Here comes China’s ‘artificial sun’, a likely source for clean, limitless energy

Chinese scientists are close to deploying an “artificial sun” by 2020, state media has reported, adding that the device will be able to provide clean energy through controlled nuclear fusion.
“The HL-2M Tokamak, China’s next-generation “artificial sun,” is expected to be operational in 2020 as installation work has gone smoothly since the delivery of the coil system in June,” official news agency, Xinhua reported this week.
The device works by replicating the natural reactions that occur in the sun using hydrogen and deuterium gases as fuels.
“The new apparatus, with a more advanced structure and control mode, is expected to generate plasmas hotter than 200 million degrees Celsius,” said Duan Xuru, head of the Southwestern Institute of Physics under the China National Nuclear Corporation was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
The report added that the artificial sun will provide key technical support for China’s participation in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, as well as the self-designing and building of fusion reactors.
“China is among seven members funding ITER, an international nuclear fusion research and engineering project that is building a tokamak nuclear fusion reactor in France, considered to be the world’s largest magnetic confinement physics experiment,” the Caixin news website reported.
In 2018, the experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST), or the country’s first “Chinese artificial sun” achieved an electron temperature of over 100 million degrees in its core plasma, a key step towards the test running of fusion reactor, a lab in east China’s Anhui province had said.
“The ultimate goal of EAST is to create nuclear fusion like the Sun using deuterium abound in the sea to provide a steady stream of clean energy,” Gong Xianzu, director of the experiment, had then said.
The temperature achieved at the EAST experiment was about seven times more than the interior of the Sun, which is about 15 million degrees Celsius.
Gong said the experimental temperature was about 50 million degrees celsius in 2017.
-
In Ketanji Jackson, US Supreme Court gets its 1st black woman justice
Quicked is empty for story with id 101656607431062
-
Guns, abortion, and now, climate: US Supreme Court limits federal power to curb carbon emissions
Quicked is empty for story with id 101656607764777
-
Biden announces $800 billion in new weapons to Ukraine in its war against Russia
Quicked is empty for story with id 101656605034279
-
US SC rules in Biden's favor on Trump's 'remain in Mexico' immigration: Report
The US Supreme Court freed President Joe Biden's administration to end a Trump-era policy that forces asylum-seekers at the southern border to wait in Mexico for their cases to be processed, letting the president retake control of a key facet of his immigration policy. Voting 5-4, the court said the “remain-in-Mexico” program isn't required under federal immigration law even though the government lacks capacity to detain everyone.
-
Hong Kong has ‘risen from the ashes’, China’s says Xi on handover anniversary visit
Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a visit to Hong Kong on the city's handover anniversary on Thursday, told crowds that the city has been “reborn of fire” and “risen from the ashes” in what appeared to be references to the pro-democracy protests quelled by security forces in 2019 and a large-scale Covid-19 outbreak earlier this year.