China’s nuclear fusion breakthrough produces ‘artificial sun’

While the world is looking at renewable energy as a solution to its energy woes, nuclear fusion has always been considered an alternate. A nuclear fusion experiment conducted by the Hefei Institute of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Science has seen a breakthrough in this field, IANS reports.

Their Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion device, fondly known as “artificial sun” successfully made a pulse plasma discharge, producing heat in excess of 50 million Kelvin (just under 50 million degrees Celsius). The device sustained this pulse for 102 seconds.

In contrast, the Sun’s core temperature is about 15 million degrees Celsius, says Space.com

Different from nuclear fission, which involves the splitting of atoms — normally Uranium isotopes — nuclear fusion involves two or more atomic nuclei colliding at high speeds to create a new nucleus. In nuclear fusion, Hydrogen isotopes Deuerium (an isotope that has one proton and one neutron) and Trutium (an isotope that has one proton and two neutrons) are collided at high speeds to produce Helium. This also releases large amount of energy and the sun gets its energy from a similar reaction. A hydrogen bomb uses the energy produced by nuclear fission to trigger a fusion reaction.

“An artificial sun can provide limitless clean energy through controlled thermonuclear fusion,” said Xu Jiannan, a researcher at the China Academy of Engineering Physics.

According to the World Nuclear Association, nuclear fusion required a large amount of energy as it’s difficult to get the positively charged Hydrogen isotopes to come close enough to collide. However, at high temperatures, this is possible.

China’s breakthrough puts it in the running with the European Union, USA, Russia and Japan that are considered to be front runners in fusion technology. Research is also underway in Brazil, Korea and Canada.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will be the world’s largest fusion reactor, when its construction ends in 2019. The Business Standard reported last year that a team of Indian scientists in Gujarat is developing some key components integral to its functioning.

10 Comments on "China’s nuclear fusion breakthrough produces ‘artificial sun’"

geopressure on Thu, 17th Mar 2016 1:04 pm 



‘mkay

Pennsyguy on Thu, 17th Mar 2016 1:38 pm 



1. Collapsing empires cannot afford complex technologies.

2. more complex technologies do not solve the problems cause be complex technologies at some point. See Tainter, et al.

3. No technology creates energy.

Bob Owens on Thu, 17th Mar 2016 5:15 pm 



OMG! Another Fusion breakthru! Unbelievable! (Really, really unbelievable).

peakyeast on Thu, 17th Mar 2016 6:13 pm 



They succeeded in burning more energy faster than they used to.

makati1 on Thu, 17th Mar 2016 7:36 pm 



“China’s nuclear fusion breakthrough produces ‘artificial sun’”

So does the core of a nuclear explosion.

102 seconds! WOW! Wake me when it can do so for 102 days. LMAO

surf on Thu, 17th Mar 2016 11:54 pm 



This was not a breakthrough. All they did pump power in to see how hot they could get the gas in a vacuum. It didn’t produce any excess power. While they did exceed the suns core temperature they did it at a vacuum. The suns core however is at unimaginably high pressure. So much pressure that it really doesn’t need heat to cause fussion.

Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Fri, 18th Mar 2016 5:07 am 



Tom Whipple probabky got a boner of this one. I wonder if he’s a shill or actually believes this shit.

Rick Bronson on Fri, 18th Mar 2016 7:35 am 



China is building Gen-4 Reactor which everyone thought is impossible.

We cannot say anything. They are serious about getting energy from all sources. And its clean energy.

Lawfish1964 on Fri, 18th Mar 2016 8:07 am 



Fusion power, only ten years away. Always has been and always will be.

Davy on Fri, 18th Mar 2016 8:39 am 



The same song and dance comes to mind for me. Scale is the song and the dance is time and resources. We are unable to sing and dance anymore in the catch 22 predicaments we are in. We are in a population, energy, and climate trap. Continue on and we fail and stop we fail. Since we are human and value the here and now over the future we continue on. The alternative is the downsizing of an order of magnitude of the population. How are we going to get 9 out of 10 people to agree to downsize with amounts to death slow and quick? Our real carrying capacity of our population without our status quo global system is 1BIL or less. I have seen no arguments that can debunk that. The debate is how quickly we get there.

This reactor or any high tech is the wrong path. The right path is forced simplicity with all the poverty and death that decision brings. Hopefully it would happen over a longish enough time frame and without extreme pain. Pain and suffering cannot be avoided but the worst extremes may be avoided. This is a gamble so there are no guarantees. Humans hate no guarantees especially when the results could be death. We have journeyed too far into overshoot for an easy transition. We are being forced to enter the unknown on a global scale.

We are on this path into the unknown just not fast enough. The result of being on this path and not embracing that reality is irrational and poor decisions per our real existential situation. We are in a stealth crisis acting as if we are not in an existential crisis. We are deceiving ourselves at the simplest level. This reactor and other high tech are our deceptions at the most extreme levels.

If we go into a global crisis we will be forced to give up bad attitudes, lifestyles, and wasteful economic activity. We are forced to use remaining resources to mitigate and adapt instead of continuing the malinvestment in industrial capacity, human development with no future, and destructive consumptionism. Population must be forced into a paradigm of excess deaths over births and begin a rebalance per our carrying capacity. In the meantime we are gutting our remaining economic capacity on bad behavior. Life at the level of civilizations do not give second chances like we see many times with individual human behavior. Life punishes civilizations that behave badly. We are going to be punished and harshly.

Can we do this? Yes and no? There is a tipping point of no return for our global system. We are close to it now because we are in a cycle of demand and supply destruction of no return. If we were to take some actions to adapt to that destructive cycle it could be the tipping point of no return. It could be our forced power down. Our growth based system is robust when growing but very brittle when not. We may just begin the necessary power down by accident. We are not going to do it by choice because no one is ready to embrace destructive change for less with extreme future pain compared to what we are used to do. It is far easier to think and believe we can get out of this whole the easy comfortable way. The economic sky daddy of technology, knowledge, and substitution has strong believers.