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China Just Made a Major Breakthrough In Nuclear Fusion Research (techienews.co.uk)

Posted by yaelk on from the china-takeover dept.

New submitter TechnoidNash writes: China announced last week a major breakthrough in the realm of nuclear fusion research. The Chinese Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), was able to heat hydrogen gas to a temperature of near 50 million degrees Celsius for an unprecedented 102 seconds. While this is nowhere near the hottest temperature that has ever been achieved in nuclear fusion research (that distinction belongs to the Large Hadron Collider which reached 4 trillion degrees Celsius), it is the longest amount of time one has been maintained.

11 of 339 comments (clear)

  1. I am not a physicist but... by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There have been some "big announcements" in other hard science fields from China in the past decade or two that have turned out to be bogus. Can someone comment on the likelihood of this being real?

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    1. Re:I am not a physicist but... by Harlequin80 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It is the second Tokamak reactor that China has built and it has been around for about 10 years. There is no inherent reason to disbelieve them. They have come a long way from 20 years ago.

      From what I have read China are claiming a significantly lower temperature than the recent German test, approx 30 million degrees K lower, but a much longer duration. The Germans also believe that their system will comfortably run for much longer, the recent operation was just a test so potentially we are seeing a point where engineering capabilities can produce the accuracy of design needed for tokamaks to work.

    2. Re:I am not a physicist but... by aaronb1138 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Probably reliable that they pulled it off. I just wonder how rough it was on the ablative neutron shielding. The current favorite is Boron alloys, but I have yet to hear anything remotely hopeful about long term containment of fast neutrons.

    3. Re: I am not a physicist but... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Interesting

      An interesting trend to watch, even if this one doesn't turn out to be verified, is that China is where most of the the significant energy research is happening.

      The US will be buying most of its advanced energy tech from China in just a couple decades. A couple decades ago that would have seemed unconscionable.

      Say what you want about the relative historical value of the two governments, but one stymies progress with fear-based regulations and denial and the other takes the engineering approach to solving problems. Only one of those can drive prosperity - the leads to despair.

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    4. Re:I am not a physicist but... by Snotnose · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There is no inherent reason to disbelieve them.

      Their currency is manipulated. Their stock market has 2 books, one set you can see, the other you can't. They sell pet food that poisons pets. They sell baby formula that harms babies. They have no respect for IP property. They're poisoning their environment such that you can't see across the street due to air pollution, and can't drink the water because of some mining company upstream. The news media is censored so that non of their citizens know any of this, except what they can see with their own 2 eyes.

      I tend to disbelieve them until shown proof.

    5. Re:I am not a physicist but... by Harlequin80 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I kept reading that and I think something has gone wrong. 15 million K is much higher than absolute zero.... But if I am right about what you are getting at the temps achieved by the German and Chinese tests are higher than the core temperature of the sun. It is because they have to be. One thing that is missing from a fusion reactor that the Sun has is gravity. The sun gets to use a combination of extreme temp & extreme pressure, where as on earth all we get to use is the extreme temperature part.

    6. Re:I am not a physicist but... by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Don't confuse lying with management. Manipulating currency and the stock market is an economics trick. It's not fake, it's quite real. As is the race to the bottom manufacturing that causes their health and environmental woes. They also do not lie about this to the western media (don't confusing lying and censorship either).

      China have some of the best engineering and economic minds in the world. We should know, we in the west trained them at our grand universities.

      This is not North Korea, and I find no reason to disbelieve that their long running fusion projects have seen some results.

    7. Re:I am not a physicist but... by Mostly+a+lurker · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Also worthy of note:

      For the sixth consecutive time, Tianhe-2, a supercomputer developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, has retained its position as the world’s No. 1 system, according to the 46th edition of the twice-yearly TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

      (Source: Top 500 lists November 2015)

      Supercomputers are fundamental to leading edge scientific research.

  2. Re:title by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Spending $20,000,000,000,000 (and counting...) on pointless war in the Middle East instead of energy research is really working out well for the USA.

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  3. Re:Great, another inflationary new statement by Harlequin80 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ummmm they didn't try to create a fusion reaction...... Or get any energy out of the system at all...... In fact it is at about half the temperature it needs to be for fusion to work. The whole point of the research currently is to create a system for containing plasma heated to 100,000,000K. The plasma can't come into contact with the walls of the chamber because, either it is so low in mass the chamber instantly cools it, or is has enough mass to melt the chamber walls down.

    Once they have a containment system that can run for extended periods of time, the current target is 1000 seconds, then they will look to trigger a fusion reaction inside the super heated plasma. At that point the plasma starts pumping out heat rather than needing it.

  4. 30+Min by k2r · · Score: 3, Interesting

    > The german stellerator Wendelstein 7-X aims for up to 30 minutes of confinement.

    Unlike the Tokamak the Stellarator in theory runs continuously. The Wendelstein team just decided that 30 minutes would be enough for all experiments and designed the cooling system to last about 30 minutes.