EAST reactor
17 minutes 120 million degrees Celsius – China’s “artificial sun” sets a new record for nuclear fusion
The EAST reactor produces records in series
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Hotter than the sun, the EAST reactor was able to heat plasma to 120 million degrees Celsius for 17 minutes. This is a new record and a decisive step because of the time that has been achieved.
Nuclear fusion is an eternal beacon of hope. The theoretical foundations were laid in the early 1950s. But in practice one struggled and achieved little. Because technically it was extremely difficult to create conditions such as those found on the sun in a reactor on earth. But research reactors have been setting new records in recent years. China’s “artificial sun” is also just setting up a new one. According to a report by the Xinhua news agency, the system ran for a full 1056 seconds at a high plasma temperature.
Unprecedented period
In terms of type, EAST is a tokamak reactor in the shape of a donut. The principle of these tokamak reactors were designed by Soviet scientists. Inside the Donust, the plasma circles.
It simulates an environment similar to the sun in order to achieve continuous fusion. Only the temperature of the plasma in the reactors has to be much higher than on the sun, since one cannot build up a comparable pressure on earth; the heat has to compensate for this deficiency. But what appeared to be an elegant solution in theory turned out to be extraordinarily complicated in practice. Only since the use of superconducting magnets have there been noticeable advances.
In December 2020, the current, improved version of EAST was put into operation. The reactor has now been designed in such a way that its heating capacity can be increased step by step. Another special feature are its superconducting coils. In May 2021, he already set another record when he worked for 101 seconds at a temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius. Now it’s 1056 seconds. In the next steps one will try to extend the duration of the high temperature operation and increase the temperature to 200 million degrees,
At least another 30 years
EAST is one of several nuclear fusion experiments around the globe that are supposed to mimic the reaction of the sun and stars with the help of tokamak reactors. Nuclear fusion occurs when two atoms fuse together to form a heavier nucleus, releasing enormous amounts of energy. Despite the current advances, nuclear fusion in tokamak reactors will not be able to solve the current energy problems. Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, said it will be about 30 years before an “artificial sun” can go online during normal operation. “The specification of 30 years is also very sporty, since the commercial reactors still have to be designed and built.
Other reactors include MIT’s Bill Gates-backed SPARC and South Korean KSTAR, which recently set a record by holding a super-hot plasma at one million degrees for 30 seconds. The SPARC experiment company Commonwealth Fusion Systems, supported by Bill Gates, was able to test a magnet in September that is operated with a magnet strength of 20 Tesla and consumes only about 30 watts of energy. This research on economical magnets is likely to be just as important as the high temperatures for this type of fusion reactor. Because so far they all devoured more electricity than they deliver.
Prototype H-bomb
In addition to large-scale tokamak systems, including the European ITER, there are numerous start-ups around the world who want to build fusion reactors. You are following a different path. Their role model is not the sun, but the hydrogen bomb. There should be no continuous fusion of atomic nuclei. The bombardment with particles is supposed to enable a sequence of mini-explosions; you don’t have to build the complicated and expensive donut whose magnets are supposed to tame the plasma. If such a development is successful and the leap from a laboratory setup to a test reactor succeeds, a commercial reactor could go into operation as early as the 2030s.
Note: This is a corrected version. There were conversion errors in the original article.