Nuclear fusion is known as one of the most ideal energy sources for human beings, compared with nuclear fission, nuclear fusion is safer, cleaner, no radiation, and the raw materials are extensive, it can be said that it is inexhaustible, known as the artificial sun.
It's just that nuclear fission is very powerful at present, and it is not realistic to use it in practice, which requires some advanced devices to restrain it in order to produce controllable nuclear fusion and be used by human beings.
In order to master the available nuclear fusion technology, human scientists have been tirelessly looking for ways in the past few decades, and after years of hard work, mankind has now mastered some technologies, and many of the available nuclear fusion technologies have been constantly making breakthroughs.
Recently, Japan's controlled nuclear fusion has been successfully ignited.
According to Science, the world's newest and largest nuclear fusion reactor JT-60SA was successfully ignited recently, becoming a milestone in the long development process of practical nuclear fusion energy.
JT-60SA is a superconducting tokamak facility jointly built and operated by Japan and the European Union, located at the Japan Atomic Energy Exploration Agency (JAEA) in Ibaraki Prefecture Inside, JT-60SA is currently the world's largest experimental device for using superconducting coil multi-carmak plasma, its exterior is wound with a superconducting coil that can generate a magnetic field, and inside the cavity is a red-hot cloud of ionized gas or plasma, inducing hydrogen nucleus fusion and releasing energy, this device can heat the plasma to 200 million degrees Celsius and maintain it for about 100 seconds, which has reached the state of controlled nuclear fusion ignition.
This technological breakthrough is crucial to the development of controlled nuclear fusion, and if this ignition state can last longer in the future, then controlled nuclear fusion is not far from commercial application.
If Japan is truly able to control this controlled nuclear fusion in the future, the global energy landscape will change dramatically, and Japan may even re-emerge with this technology.
Seeing this, many people are both happy and worried, happy that mankind is getting closer and closer to the commercialization of nuclear fusionThe concern is that many people are worried about whether we will fall behind them if Japan takes control of this technology
In fact, you don't have to worry, China is also in the forefront of the world in the research and development of controlled nuclear fusion, and Japan is constantly making breakthroughs in controlled nuclear fusionChina's controlled nuclear fusion has also been making breakthroughs.
As an important participant in the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), China has been working hard to promote the development of controlled nuclear fusion in recent years, and has also made many technological breakthroughs.
China's nuclear fusion research and development started very early, as early as the 50s of the last century, China began to research and develop nuclear fusion, and in the seventies and eighties of the last century, China began to focus on the tokamak device.
In 1984, the Institute of Nuclear West Technology built China Circulator No. 1 (HL-1), which was the first fusion large-scale scientific engineering device independently designed and built in China.
In 2006, China built the world's first fully superconducting non-circular cross-section tokamak experimental device (EAST) in Hefei, and on September 28 of that year, the first round of physical discharge experiments of EAST was successful.
In 2009, the China Circulator No. 2M device project was officially approved.
On November 12, 2018, EAST achieved a number of major breakthroughs such as 100 million degrees Celsius plasma operation;
On May 28, 2021, EAST set a new world record and successfully achieved a repeatable 1200 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds and 1The 20-second plasma operation at 600 million degrees Celsius extends the original record of 100 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds by a factor of five.
On December 30, 2021, EAST achieved a long-pulsed, high-parameter plasma operation of 1056 seconds.
On August 25, 2023, "China Circulation-3" made significant scientific research progress, achieving high-confinement mode operation under 1 million amperes plasma current for the first time, once again refreshing the operation record of China's magnetic confinement fusion device, and breaking through key technical problems such as plasma high-current high-confinement mode operation control, high-power heating system injection coupling, and advanced deflector shape control.
From these scientific research results, it can be seen that China has been in the forefront of nuclear fusion research, especially in the tokamak device.
In terms of tokamak devices, the current scientific research level in China, the European Union and Japan as a whole is comparable.
And whether it is China, the European Union or Japan, they are actually important players in ITER, and everyone is seeking technological breakthroughs for global controlled nuclear fusion.
In addition, from a practical point of view, if controlled nuclear fusion wants to be commercialized, it is basically unrealistic to rely on one country alone, and it requires the cooperation of multiple countries to achieve technological breakthroughs as soon as possible, so that controlled nuclear fusion can truly benefit mankind.
Of course, I believe that the United States, the European Union, and Japan will definitely take some of these core technologies into their own hands, and then choose to use them to limit each other at the right time.
For this potential risk, in fact, we don't have to worry, because at present, China has also mastered a lot of core technologies in controllable nuclear fusion, even without the support of Europe and the United States, I believe that Chinese scientists will one day achieve pure localization of nuclear fusion devices.