China claims success in testing fusion reactor

Schumacher

Senior Member
Putting this in the General Military thread, not sure where else to post it. :)

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China claims success in testing fusion reactor
The Associated Press

Published: September 28, 2006
BEIJING China claims to have carried out a successful first test Thursday on its experimental thermonuclear fusion reactor, state media reported.

The brief Xinhua News Agency report gave no details about the nature of the test or the results.

The test was carried out on a Tokamak fusion device, built in Hefei, the capital of eastern China's Anhui province, it said.

The facility is a smaller version of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) to be built in southern France, which is not expected to be fully operational for a decade, state media reported in June.

Fusion reproduces the sun's power source and produces no greenhouse gas emissions and only low levels of radioactive waste. Researchers hope it may eventually provide a cheaper, safer, cleaner and endless energy resource, reducing the world's dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power.

China has been eager to claim progress in the project, said to be the first such reactor in the world, as well as other advanced technologies.


BEIJING China claims to have carried out a successful first test Thursday on its experimental thermonuclear fusion reactor, state media reported.

The brief Xinhua News Agency report gave no details about the nature of the test or the results.

The test was carried out on a Tokamak fusion device, built in Hefei, the capital of eastern China's Anhui province, it said.

The facility is a smaller version of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) to be built in southern France, which is not expected to be fully operational for a decade, state media reported in June.

Fusion reproduces the sun's power source and produces no greenhouse gas emissions and only low levels of radioactive waste. Researchers hope it may eventually provide a cheaper, safer, cleaner and endless energy resource, reducing the world's dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power.

China has been eager to claim progress in the project, said to be the first such reactor in the world, as well as other advanced technologies.
 

oringo

Junior Member
Putting this in the General Military thread, not sure where else to post it. :)

The brief Xinhua News Agency report gave no details about the nature of the test or the results.

The test was carried out on a Tokamak fusion device, built in Hefei, the capital of eastern China's Anhui province, it said.

Also from the artical:
Cheng said the test was considered a success because the reactor produced plasma, a hot cloud of supercharged particles. She wouldn't give other details.
Plasma is One indication of a success, but the real indication is how long that plasma lasted and whether there was positive net energy resulted from it. I think this is probably just a test-fire of this new facility, to demonstrate that it is working. But "success" is not really there yet. See
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for more information on China's EAST tokamaks reactor.
 
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renmin

Junior Member
Do you guys think that China might be at the verge of solving cold fusion? It seems unreal. Cold Fusion has been deemed impossible.
 
D

Deleted member 675

Guest
Do you guys think that China might be at the verge of solving cold fusion? It seems unreal. Cold Fusion has been deemed impossible.

Even if this report were true, China hasn't made fusion a viable reality. Decades ago we made electricity powered through fusion through part of the JET project. The problem is actually conducting the reactions on a scale that makes it a useful economic investment. And currently no one has done that.

I still believe that ITER is the most probable way to progressing along the road to commercial fusion power.
 

oringo

Junior Member
Do you guys think that China might be at the verge of solving cold fusion? It seems unreal. Cold Fusion has been deemed impossible.

This news is not related to cold fusion at all. Tokamaks-style reactors are not cold, indeed, the plasamas created in tokamaks reactions are millions of degrees hot. Cold fusion has been mostly considered a myth, although there has been recent lab results of "successful" cold fusion. But even in those "successful" cold fusion labs, they admit that there is no net energy gain, and the only indications of the fusion reaction was some neutrons. So at the very most these lab cold fusion devices can be used as a cheap and clean neutron source, but not for energy generation.

So to answer your question, no, China is not at the verge of solving cold fusion. In fact, I don't even think they are all that interested in cold fusion. It's just a vaporware dreamed up by sci-fi fans.

P.S.
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is the recent report that I'm referring to.
 
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Schumacher

Senior Member
Even if this report were true, China hasn't made fusion a viable reality. Decades ago we made electricity powered through fusion through part of the JET project. The problem is actually conducting the reactions on a scale that makes it a useful economic investment. And currently no one has done that.

I still believe that ITER is the most probable way to progressing along the road to commercial fusion power.

Yes, even the Chinese themselves admitted commercial viability of fusion is abt 50 yrs away.
The much larger ITER, of which China is a part, is much larger but it won't run until 10 yrs from now.
 
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