China’s government is urging the nation’s fusion energy physicists to redouble and accelerate their efforts in view of recent key breakthroughs in the field made by US and Japanese scientists.
Chinese state media reported that Science and Technology Minister Wang Zhigang inspected the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) experimental fusion reactor and met with local scientists at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) where it is housed earlier this month.
Wang did not say whether the Chinese government will provide more funding for fusion projects, though it is expected that if scientists develop sound proposals with clear goals the government will direct state-owned enterprises to invest.
“How can scientific technology be applied in power engineering? What stage is our fusion power technology at?” Wang, who studied telecommunications in Xidian University from 1978-1982, asked physicists in a closed-door forum on June 7.
Wang said Chinese scientists must study Party General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speech about China’s goal of technological self-sufficiency and try to realize the potential of fusion energy.
“We need to discuss which fusion technology to adopt. Magnetic confinement fusion, fusion-fission hybrid or hydrogen-boron fusion have their pros and cons and timetables for breakthroughs,” he said. “Everyone is now talking about the commercial applications of fusion power. We should plan backward from this and see what to do in the next steps.”
Magnetic confinement fusion is what most countries, including China, are currently pursuing. Plasma particles flow and fuse in the magnetic field of a tokamak, a donut-shaped machine first developed by Soviet scientists in 1958.
Fusion-fission hybrid is similar but the fast neutron created by fusion will hit and split up uranium-238 or thorium-232, creating nuclear waste. This reaction can be seen in the explosion of a hydrogen bomb. Some scientists have tried to use this technology to reduce nuclear waste.
Hydrogen-boron fusion combines proton and boron to become helium and release energy. It was achieved in February in Japan’s Large Helical Device, which is similar to a tokamak but as the name suggests has a helical shape.
Wan Yuanxi, an 84-year-old academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said China has already proven the feasibility of using a tokamak to develop fusion power and that the next step is to achieve power generation.
Wan said China needs to invest more in scientific research, develop core technologies and build related infrastructure while setting a clear roadmap with improved regulations to realize fusion energy use as soon as possible.
Since the 1970s, China has built small and medium-sized tokamaks such as the HL-1 and HL-1M in the Southwestern Institute of Physics (SWIP) in Chengdu and the HT-6B and HT-6M at the Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Hefei.
The 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 2006, China joined the France-based International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) – the world’s largest fusion project supported by the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the US. Its stated goals are to commence deuterium-tritium operations by 2035 and make power generation for commercial use by 2050.
China agreed in 2006 to take up 10% of the collaborative effort’s scientific research tasks and that same year launched the EAST (HT-7U).
In May 2021, the EAST achieved 101 seconds of steady-state high-confinement mode (H-mode) operation at 120 million degrees. In December 2021, it maintained a stable plasma at 70 million degrees for 1,056 seconds. On April 12 this year, it achieved the world’s first 403-second steady-state H-mode plasma.
By comparison, the France-based Tungsten Environment in Steady-state Tokamak (WEST), formerly called Tore Supra, achieved 390 seconds at 70 million degrees in 2003. Japan’s JT-60SA achieved 28.6 seconds at 100 million degrees in 2006. It sustained plasmas of up to 200 million degrees for 100 seconds. It can reach up to 522 million degrees.
Li Jiangang, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a physicist at ASIPP, said his team has failed in experiments at least 50,000 times over the past 20 years. Li said it is a long process to boost the EAST’s temperature from several million degrees to over 100 million degrees.
Song Yuntao, director of ASIPP, said the unit had worked with 120 fusion research institutes from 45 countries in the past and is visited by about 500 foreign experts each year. Chinese media said EAST owns 2,000 patents and that 80% of its core parts and raw materials are supplied by Chinese firms.
On December 13 last year, the US Department of Energy (DOE) and its National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) achieved a net gain of energy by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to a target, an experiment which produced 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output.
The DOE said the experiment demonstrated for the first time a fundamental scientific basis for inertial fusion energy. Scientists have said if a reactor can achieve 10 ignitions per second, fusion power generation is possible. Media reports said the LLNL experiment used about 200 lasers and did not use a tokamak to enable a fusion reaction.
Last month, Helion Energy, a US startup backed by Sam Altman, who has also invested in artificial intelligence firm OpenAI, said Helion plans to supply Microsoft with 50 megawatts of fusion electricity in 2028. The firm said it will use a self-developed tool called Polaris, which points two laser beams at each other to create plasmas.
“The LLNL’s ignition has an important meaning as it is a big step for mankind to realize fusion energy,” a Guangdong-based technology columnist wrote in an article. “But there is a very long way to go before people can actually use fusion power.”
Citing a CNN report, the columnist said the amount of energy produced by the ignition was still small, likening it to just enough to boil 10 kettles of water. He claimed the US spent a decade and several billion dollars to achieve such a small ignition, demonstrating how difficult the process is.
He also says people should not directly compare the progress of the US and China as the latter will use another ignition method.
Last September, Peng Xianjue, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, was quoted by the South China Morning Post as saying that fusion power will be available in China by 2028. In fact, he was referring to a fission-fusion hybrid plant in Chengdu, not a pure hydrogen fusion one.
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