China to Build World's First "Artificial Sun"

cletuii writes to tell us the People's Daily Online is reporting that China is planning on building the world's first "artificial sun" device. From the article: "The project, dubbed EAST (experimental advanced superconducting Tokamak), is being undertaken by the Hefei-based Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It will require a total investment of nearly 300 million yuan (37 million U.S. dollars), only one fifteenth to one twentieth the cost of similar devices being developed in the other parts of the world."

Comments

even better

[idlake]

Since, with clean power, we wouldn't need oil from the Middle East, we could get out of there and terrorists would lose interest in the US.

Re:we already have clean nuclear power technology

[Decker-Mage]

Unfortunately, despite all the advantages of breeder reactors, the first thing the public and especially the eco-freaks think when you say breeder is nuclear weapons material. I don't make the universe, I just take it and engineer solutions within it. The problem with breeders is political, not engineering. Just as the public and some of the eco-freaks hear fusion and start singing hosannas despite the well known engineering problems that they will have (posted above) that they also happen to share with their fission cousins. All politics.

BTW, I used to belong to several of eco-freak organizations and tried to pound some sense into them about the risk/cost/benefit ratios of various means of energy production with zero success. Which is why I parted ways with them. I'm ecologically minded, and well trained in the science and the economics of same, they weren't. Those people are not rational, sadly. It's all about what feels good.