In a world first, Chinese engineers have achieved brief nuclear fusion with a much cleaner and abundant fuel supply in what an international review team called a “significant and valuable” advance in the field.
Using hydrogen-boron as fuel, a state-backed energy company used a laser and radio waves to generate a plasma within a spherical reactor device known as a tokamak.
GNN has reported often on developments in nuclear fusion made around the world, including discoveries and advancements in the US, Japan, Europe, and China.
Nuclear fusion is a potential new energy source with increasingly real potential to solve the West’s energy needs. It replicates the process of melding two atomic nuclei together which happens at the center of our Sun, a function of physics which releases intense amounts of energy as heat through escaping neutrons.
Theoretically, it has the potential to generate enough energy to power a household for a human lifetime on a single glass of seawater, remarked MIT’s spinout fusion company. It produces no emissions, and unlike nuclear fission, the currently-used method of nuclear power, generates no radioactive waste.
There are many hang-ups and roadblocks. Discussing fusion is discussing one the most complex, albeit understood, challenges in engineering. To name one, the existing fuel source theorized as standard for the commercialization of fusion, a mixture of deuterium and tritium, produces radiation and is extremely expensive.
While deuterium is already produced in bulk seawater processing, tritium cannot be mined, is naturally radioactive, and is found only in trace amounts in nature. In contrast, ENN Group, a leading Chinese clean energy provider, has opted for the hydrogen-boron route.
Inside the tokamak chamber, one hydrogen proton with a boron-11 nucleus are fused to produce harmless helium nuclei (alpha particles) and energy, without releasing high-energy neutrons, i.e. radiation. World Nuclear News reports that private fusion energy companies like TAE Technologies in the US and Marvel Fusion in Germany are experimenting with hydrogen-boron fuel.
Yang Yuanming, the chief engineer who led the fusion project at ENN, explained to South China Morning Post in Hong Kong that in addition to an unorthodox fuel source, their method for generating the plasma—a 4th state of matter that gives off the energy which would be sold as electricity—was also novel.
Typically, to achieve and sustain fusion, the molecules in a reactor need to be heated to hundreds of millions of degrees using the pressure of an intense and contained magnetic field generated by superconducting magnets.
Here, ENN used a dual approach of high-energy neutral beam injection and radio frequency waves to target the exact spot in the hydrogen-boron fuel where the particles are most likely to react.
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“Under this mechanism, a large number of ‘fast protons’ are rapidly generated within the system,” reports Dannie Peng at SCMP. “Acting as a catalyst for the reaction, these high-energy particles triggered a chain reaction, pushing the overall fusion reaction rate beyond 100 million times per second.”
A delegation of visiting scientists reviewed the experiment and agreed unanimously it was “a significant and valuable contribution” to the field, and likely to enrich future attempts at commercializing what many, including more than one great science-fiction author, have described as the “last” energy source.
Yang, the chief engineer, shared this latest milestone on social media on Monday morning.
“[We will] strive to get the plasma to 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit) as soon as possible!”
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