The search for a clean and effective energy source is one of the great challenges of humanity for this century. The obvious and growing problem of fossil fuels requires an energy transition to a source of energy without greenhouse gas emissions. Is nuclear energy a safe and reliable alternative?
There are two types of nuclear energy, fission and fusion. Fusion, a process that takes place in the Sun, is much cleaner than fission (a process used by the nuclear power plants that we have today) generates a lot of waste, and this is unstable and its storage is expensive and problematic. On the other hand, fusion hardly produces nuclear waste. But there is no place on Earth capable of recreating the temperatures of a star, necessary for fusion to occur. Or if?
China is already preparing the fusion power plant project for 2050, a date on which they expect this miniature ‘artificial Sun’ to be fully operational: it is the Tokamak Advanced Superconductor (EAST) , the project of a power plant in the shape of Donut, located in the eastern province of Anhui, which achieved a number of firsts in nuclear energy research.
In 2017, it became the first facility of its kind in the world to sustain some of the conditions necessary for nuclear fusion for more than 100 seconds, and last November it reached a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius, six times higher than the core of the Sun.
With this approach, China aims to start generating commercially viable fusion power by mid-century.
EAST is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, which seeks to demonstrate the viability of fusion energy.
Funded and led by the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States, the centerpiece of the multi-million dollar project will be a giant cylindrical fusion device, called a Tokamak.
Now, it is under construction in Provence, in the south of France, and will incorporate parts developed at EAST and also from other research centers.
The promise of nuclear fusion power
Many countries see the promise of unlimited clean energy in nuclear fusion. Fusion, a process contrary to fission, consists of joining nuclei of simple atoms to form more complex ones (the Sun does so continuously by fusing hydrogen to form helium); the result is the release of a great energy power.
But achieving the merger (and in a controlled manner) is extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive : the total cost of ITER is estimated at 20 billion euros.
One of ITER’s top Chinese engineers, Wu Songtao, acknowledged in a statement that China’s technical capabilities in fusion still lag behind the more developed countries, and that the Japanese and American Tokamaks have generally achieved results. most valuable.
But the Anhui test reactor underscores China’s rapid scientific advancement and its determination to become one of the pioneer countries in new energy.
