According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences plasma news, China's magnetically constrained nuclear fusion experimental device "artificial sun" has made a major breakthrough, laying an important technical foundation for the subsequent development and utilization of nuclear fusion clean energy.
You may not be very familiar with nuclear energy. You are not very clear about what this breakthrough means. Next, let's take a closer look at the knowledge of nuclear energy, fission energy and fusion energy, in order to better understand the importance of this "artificial sun" breakthrough.
First of all, you must first know what nuclear energy is? Nuclear energy, also known as atomic energy, is a new member of the energy family, mainly the energy released from the nucleus through nuclear reactions. It has two main forms, fission energy and fusion energy.
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Among them, fission energy is the huge energy released by the nucleus of heavy metal elements through fission. At present, thanks to the development of controlled nuclear fission technology, the application of fission energy in China has been commercialized, such as nuclear (fission) power stations. However, it must be said that the development of fission energy is limited and limited, because the heavy metal elements such as uranium required for fission are rare on the earth, and the conventional fission reactor is very bad - it will produce more radioactive nuclear waste.
The fusion energy is the energy released by the aggregation of two lighter nuclei into a heavier nuclei. At present, countries are vigorously conducting research on controlled nuclear fusion, mainly to achieve the peaceful use of fusion energy. In fact, humans have already achieved nuclear fusion in the early days before the hydrogen bomb explosion. However, this explosion is an uncontrollable instantaneous energy release. Because it is uncontrollable, it is potentially dangerous.
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Therefore, countries have accelerated their research on controlled nuclear fusion. Unlike fission, the fuel that sustains fusion is the isotope of hydrogen—the strontium and the strontium, and the scorpion is extremely rich in reserves and is hidden in the seawater of the earth. In short, fusion energy is a clean, pollution-free, safe new energy source that can be developed and utilized infinitely. Therefore, this "root" looks so big, the countries of the world, especially the developed countries, naturally spare no effort to compete for research and development of fusion energy, to take root. Therefore, you should be able to imagine the importance of the breakthrough of the large scientific device "artificial sun".
Then, let's take a look at the major breakthroughs in China's "artificial sun". Chinese scientists have made progress in the forty years of nuclear fusion research, making China's "artificial sun" breakthrough in the following aspects: achieving heating power of more than 10 megawatts, plasma energy storage increased to 300 In the kilojoule, the electron temperature of the plasma center reaches 100 million degrees for the first time. Under the conditions of similar RF reactor heating, low momentum injection, tungsten divertor and the like, the high confinement, high density and high specific pressure are realized. Inductive advanced steady-state operation mode... In a nutshell, that is, China has taken a crucial step towards the future fusion reactor experiment!
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Finally, let's take a closer look at why this “artificial sun” needs to be realized under tungsten divertor conditions. As you may know, divertor is an important part of Tokamak. The presence of a tungsten divertor is primarily intended to deflect the charged particles produced by the central plasma discharge into a single chamber. In this room, the charged particles bombard the baffle and become neutral particles are removed, avoiding the charged particles bombarding the main chamber wall to release secondary particles, affecting the magnetic field configuration at the edge of the confinement zone. After nearly forty years of various tokamak device experiments, researchers have found that tungsten (W) materials have excellent thermal properties, low solubility of H and low sputtering rate, making W the present and future One of the important materials for the divertor in the Carmack device. Japan has already completely diluted the divertor as early as 2013 and has been the main experimental object of the future divertor. Our country has also achieved full tungsten of the divertor, that is to say, the pieces you see from the picture are all tungsten pieces made of tungsten.
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At the moment, 90% of human energy comes from petrochemical fuels, which also leads to serious pollution - acid rain, water pollution, greenhouse effect, ozone hole, severe weather changes and so on. Moreover, we all know that these resources are very valuable and limited. They also have many applications, and almost all industrial sectors are inseparable from petrochemical products. Therefore, for energy, the existence of such rapid consumption, China's "artificial sun" also shoulders an extremely important scientific mission - that is, in the future, to achieve the commercial goal of fusion energy, for the earth, or for the world Bring revolutionary changes. I hope that China's nuclear fusion devices will be able to make more breakthroughs in the near future, so that this "artificial sun" will benefit all mankind.
