"Artificial Sun" Fires Up for Test Run Again: China's Nuclear Fusion Energy Accelerates Breakthrough

Nuclear fusion energy has long been regarded by many as the “ultimate energy” for the future. In Hefei, Anhui, nuclear fusion energy has recently seen a series of breakthroughs—what exactly is going on? Follow the camera of a CCTV reporter to the scene and take a look.

A New Nuclear Fusion Device in Anhui Discharges Again

At the laboratory of a new nuclear fusion device in Hefei, Anhui, the fusion test facility completed a discharge experiment today, while staff members were checking the device after the experiment.

What does this device look like when conducting experiments? The reporter captured the process of plasma ignition with a high-speed camera.

The thing that’s “burning” isn’t real fire—it’s “plasma,” the fourth state of matter in addition to solid, liquid, and gas. Igniting this cloud of plasma and successfully confining it in a cage is our first step toward using fusion energy. This key step can be understood as igniting and running a “man-made sun” for a test—to see whether this “little sun” can properly “light up.” What’s more, this discharge is also to accumulate experimental data again, creating conditions for installing all kinds of follow-up systems.

Small in Size, Light in Weight, Low in Cost

In the Future, It Can Light Up an Entire City

This new nuclear fusion device laboratory is a snapshot of the diverse nuclear fusion technologies that our country is currently exploring. Compared with large scientific facilities, this nuclear fusion device is much smaller. It has a linear structure, with an overall length of 18.5 meters, built by orderly connection of five vacuum chambers. In appearance, it looks like a slender “energy tunnel.”

Its total weight is not that heavy. The laboratory is located on the second floor, overturning people’s traditional impression that fusion devices are “clunky and massive.” It greatly reduces reliance on superconducting materials, significantly lowering costs.

With continuous experiments and iterations, its size will keep becoming smaller. Even though it is small, it contains a great amount of energy. It is expected that by 2035, the fusion experimental reactor will be completed. A reactor about this size, behind the reporter, could reach dozens of megawatts and make possible an annual electricity generation of 200–300 million kilowatt-hours, meeting a small city’s residents’ electricity demand for one year in a community of 200,000 people.

Seizing New Opportunities

Anhui’s Nuclear Fusion Energy Industry Accelerates Its Layout

To truly realize commercialization of controllable nuclear fusion, it must go through six stages: from principle exploration, to scale-up experiments, to burning experiments, and then to an experimental reactor, a demonstration reactor, and only afterward can it move toward commercial reactors.

The “three-step approach” we often talk about—planning, implementation, and commercialization—depends on a complete innovation ecosystem and hard-core technical support at every step. So how far are we from the real “man-made sun,” exactly?

In Hefei, Anhui, driven by large scientific facilities, the nuclear fusion industry is accelerating its clustering. Currently, there are already more than 200 companies related to Hefei’s nuclear fusion industry chain, and it has also spawned a number of emerging industries such as plasma diagnostics and terahertz lasers.

At the same time, Anhui has also established a fusion industry alliance, coordinating multiple organizations to tackle key core technologies together, speeding up the layout of the entire industrial chain—from nuclear fusion energy equipment, to components and parts, to application services. It is expected that by 2030, Anhui will be able to light up the nuclear fusion “first light.”

(CCTV National Central Television reporter Wang Shiyu, Yang Ziqing, Zhang Hao, Wang Li, Cui Qi)

Source: CCTV News Client