China’s ‘artificial sun’ nuclear fusion reactor has set a new world record after running at 216 million degrees Fahrenheit (120million°C) for 100 seconds, according to state media. For another 20 seconds, the “artificial sun” also achieved a peak temperature of 288 million degrees Fahrenheit (160 million degrees Celsius), which is over ten times hotter than the sun.
Chinese scientists hope the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) will unlock a powerful green energy source in Beijing’s quest for ‘limitless clean power’. Situated at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP) in Hefei, the Tokamak device has been designed to reproduce the nuclear fusion process, something natural to the Sun and stars.
“The breakthrough is significant progress, and the ultimate goal should be keeping the temperature at a stable level for a long time,” Li Miao, the director of the department of physics at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China.
According to a report in New Atlas, scientists are currently working on a wide variety of devices to trigger these reactions, but experts said that doughnut-shaped tokamaks, like the EAST, appear to be most promising. The device features a series of magnetic coils designed to hold superheated streams of hydrogen plasma in place for long enough for the reactions to occur.
Since it first became operational in 2006, the EAST has set several records for the duration of confinement of exceedingly hot plasma. The EAST project is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) facility, which will become the world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor when it becomes operational in 2035. The project includes the contributions of several countries, including India, South Korea, Japan, Russia and the United States.
How does the ‘artificial sun’ EAST work?
The EAST Tokamak device is designed to replicate the nuclear fusion process carried out by the sun and stars. Nuclear fusion is a process through which high levels of energy are produced without generating large quantities of waste. Previously, energy was produced through nuclear fission — a process in which the nucleus of a heavy atom was split into two or more nuclei of lighter atoms.
While fission is an easier process to carry out, it generates far more nuclear waste. Unlike fission, fusion also does not emit greenhouse gases and is considered a safer process with lower risk of accidents. Once mastered, nuclear fusion could potentially provide unlimited clean energy and very low costs.
For nuclear fusion to occur, tremendous heat and pressure are applied on hydrogen atoms so that they fuse together. The nuclei of deuterium and tritium — both found in hydrogen — are made to fuse together to create a helium nucleus, a neutron along with a whole lot of energy.
Fuel is heated to temperatures of over 150 million degrees C so that it forms a hot plasma “soup” of subatomic particles. With the help of a strong magnetic field, the plasma is kept away from the walls of the reactor to ensure it does not cool down and lose its potential to generate large amounts of energy. The plasma is confined for long durations for fusion to take place.
