Topic: China Tests Fusion Reactor

[Dracho]

Nothing like need to motivate!  China uses a lot of oil, but they have not yet become permanently attached to the oil teat.  They could not afford to drive their economy off of oil at the same level we do (because of sheer size) so I really see the motivation for fast-tracking alternative fuels.


BEIJING (AP) - Scientists on Thursday carried out China's first successful test of an experimental fusion reactor, powered by the process that fuels the sun, a research institute spokeswoman said.

China, the United States and other governments are pursuing fusion research in hopes that it could become a clean, potentially limitless energy source. Fusion produces little radioactive waste, unlike fission, which powers conventional nuclear reactors.

Beijing is eager for advances, both for national prestige and to reduce its soaring consumption of imported oil and dirty coal.

The test by the government's Institute of Plasma Physics was carried out on a Tokamak fusion device in the eastern city of Hefei, said Cheng Yan, a spokeswoman at the institute.

Cheng said the test was considered a success because the reactor produced plasma, a hot cloud of supercharged particles. She wouldn't give other details.

"This represents a step for humankind in the study of nuclear reaction," she said.

U.S. and other scientists have been experimenting with fusion for decades but it has yet to be developed into a viable energy alternative.

"I think it is a considerable step ahead for China," said Karl Heinz Finken, a senior scientist at the Institute for Plasma Physics in Juelich, Germany, who had no role in the Chinese research.

"China is speeding up with the development of nuclear fusion and I think at the moment they are making considerable progress," he said.

The Chinese facility is similar to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, being built by a seven-nation consortium in Cadarache in southern France, according to state media. That reactor is due to be completed in 2015.

China is a partner in the ITER reactor, along with the European Union, the United States, Japan, Russia, India and South Korea.

A Tokamak reactor uses a doughnut-shaped magnetic field to contain the hot gas.

Several countries have produced plasma using a Tokamak or similar device, said Gabriel Marbach, deputy head of fusion research at the ITER facility. He said producing plasma was only one step toward the fusion that ITER aims to perform, and that the project could be helped by the Chinese experiments.

"It was important for China to show that it is part of the club, and that adds value to its participation in ITER," Marbach said.

"That is not to say that it is at the level of the Europeans or Americans," he said. However, he added, "We are rather admiring of the Chinese for conducting this test. It was conducted well, and they constructed (the machine) rather quickly."

China is the world's No. 2 oil consumer and its No. 3 importer, consuming at least 3.5 million barrels of foreign oil per day last year.

China plans to build dozens of nuclear power plants and is trying to promote use of cleaner alternative energy sources such as natural gas, wind power and methanol made from corn.

---

AP correspondent Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060928/D8KDR1G00.html

[kmelew]

I believe it was a mistake to shutdown Princeton's tokamak. 

[Nemesis]

First the moon race and now the fusion race (I hope).

If fusion lives up to the hype it should, when perfected well enough to use, produce clean cheap power in vast quantities.  It could easily be the basis of an economic revolution. 

Then if someone could make cheap stable reliable carbon nanotube based battery/capacitors then the oil producing countries would have their power broken.

[Max Torps]

If the Chinese take up this technology at the same pace as they took up other technologies you can bet your bottom dollar there will be renewed and serious interest in western countries to actually start addressing the issue of carbon fuels at last and to take a really serious interest in fusion rather than theorising and the odd small scale experiment. The article linked was worded in such a way to indicate that the chinese "dabbled successfully" for the first time. I ask you, how many times have they done that and been successful in low cost improvement and production?

IMHO there is nothing better to speed up western progress than the infusion of unwanted competition. This is a welcome development for everyone..... eventually.

[Hexx]

Although the ideas behind it are beyond me, dated a girl once who knew her stuff.
She was of the opinion that Fusion could be developed and make marketable if enough money was thrown at it and
people could be shown that "nuclear fusion" and Nuclear fission" are two very different things.

I assume China won't have a huge issue with the second, and if it is just a matter of money liekly won't have an issue with the first either.

Personally I think it's kinda embarrassing they're doing this, while here in Canada we still can't decide how to replace our coal (and not all clean coal)
stations.

[Just plain old Punisher]

I say we let them go through the cost and expense of developing the technology, and then steal it.

Turn about is fair play.

As far as viable fusion is concerned, that's at least 20 years away.