several fission events, multiplying the energy released by each fusion reaction by many times. This drastically reduces the demands placed on the fusion reactor, which no longer has to produce net energy.

This makes a hybrid fusion-fission  power plant in principle much easier to realize than a “pure” fusion power plant – and thus possibly deliverable much faster. 

The Chinese government had included a fusion-fission hybrid project in its 863 program, a high-technology development plan launched in 1987, but terminated the project in 2000.

In 2008, Peng Xianjue from the China Academy of Engineering Physics and his team pointed out that traditional fusion-fission hybrid research had faced a bottleneck due to problems in breeding and transmutation of chemical elements.  

These problems can be resolved by using a Z-pinch-driven fusion-fission hybrid reactor (Z-FFR), Peng said.

A Z-pinch, or zeta-pinch, reactor uses a gigantic pulse of electric current to generate a magnetic field that compresses the plasma. 

Peng said in September 2022 that China planned to build a 50-million-ampere Z-pinch machine, which would be ready for experimental use by 2025. He said this Chengdu-based machine would be the largest in the world. A comparable machine at the Sandia National Laboratory in the US can produce only 26 million amperes. Peng said then that the country would be able to generate fusion power around 2028 and build a fusion-fission reactor for commercial use in around 2035.

It is possible that the proposed fusion-fission reactor in Jiangxi will also use Peng’s Z-pinch design although the announcement by Jiangxi Electric Group did not specify what type of fusion reactor would be used.

Nuclear weapons scientist

Peng, 82, was originally a nuclear weapons scientist before he started focusing on fusion power in the 2000s.

He graduated from the People’s Liberation Army Military Institute of Engineering, currently known as the Harbin Engineering University, in 1964. The institute was established in 1953 to allow Chinese students to learn the Soviet Union’s technologies. 

Peng had contributed to the design of China’s first hydrogen bomb, which was made by Chinese physicist Yu Min and Yu’s team in 1967. Yu was honored as “the father of the Chinese hydrogen bomb” although he personally refused to accept the title.

In 1996, Peng began to focus on research related to the safety and reliability of nuclear weapons and explore the peaceful usage of nuclear explosions. In 1999, he became an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. 

In 2000, he started focusing on Z-pinch research after the Sandia National Laboratories had made a major breakthrough in the area in 1997.

Read: China beats the drum for faster fusion energy results

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

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If the echoes of World War II have any resonance in 21^st century Myanmar then events have not yet reached the point in April 1945 when the delusional commander-in-chief of a defeated German army directed non-existent divisions from an underground bunker amid the ruins of the national capital.

They are, though, plausibly at a similar point to August 1944 when two months after the D-Day landings German forces had just suffered a crippling defeat in Normandy’s “Falaise Pocket” and the Nazi high command confronted the prospect of an overwhelming Allied advance on the German homeland.

The Myanmar military’s commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung and his generals in Naypyidaw’s war room are now facing their own “Falaise Pocket” moment in the shape of an insurgent offensive that has swept across the north of Shan state over the last two weeks.

Dubbed “Operation 1027” for its October 27 launch date, the coordinated onslaught brought together forces of the so-called Brotherhood Alliance composed of three insurgent factions which have operated together since at least 2014.

The trio includes the mainly ethnic Chinese Myanmar Nationalities Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), which is spearheading operations in and around Kokang in the far northeast of the state; the ethnic Palaung Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), which dominates the northwestern hills and operates along the Mandalay-Muse highway; and the ethnic Rakhine Arakan Army (AA), which is based in Rakhine state on Myanmar’s western seaboard but which fields a contingent of around 1,500 troops alongside its allies in the north of Myanmar.

Within the first two weeks of hostilities, Brotherhood forces had seized several towns along the Chinese border, including importantly Chin Shwe Haw and Namkhan, and overrun scores of military bases and posts capturing huge stocks of munitions.

How Myanmar’s military leadership will respond to this debacle in the coming days and weeks remains strikingly unclear and is certainly not made easier by significant dysfunction following the recent sacking of army chief-of-staff Lieutenant General Moe Myint Tun on charges of massive corruption.

But in strategic terms, the armed forces command faces three broad options, none of them attractive or likely to deflect the ultimate trajectory of a war it is now clearly losing.

One option would involve the launching of a major counteroffensive aimed at retaking the economically vital trade artery that runs from Mandalay in central Myanmar to the trade hub of Muse on the northeastern border with China which remains under regime control.

Another would be to attempt to retain strongholds in northern Shan state anchored on the regional capital and headquarters of the Northeastern Regional Military Command (RMC) in Lashio city and fight for time.

A third would entail a bold decision to undertake a strategic withdrawal from the north Shan region and possibly also eastern Shan state, pulling out troops and where possible hardware while there is time to bolster defensive lines around the heartland centers of Mandalay and the fortress capital of Naypyidaw.

All three options have pros and cons. Anchored on the garrison city of Pyin Oo Lwin in the hills overlooking Mandalay, a big push counteroffensive backed by air power and armored forces that to date have been little deployed in the conflict would serve to restore the flow of trade with China.

That would also impress on Beijing that Naypyidaw is still capable of controlling points on the border and that banking on the Brotherhood Alliance is necessarily a bad bet. It would also act to salve military honor and restore severely shaken morale.

These arguments, doubtless reinforced by the Myanmar Army’s congenitally aggressive instincts, are offset by other factors, however.

First, any such counterpunch would necessarily be channeled along only one dangerously narrow primary line of advance: the highway leading from Pyin Oo Lwin through the towns of Naungcho, Kyaukme and Hsipaw to Lashio; and then from Lashio through Hsenwi and Kutkai north to Muse on the border.

Spearheaded by elements from Naypyidaw’s Light Infantry Division (LID) assault units – Myanmar’s equivalent of the Nazis’ Waffen SS – and backed by a concentrated commitment of armor and air power, an initial advance should break through mainly TNLA forces scattered across the hill country along the highway relatively easily.

But holding open the highway that stretches over nearly 400 kilometers in the face of aggressive insurgent harassment would prove a constant, debilitating drain on vehicles and manpower that would ultimately throw into question the value of the entire enterprise.

The counteroffensive would also require assembling a divisional-size task force of at least 2,000-3,000 troops in an army that is already severely overstretched, inevitably weakening the defenses around other key positions.

And importantly, the success of such a campaign would hinge critically on leadership in the person of a “fighting general” capable of commanding from the front and inspiring already demoralized troops.

In a military bureaucracy riddled with corruption where officers beyond colonel level rarely lead combat forces in the field, theater-level commanders of this caliber have been conspicuous by their absence for decades.

Today such a general would need to emerge from somewhere in the ranks between Myanmar Army commander and regime strongman Vice Senior General Soe Winn – who has a reputation as a “soldiers’ soldier” but now shoulders daunting countrywide responsibilities – and the commanders of any of the army’s ten LIDs whose duties are specific to their own divisional commands.

With a background in military education, current Northeastern RMC commander Brigadier General Naing Naing Oo is probably not that man and if there is any other candidate for the role he has yet to step forward.

Finally, the offensive would involve advancing through towns like Hsenwi (where a key bridge on the highway was blown in the opening hours of Operation 1027) with the prospect that the ultimate objective of Muse might already have fallen to the Brotherhood before it could be secured – implying the need for a far larger and inevitably costly urban battle immediately on China’s border to retake it.

All these factors militate powerfully against risking a strategic counteroffensive into northern Shan state.

The second option – defending key strongpoints in the region – has the advantage of reinforcing a response that has been in play since Operation 1027 began.

This involves flying reinforcements into the Lashio bridgehead from secure zones, such as Yangon, Meiktila and Mandalay, and then using helicopters to stage airmobile insertions into smaller bases and towns, buying time and possibly setting the stage for smaller offensive operations when the 1027 wave has exhausted its potential.

But by deploying crucially needed resources into a fight that has arguably already been strategically lost, the dangers here are also stark. There is already virtually zero prospect of retaking Kokang in the far northeast corner of Shan state and the fall of the regional capital of Laukkai is now almost certainly just a matter of time.

If insurgent forces succeed in tightening their grip along the highway north and south of Lashio, that city too could be surrounded and slowly squeezed, trapping forces flown in to relieve it. And were its airport to be shut down by artillery fire, the ghosts of Dien Bien Phu would hover over Shan state.

Finally, there is the radically alternative strategy of withdrawing from rather than reinforcing northern Shan state. This option makes real sense in terms of husbanding exposed manpower and materiel, especially if that withdrawal were to be broadened to include the two RMCs in the east of the state, the Triangle Command in Kengtung and the East-Central Command in Koilam on the Kengtung-Taunggyi highway.

A withdrawal to the strongpoints of Pyin Oo Lwin defending Mandalay and the Shan state capital of Taunggyi screening the Naypyidaw Capital Region would free up several thousand troops whose utility in the defense of those key cities would be crucial.

The downsides are also striking though. At one level, strategic withdrawal would imply a psychologically near-impossible abandonment of the army’s deeply ingrained sense of institutional mission as an “all-of-Myanmar” force sworn to the “perpetuation of national sovereignty” and “non-disintegration of the union.”  

Practically speaking, it would also effectively mean surrendering Shan state east of the Salween River to the United Wa State Army (UWSA), which would emerge from behind the wall of its ceasefire with Naypyidaw and in a matter of days join up Wa territory along the Chinese border with the separate swath of territory it already controls along Shan state’s southern border with Thailand.

The upshot of these unpalatable considerations is likely to be a compromise strategy which in reality is less a strategy than the reaction of the proverbial deer frozen in the headlights.

Northern Shan state will be reinforced where possible to attempt a protracted defense of Lashio and Muse while assets under the two RMCs in Keng Tung and Koilam will be left in place to be overtaken by events in Myanmar’s national heartland – and then very probably face the ignominious prospect of having anyway to surrender to the UWSA.

Compounding the dilemmas confronting Myanmar’s generals is the fact that the battle for Shan state in the coming weeks will not be happening in isolation.

The November 13 return to hostilities of the powerful insurgent Arakan Army (AA) in Rakhine will undoubtedly tie down the several thousand troops including important LID elements already committed to the defense of the western seaboard state.

Equally, the current push by resistance forces in Kayah state led by the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF) to seize the state capital of Loikaw is also demanding attention and resources.

At the same time, the battle for the Sagaing region town of Tigyaing on the Ayeyarwady River near the border with Kachin state could have a potentially decisive impact on the future of the war in northern Myanmar and by extension the national situation.

Were Tigyaing and its strategic bridge across the river to fall to a local alliance of Kachin Independence Army (KIA), AA and local anti-military peoples defense forces (PDFs) already reportedly fighting inside the town, the logistics lifeline linking the military in central Myanmar to Kachin state would effectively be cut.

Resupply of the northern RMC based in the Kachin state capital of Myitkyina would then depend on air transport, which over even the medium term is not sustainable.

The now real possibility that the debacle in Shan state will in the coming dry season months – or possibly even sooner – be paralleled by the loss of Rakhine, Kayah and Kachin states essentially presents military planners in Naypyidaw with a potential checkmate situation and the end of the war as a rational military undertaking.

At that point, it is reasonable to expect that either on the watch of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing or, more likely, after his departure, a proposal for a cessation of hostilities and negotiations will emerge from Naypyidaw. 

How Myanmar’s still fragmented opposition responds to such an initiative that will almost certainly not involve a white flag of unconditional surrender will be critical to the country’s post-conflict future.  

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Italy’s participation in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) may soon come to an end. 

The country entered China’s initiative in March 2019, when a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed in Rome by former Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Less than five years after the MoU was signed, the whole BRI story risks becoming a major foreign policy failure for Italy.

The MoU will be automatically extended in March 2024, unless terminated by either party at least three months in advance — that is, by the end of 2023. As the deadline approaches, the government of current Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is expected to announce its decision soon. 

Comments by members of the government and Italy’s low-profile participation in the recent BRI Forum suggest that Rome may be ready to leave the initiative.

In 2019, the Conte I government’s decision to sign the MoU was made amid a heated yet highly ambiguous political debate. Different views coexisted within the government itself, where the strong pro-China orientation of the 5 Star Movement contrasted with traditional hostility towards Beijing from influential sectors of the League. 

In turn, the most vocal opponent of the MoU – the opposition’s Democratic Party – had, in fact, promoted closer relations with China under the previous Renzi and Gentiloni governments, when Chinese investments in Italian strategic sectors were finalized and Rome’s interest in the BRI was first conveyed to Beijing. 

A strong push towards the Chinese initiative also came from Italy’s bureaucratic machine, which was aware of the BRI’s potential well before the Conte I government came to power.

In this context, the decision to sign the MoU was a “tactical gamble” by Rome. Lacking the resources to effectively address longstanding issues in relations with China (most notably, unbalanced trade flows), the Conte I government went for a deal that offered China what it wanted most – recognition of the BRI by a G7 member – in exchange for China’s assurance of more balanced economic relations. 

Inherent asymmetry made this gamble risky. While for Italy the rationale behind the deal was mostly economic, for China it was mostly political. While China immediately gained the political recognition it valued, the more balanced trade relations that Italy aimed to achieve were projected into the future.

Just four and a half years later, it is difficult to conclude that Italy’s gamble was a win. On the one hand, the costs sustained in joining the BRI have been higher than originally expected. Criticized both in Washington and in Brussels since the beginning, Italy’s involvement in the BRI came under even greater scrutiny as US-China relations rapidly deteriorated and the European Union increasingly focused on “systemic rivalry” with China. 

The Conte I government had evidently underestimated the magnitude of the changes that were taking place in policy debates on China both in the United States and in Europe.

On the other hand, Rome has been unable – and maybe, also unwilling – to reap some of the benefits originally expected from the MoU, especially when it comes to trade relations. Developments outside Rome’s control had a major negative impact. 

Most notably, the Covid-19 pandemic frustrated expectations that a boom of Chinese tourists may bring positive spillovers to the Italian economy as a whole. But this is only part of the story. For a rebalance in trade relations to materialize, Italy needed to leverage the MoU and engage with a plurality of institutional and corporate interlocutors in China. 

Yet, in a damage-control mode vis-a-vis its allies, and amid increasingly negative views of China among the Italian political elite, Rome soon started to de-emphasize its involvement in the BRI.

A few months after signing the MoU, the Conte I government collapsed and was replaced by the Conte II government, which included a Democratic Party now keen on distancing itself from the BRI. In February 2021, the Conte II government was in turn replaced by the “responsibility government” of prime minister Mario Draghi, whose cold attitude towards China had been evident since his inaugural speech.

On balance, the political costs of Italy’s participation in the BRI were entirely paid (and seemingly at a higher price than expected), while the economic benefits were not fully reaped, in part due to factors outside Italy’s control, but also due to Italy’s unwillingness to politically invest in the BRI. 

If the decision is eventually made to terminate the MoU, additional costs must be expected, either in the form of a Chinese retaliation or, more optimistically, in the form of a colder attitude from Beijing. In both cases, Italy’s relations with China would emerge from the BRI story worse off than they were before 2019.

Italy’s trajectory with the BRI may present all the ingredients of a major foreign policy failure for the country – a failure with Italian characteristics. 

These characteristics include government instability, which makes it more difficult for Rome to carefully plan and implement policies; a highly polarised media environment, which is not conducive to a healthy debate on China and international affairs altogether; and a lack of long-term visions for the future of the country, which complicates Italy’s ability to navigate a rapidly changing international environment.

Simone Dossi is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Milan.

This article was originally published by East Asia Forum and is republished under a Creative Commons license.

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This is the fifth installment in Asia Times Science Editor Jonathan Tennenbaum’s series “Fusion Diary.” Read a series introduction, part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4. Part 5 is a continuation of an August 22, 2023, interview with Paul Methven, director of Great Britain’s Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) program.

Jonathan Tennenbaum: What are the most important decisions that you’re facing right now?

Paul Methven: I think some of the most critical decisions we will make are around the selection of our partners. Because, by definition, trying to get a fusion energy plant designed is an extreme example of a complex major program. In any such endeavor, you’re going to face a myriad of things you can’t predict, a myriad of problems and twists and turns.

If you are not organized and don’t have the right culture and the right partners in place, you will be far less able to navigate through those challenges as they arise. There’s no point in pretending that things won’t be difficult. You have to know that they will be difficult and then get the capability and the organization and the behaviors in place to deal with that difficulty. So, actually, partner selection and organization of the program is the number one set of decisions that we need to deal with.

There are a myriad of technical decisions that arise. Some of those are around the basic architecture to enable maintenance. A number of them are material selection choices, balancing between something that’s optimal but doesn’t quite exist yet, versus something that’s probably suboptimal, but is here today, and that we know we can build from.

Across the whole program, there is balance of risk between do we go with something that’s more established technology, but maybe lower performance, or do we go with not yet established technology, but which might just give us that performance leap that we need to make the whole integrated design work.

Those decisions are day in, day out and sometimes when you make them, you have to go right back down around your design loop again, because the problem is so integrated.

JT: During the time between now and planned operation a number of technological breakthroughs are sure to happen.

PM: Yes, absolutely. So some of this is about determining which things you’re going to deliberately leave as choices to be made later. And there’s some attendant risk with that, but also you’re banking on an opportunity arising later on, versus some things where you think, I just have to cement this now because the whole problem is too uncertain unless I actually make a decision on something.

And the whole program is a balance of those things. Understanding the nature of each of the decisions you have to make and sequencing them is in itself quite a tricky thing to do. But we are trying our best to work through that.

High-temperature superconductors are a key issue

JT: Speaking of technological breakthroughs that might occur along the way, obviously one area is high-temperature superconductors, which are essential to the STEP reactor. It’s hard for me to believe that there won’t be a great deal of progress in that area in the coming period. Are you anticipating that, in your design work?

PM: We are anticipating some improvement. Well, let me rephrase. We would hope, and I think you’re right, there will be really considerable improvement in HTS magnets across the next 20 or so years. What we’re doing at the moment is anticipating some pretty modest improvements, and using that as the basis for design. Any subsequent improvement becomes upside.

With a number of technologies, not just HTS magnets, we’re being not super-conservative but relatively conservative and making sure that in our calculation we can get a positive estimated net power. If we have subsequent efficiency improvements and cost improvements, for example as the demand for high-temperature superconductor tape and so forth goes up, that would be an upside on the project.

STEP targets

JT: Do you regard STEP to be a prototype, so that you could move to an commercialization with a similar design, for example in terms of the size of the reactor?

PM: I would think that a few things would change. There would probably be an increase in scale. This is just the point we’ve been discussing, that efficiency improvements in each of the underpinning systems might actually limit the necessity to increase scale greatly. At the moment we have an energy balance which shows us in design as positive net energy out. But that could get better for two reasons.

One, if you increase the physical scale of the machine. But more particularly if you drive efficiency improvements in the key systems. You might not actually have to grow your size that much, if you make significant efficiency improvements in the underpinning technology.

JT: How much electric power do you expect to get out of STEP?

PM: At the moment we’re looking for a thermal power something on the order of 1.8 – 2 gigawatts. In terms of electrical power — and this sounds relatively unambitious – the prototype would be anywhere from about 100 MW to about 400 MW. We may well do better than that. Our baseline intent is to get at least 100 MW electric out. But if we have plasma performance improvements and underpinning system efficiency improvements, then you get better and better beyond that. But we’ve got to break the back of it first.

JT: I understand that you have set 2040 as a target date for an actual operating system.

PM: For getting to what we would call first plasma. We wouldn’t be at power generation operations in 2040. You have to have the majority of your systems in place in order to deliver a plasma. But we are working on a staged series of operations which would go from plasma demonstration, then probably a maintenance demonstration prior to significant activation of the machine and then into a DT*campaign where you would demonstrate your power operations and your tritium self-sufficiency.

*Note from JT for the reader: A major challenge for utilizing deuterium-tritium (DT) fuel is the supply of tritium, which is present on the Earth only in minute quantities. In order to ensure self-sufficiency in fuel, a favored solution for future fusion power plants is to “breed” tritium in the reactor itself.

This can be done by introducing the element lithium into the “blanket” of material surrounding the reactor chamber. When a neutron generated by DT fusion is absorbed by a lithium nucleus, this triggers a nuclear reaction whose products are tritium and helium.

Next: From submarines to fusion reactors

Jonathan Tennenbaum, PhD (mathematics), is a former editor of FUSION magazine and has written on a wide variety of topics in science and technology, including several books on nuclear energy.

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