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Jakarta –
China successfully powered its ‘artificial sun’ nuclear fusion reactor for the first time on Friday. This energy from the ‘artificial sun’ is said to have a temperature 10 times higher than the core of the sun.
Located in the southwest of Sichuan province and completed at the end of last year, this reactor is often called an artificial sun because of the heat and energy it generates.
According to a report by the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), the reactor, called HL-2M Tokamak, is capable of operating at temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius. Meanwhile, the core of the sun only reaches a temperature of 15 million degrees Celsius.
The chief engineer of the CNNC Fusion Science Institute at the Southwest Physics Institute, Yang Qingwei, said that the HL-2M can achieve a magnetic plasma confinement time of up to 10 seconds.
“HL-2M is China’s largest artificial sun with the best parameters,” said Xu Min, director of the institute, as quoted by the South China Morning Post, on Saturday (5/12/2020).
China aims to develop fusion technology as it plans to build experimental reactors starting next year, build industrial prototypes by 2035, and enter large-scale commercial use in 2050.
Chinese scientists plan to use the reactor to collaborate with scientists working on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a France-based nuclear fusion research project around the world, expected to be completed by 2025.
But achieving the merger is extremely difficult and very expensive, with a total cost of ITER estimated at $ 22.5 billion. ITER, which is being built in France, is also designed to operate in temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius.
(fdl / fdl)
