China has made a new breakthrough in its efforts to find clean thermal energy, as one of its artificial suns set a new record for continuous high temperatures, Xinhua reported.
The artificial sun (full name is Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak - EAST) is actually a nuclear reactor research facility that ran at 70 million degrees Celsius for 1,056 seconds (17 minutes 36 seconds).
Previously, the Chinese artificial sun reached another milestone in May 2021 when it ran at plasma - or hot air - 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds.
In another 20-second experiment also in May 2021, EAST achieved a peak temperature of 160 million degrees Celsius, 10 times hotter than the Sun.
These are targets for different stages... Recent activity has laid a solid scientific and experimental foundation for operating a thermal reactor, said Gong Xianzu, a researcher at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Gong Xianzu is in charge of the experiment at EAST, located at the Hop Phi Institute of Physical Sciences in Anhui Province. EAST is called an artificial sun because it simulates the nuclear synthesis reaction that feeds the real Sun, using hydrogen and deuterium as fuel.
Thermal energy is considered the malest energy for a carbon-neutral energy future, because hydrogen and deuterium are abundant on Earth, cleaner and have fewer emissions.
EAST is one of three large artificial suns currently active in China. The HL-2M tokamak thermal reactor, put into operation in December last year, is located in Chengdu, southwestern China and the third reactor in the city of W finishedgo.
The trial will start in early December and will last until June 2022.
The experiment once again challenged the world record. We have comprehensively perfected the technology, promoting a major step forward from basic research to technical application - Director of Plasma Physics Institute Song Yuntao said.
Meanwhile, EAST will provide detailed information on the important plasma physics research to set up industrial-scale reactors to create clean energy - CCTV state broadcaster reported.
However, despite decades of searching by scientists around the world, the thermal reactors are still far from reality. The two main challenges are keeping temperatures above 100 million degrees Celsius and operating at a stable level for a long time, according to Xinhua.
Similar efforts are underway in the US, Europe, Russia and South Korea. China is also among 35 countries participating in the International Thermal Reactive Testing (ITER) super project in France.
The artificial solar project in Chengdu, the HL-2M Tokamak thermal reactor, operated at 150 million degrees Celsius for up to 10 seconds in an experiment late last year.
