An 'artificial sun' to rise from China?

China plans to build the world's first 'artificial sun' experimental device which aims at generating infinite, clean nuclear fusion-based energy, the state media reported today.

China plans to build the world's first "artificial sun" experimental device which aims at generating infinite, clean nuclear fusion-based energy, the state media reported today.

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Experiments with the advanced new device, a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion apparatus which will be built in March or April in Hefei, capital city of east China's Anhui province, will start in July or August.

If the experiments prove successful, China will become the first country in the world to build a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, nicknamed 'artificial sun', experts said.

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 (USD 37 million), only one-fifteenth to one-twentieth the cost of similar devices being developed in the other parts of the world, Xinhua news agency reported.

The new device will be an upgrade of China's first superconducting Tokamak device, dubbed HT-7, which was also built by the institute in partnership with Russia in the early 1990s. HT-7 made China the fourth country in the world after Russia, France and Japan to have such a device.

"The EAST project research results will be significant for the International Thermonuclear Experiment Reactor, or ITER, in terms of basic research both in engineering technology and physics," said Wan Yuanxi, who is in charge of the project.