A leading scientist who organizes China's experimental
controlled thermonuclear fusion said Saturday that a fusion reactor
is expected to generate electricity in a commercial sense in about
half a century.
Wan Yuanxi, a principal researcher and chief coordinator of the
China-made experimental fusion reactor, said experiments are going
on well in a national laboratory in the Chinese Academy of Sciences
(CAS) Institute of Plasma Physics in Hefei, east Anhui
Province.
After joining the International Thermonuclear Experimental
Reactor (ITER) program in 2003, lab data collected from China's
Experimental Advanced Super-conducting Tokamak (EAST), a fusion
reaction idea bred by Russian scientists decades ago, would
contribute to a global consortium for the 4.6-billion-euro ITER
project.
The first successful test was conducted in late September last
year at the CAS laboratory, Wan said. Since then, the facilities
have been operating well.
During the experiment, deuterium and tritium atoms were forced
together at a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius.
"At that temperature, the super heated plasma, which is neither
a gas, a liquid nor a solid, should begin to give off its own
energy," the scientist explained.
The first test lasted nearly three seconds, and generated an
electrical current of 200 kiloamperes, Wan said.
The device is planned to eventually create a plasma lasting 1,
000 consecutive seconds, the longest a fusion reactor has ever
run.
Thanks to fusion technology, the deuterium extracted from one
liter of sea water can produce energy equivalent to that generated
by burning 300 liters of gasoline, Wan said.
The EAST is an upgrade of China's first-generation Tokamak
device and the first of its kind in operation in the world.
The CAS institute spent eight years and 200 million yuan
(US$26.7 million) on building the experimental reactor.
The columniform device, made with special stainless steel, is
about 12 meters high and weighs 400 tons.
Unlike traditional nuclear fission reactors, which split atoms
to create energy and produce dangerous radioactive waste, the EAST
uses nuclear fusion to compress atoms at extremely high
temperatures to generate energy that would produce very little
pollution.
Scientists theorize that a fully functional fusion reactor would
provide cheaper, safer, cleaner and endless energy and reduce the
world's dependence on fossil fuels.
The multinationally collaborated ITER, which is expected to be
completed in 2016, was initiated by the United States and the
Soviet Union.
Among the six partners involved in this ambitious plan, the
European Union will cover 50 percent of the total budget. The
remaining five, the United States, Japan, Russia, the Republic of
Korea and China, will pay 10 percent each.
(Xinhua News Agency October 21, 2007)
