According to official media, a Chinese nuclear fusion reactor has established a new record for sustained high temperatures after running five times hotter than the sun for more than 17 minutes.
During the experiments, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), also known as a “artificial sun,” reached temperatures of 70,000,000C, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
The artificial sun device’s ultimate purpose is to generate near-infinite clean energy by imitating natural processes.
Gong Xianzu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Plasma Physics, said, “The current operation establishes a solid scientific and experimental framework for the functioning of a fusion reactor.”
The experiment will run through June under the EAST programme, which has already cost China over £700 billion.
Nuclear fusion has been hailed as the holy grail of sustainable energy production, but despite decades of research, it is still a long way off from being realised outside of a laboratory.
Nuclear fusion reactors fuse atomic nuclei to generate vast amounts of energy that can be converted into power, mimicking the physics of the sun.
China’s “artificial sun” has set a new record for sustained high temperatures after running 5x hotter than the sun for more than 17 mins. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), known as an “artificial sun”, reached temp of 70,000,000C during the experiments. pic.twitter.com/IYBxch5No9
— ASB News / MILITARY〽️ (@ASBMilitary) January 5, 2022
Unlike the nuclear fission process that powers commercial nuclear energy production, the technique uses no fossil fuels and produces no hazardous waste. Environmental disasters, according to physicists, are significantly less likely.
Another nuclear fusion reactor megaproject is now being built in Marseille, France, and China’s reactor team will provide technological help to it.
When it is finished, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will be the world’s largest reactor.
