China’s ‘artificial sun’ sets a new record

China’s “Artificial Sun” reactor breaks its own world record for maintaining super-hot plasma, marking another milestone in the journey towards endless clean energy, Live Science reported on January 21. Called the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), the reactor located in Hefei maintained a stable plasma ring, the high-energy fourth state of matter, for 1,066 seconds on January 20, double The previous record was 403 seconds.

Fusion reactors are nicknamed “Artificial Suns” because they produce energy in a similar way to the Sun, by fusing two light atoms into one heavy atom through heat and pressure. The Sun has greater pressure than many reactors on Earth, so scientists overcome this by using temperatures hotter than the Sun’s core.

Fusion offers the potential for an almost limitless source of electricity without emitting greenhouse gases or much nuclear waste. However, scientists have been developing this technology for more than 70 years. Most likely it will not progress fast enough to become a realistic solution to climate change. Researchers hope to be able to put electricity from fusion reactions into use within a few decades, but the reality is that it could take much longer.

EAST’s new record is a stepping stone toward a future in which fusion power plants will produce electricity. EAST is a magnetically controlled reactor, or tokamak, designed to maintain palasma burning continuously for long periods of time. Reactors of this type have never reached the ignition step, the point at which the fusion reaction generates energy and sustains its own reaction, but the new record maintains the prolonged plasma loop that the reactor future need to meet to produce electricity.

“A fusion device must be able to operate stably at high efficiency for thousands of seconds for the plasma cycle to sustain itself,” said Song Yuntao, director of the Institute of Plasma Physics responsible for the fusion project in Chinese Academy of Sciences, said.

EAST is one of several fusion reactors in the world, but all currently consume more energy than they produce. In 2022, the US National Ignition Facility’s fusion reactor achieved core ignition using a different testing method, which relies on rapid flashes of energy. However, overall, this reactor still consumes more energy than it produces.

A tokamak reactor like the EAST is the most common type of fusion reactor. EAST heats the plasma and traps it inside an annular chamber called a tokamak with a strong magnetic field. For the latest record, researchers made several upgrades to the reactor, including doubling the heating system’s capacity. Data collected by EAST will support other reactor developments both domestically and internationally. China is a member of the International Thermal Experimental Reactor (ITER) program that brings together dozens of countries including the US, UK, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

The ITER reactor is being built in southern France, contains the world’s strongest magnet and will be operational as early as 2039. ITER is an experimental tool created to sustain fusion reactions for nuclear purposes. study.