China plans $30m energy surge

China plans to take its “artificial sun” programme, that uses nuclear fusion, to a higher level. The nation’s Institute of Plasma Physics, which handles the experiment, is in the process of doubling its present capabilities.

It expects to spend $30 million to set up a new heating system for plasma and a central drive to achieve this goal, a senior scientist said.
The latest move will put China further ahead in the race for producing energy using nuclear fusion technique as compared to India, sources said. India is a late starter, although it has spent a much larger amount of money in this field, a senior Chinese scientist said. India has spent four times the money on a similar project although it is smaller than the one at the institute’s facility, he claimed.

“We want to set up new systems of six megawatts each for the central drive and the heating system. We expect to do this over the next three years,” Song Tao Wu, the deputy director-general at the institute told TOI. The move would enable the institute to produce 10,000 kv energy as compared to the present level of 5,000 kv, he said.

But a group of visiting journalists was taken aback to find that the institute was not utilising its latest and
the most prized possession, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), for fusion research at that time.

Times of India