Hefei artificial sun energy input and output ratio

The clothes we wear, the plastic products we use, the fertilizers in agriculture, automobile fuel and various other resources are all from oil. The international price of oil directly affects the economy of each country, and the adequacy of oil energy directly affects the development of a country.

But the world has seen many energy crises due to wars, economies, and other factors. For example, in 1990, the Persian Gulf War caused oil prices to skyrocket, and in 2000, the failure of California's electric power control policy, coupled with an oversupply of power resources, led to a crisis in California's electric power, and in 2005, global oil supply and demand were out of whack, with the supply of oil far less than the demand for oil, leading to a sharp rise in the price of oil.

Although oil is an indispensable energy source for today's society, it is a non-renewable energy source. As human society continues to develop, technological advances, population growth, and the increase in automobile ownership have all increased human dependence on oil resources.

Currently, the consumption of petroleum resources is rising year by year, but the total amount of petroleum resources will not be increased in a short period of time, in the long run, petroleum energy is bound to "sit on the mountain of empty". Therefore, mankind now urgently needs to find a substitute for petroleum resources.

In order to realize the sustainable development of all mankind, all countries in the world are actively exploring other energy sources. Nuclear energy has become one of the most important sources of energy that all countries are striving to develop.

But at present, all the countries in the world that use nuclear energy to generate electricity use nuclear fission, which is very dangerous and polluting, and the cost of disposing of nuclear waste is also very high. Japan, for example, claimed to dump nuclear waste into the sea in order to save money on nuclear waste disposal, which was strongly resisted by countries around the world.

Fukushima nuclear power plant

But there is another way of generating nuclear power that does not produce radioactive fertilizer, and it is controlled fusion power generation technology. China's Hefei City, Anhui Province, there is a by virtue of this technology to produce an "artificial sun", this "artificial sun" to 70 million degrees Celsius temperature running for 17.6 minutes, which in the world is what level?

Artificial sun

"Artificial sun" is the all-superconducting tokamak fusion experimental device (EAST), which operates on the principle of adding hydrogen isotope deuterium or tritium to the vacuum chamber inside the device, and after that, the device will operate to produce plasma. The plasma is then operated to produce a plasma, the density and temperature of which are increased by means of technology, and then it undergoes a fusion reaction, which generates enormous amounts of energy. It is also known as the Eastern Super Ring because of its ring-like shape.

December 30, 2021, China's Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences, Institute of Plasma Physics, came a good news, China's Oriental super-ring in the 70 million degrees Celsius high temperature ran for 17.6 minutes. This is the world's first "artificial sun" long pulse high-parameter plasma running more than a thousand seconds of the record.

As early as in the 1990s, the European Union, the United States and Japan's large-scale tokamak devices in magnetic confinement fusion research has obtained many important results. However, China's research and development in the field of superconducting tokamak devices started relatively late, the earliest was the former Soviet T7 superconducting tokamak into HT-7.

Until 2000, China's all-superconducting tokamak EAST program began to prepare for the implementation. After nearly 10 years of preparation, the EAST was finally completed and put into operation in 2006.

The EAST device is the world's first non-circular cross-section all-superconducting tokamak device, and has made major breakthroughs many times since its birth.In 2009, the first round of physical discharge experiments of the EAST device was successful.

In 2016, the Eastern Super Ring Device broke the world record for long-time operation in a high temperature environment of 50 million degrees Celsius. The Oriental Super Ring Device set a new world record by successfully realizing repeatable 120 million °C for 101 seconds and 160 million °C for 20 seconds plasma operation. Before this record was broken, devices of the same type in the world could only run for about 20 seconds at temperatures around 100 million degrees Celsius.

The Oriental Super Ring device consists of six main components, including an ultra-high vacuum chamber, a longitudinal field coil, a poleward field coil, an inner and outer cold screen, an outer vacuum dewar, and a support system.

The main body of the overall device is 11 meters high, 8 meters in diameter and weighs 400 tons. Despite its 8-meter diameter, the Eastern Super Ring is only about one-third the diameter of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

But the Dongfang Super Ring has the advantage of being more flexible, and its role in the field of scientific research is not small at all, especially this time to be able to run for 17.6 minutes at 7,000 degrees Celsius, injecting 1.73 gigajoules of energy, which is to break the world record of 411 seconds set by China's Super Ring itself in 2012, and it has an unprecedented significance for the future of China's research and exploration of fusion engineering. The project is of unprecedented significance for China's future research and exploration in fusion engineering.

What is the world level of the Eastern Super Ring?

Controlled fusion power generation technology is currently used in the Eastern Super Ring, and its biggest advantage is that it is a clean energy source. Although it is the same nuclear power generation technology, nuclear power generation uses uranium, plutonium and other heavy elements as raw materials. This controllable nuclear fission technology is not absolutely controllable, once the leakage accident will cause very large pollution, and the consequences of pollution will continue for more than a hundred years.

But the controlled fusion power generation technology of the Eastern Super Ring will not use radioactive elements, so it will not be as dangerous as nuclear fission. If an accident occurs during the experiment, the temperature and pressure can be quickly reduced with a simple operation, and the fusion process will stop immediately. That's why many countries have the momentum to move into the field of controlled fusion power generation technology.

But at present, the only devices in the world that can use radiofrequency wave heating are the China Super Ring and the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). So the fact that China has achieved such proud results shows that the Eastern Super Ring has reached the international advanced level.

At this stage, the DSCR has basically reached the power generation capacity, and China will continue to extend the operation time of the DSCR to realize the ambitious goal of "letting the first light of fusion energy be lit in China".

The proud achievement of the Eastern Super Ring is due to the hard work of the staff behind the scenes. From May 28, 2021, the Oriental super-ring successfully reached 120 million degrees Celsius after 98,958 experiments, and then ran for 17.6 minutes after 106,915 experiments on Dec. 30, just 216 days apart.

If in these seven months, China's researchers every day without stopping the experiment, they have to experiment an average of 37 times a day. If they could rest on holidays, the average number of experiments per day would be more than 50. So it's not without the hard work of every single researcher that we've been able to achieve such excellent results.

The future of Oriental Super Ring

Currently, the efficiency of fusion mass-energy conversion is about 7 per thousand, which means that only 7 grams of fuel out of 1 kilogram of fuel will be completely converted into energy, and it can generate about 175 million kilowatts of electricity. Now our country consumes about 7,200,000,000,000,000 degrees of electricity, so if we do apply this technology nationwide, then we would need 42 tons of fuel.

The feedstock for the Eastern Hyperloop is hydrogen, and while 42 tons of hydrogen may seem like a lot, we're not at all worried about running out. On the one hand, the most common substance in the universe is hydrogen, an important constituent of the Earth is also hydrogen, and our air contains a lot of it.

On the other hand, hydrogen can be obtained not only from the natural environment, but also artificially produced. For example, hydrogen can be produced from industrial by-product gases such as coking, chlor-alkali, steel and metallurgy using electrolysis of water. Although the hydrogen we need for fueling the Eastern Super Ring is ubiquitous, our technology for preparing, storing, and transporting it in large quantities still needs to be improved.

The all-superconducting tokamak is just a fusion test reactor, and construction of our next-generation "artificial sun" has already begun in 2021 and is expected to be completed by 2035. The new generation of "artificial sun" is a larger nuclear reactor, is a fusion engineering project.

Hydrogen from electrolyzed water

When the new-generation "artificial sun" is completed, China will be able to carry out practical scientific experiments on power generation on the basis of existing technology. It is expected that by 2050, China's new generation of "artificial sun" fusion engineering test reactor can be commercialized to promote electricity. By then, we will have fully mastered fusion power generation technology. The ambitious goal of "letting the first light of fusion energy be lit in China" will also be transformed into the beautiful vision of "letting fusion energy lights be lit in every household in China".

Technological advances have devastated the Earth's environment with land, water and air pollution. The good news is that humans have realized the indelible damage we've done to the planet, and we're doing our best to repair this already scarred pale blue planet.

Fossil fuels are still a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, but when we fully master fusion power generation, we will be able to outlaw this environmentally destructive form of power generation. In the future, advances in technology will surely allow the Earth to be revitalized as well!

Special note: This article was uploaded and published by the author of the NetEase media platform "NetEase", and represents the author's point of view only. NetEase only provides a platform for the release of information.

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