China's "Artificial Sun" Breaks World Record

2023-04-14

At 21:00 on the 12th, the world's first fully superconducting tokamak nuclear fusion experimental device (EAST) in operation made significant achievements, successfully achieving 403 second stable long pulse high confinement mode plasma operation, breaking the previous world record of 101 seconds. All things grow by the sun. The reason why the sun can emit light and heat is because of the internal nuclear fusion reaction. For a long time, scientists hope to create a "sun" through controllable nuclear fusion reaction, so as to obtain endless energy. Located on the Science Island in Hefei, Anhui Province, EAST is known as the "artificial sun". As a major national science and technology infrastructure, it has a nuclear fusion reaction mechanism similar to the sun. But to create a practical "artificial sun", it requires a plasma of hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius, a continuous operating time of over a thousand seconds, and a plasma current of 1 megaampere, which is extremely difficult. After more than a decade of concerted efforts and 122254 experiments, we have finally achieved today's breakthrough! "Said Song Yuntao, Vice President of the Hefei Institute of Materials Science and Director of the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, excitedly. After continuous and difficult research, the EAST scientific team has solved a series of cutting-edge physical and technological integration problems such as plasma configuration constraints at a long time scale, high-power RF wave heating and current driving, plasma wall interaction, and real-time diagnosis of key distribution parameters, achieving 403 second high constraint mode plasma operation. Song Yuntao introduced that the main significance of this breakthrough lies in the "high constraint mode", which fully verifies the ability of EAST to operate in a steady state with high parameters and long pulses, and is of great significance for exploring the frontier physical problems of future fusion reactors, improving the economy and feasibility of nuclear fusion energy, and accelerating the realization of fusion energy applications. In recent years, the performance of EAST has been continuously improved, and the operation range of the device has been continuously expanded, which has made many significant landmark achievements in the operation of international tokamak. EAST has over 200 core technologies and over 2000 patents, bringing together cutting-edge technologies such as "ultra-high temperature", "ultra-low temperature", "ultra-high vacuum", "ultra strong magnetic field", and "ultra large current" in one furnace, with over a million components working together. This successful breakthrough is inseparable from the improvement of plasma control, heating, wall treatment, advanced diagnosis and other technologies, as well as the improvement of the internal vacuum chamber. A series of major innovative achievements of EAST have provided an important experimental basis for the operation of ITER, an international thermonuclear experimental reactor, and China's own construction and operation of fusion reactors. At present, the engineering design of the next generation "Artificial Sun" China Fusion Engineering Experimental Reactor has been completed, aiming to build the world's first fusion demonstration reactor in the future. (Outlook New Era Network)

Edit:qihang    Responsible editor:xinglan

Source:GMW.cn

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