News on China's scientific and technological development.

kroko said:

Does that mean that china now knows how to produce single crystal turbine blades?

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escobar said:

Jiangsu University successfully developed the world's first permanent magnetic bearing for centrifugal pump. Its advantages are: no mechanical wear, lubrication, sealing and friction noise, small centrifugal pump volume, more energy-efficient, long service life, no need of downtime for repair and maintenance:

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Can be used to show the feasibility of permanent maglev technology and has broad application prospects in the field of defense, biomedical engineering.

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The head of China's top scientific think tank on Monday urged the country to seize opportunities presented in the world's new round of technological revolution.

Bai Chunli, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said during an interview with Xinhua that while facing the new round of science and technology revolution, developed countries and emerging ones stand at the same starting line.

China, as a developing country, should make good use of global innovation resources and draw on the good practices of developed countries in order to avoid detours and catch up with those countries that are currently leaders in technology, Bai said.

He also urged strategic planning at the national level to raise science and technology to a more prominent place, stressing research in basic sciences and pioneering disciplines where revolutionary findings might emerge, including material sciences, life sciences, information sciences and earth sciences.

Furthermore, he said China's capacity for science and technology innovation has improved significantly over the past decade.

He cited several figures, including those showing that China's investment in research and development stood at 861 billion yuan (137.9 billion U.S. dollars) in 2011, making it the second-highest such investment in the world.

Moreover, he said that the country's Science Citation Index (SCI) rose to the seventh place in the world in 2011 and the number of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications ranked fourth globally.

Bai expects that by 2020 China's investment in the science and technology sector will account for 2.5 percent of the country's GDP (gross domestic product). Calculated with the estimated growth rate of the GDP, scientific and technological investment will exceed 2 trillion yuan by then.

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As the U.S. launched what's expected to be the world's fastest supercomputer at 20 petaflops, China is building a machine that is intended to be five times faster when it is deployed in 2015.

China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer will run at 100 petaflops (quadrillion floating-point calculations per second), according to the Guangzhou Supercomputing Center, where the machine will be housed.

Tianhe-2 could help keep China competitive with the future supercomputers of other countries, as industry experts estimate machines will start reaching 1,000-petaflop performance by 2018.

The Tianhe-2 is not China's first attempt at building a world-beating supercomputer. It briefly took the top spot on the world's list of most powerful supercomputers in 2010 with the Tianhe-1A. That computer is now ranked fifth in the world with a theoretical peak speed of 4.7 petaflops, and uses processors from Intel and Nvidia.

Like the Tianhe-1A, the Tianhe-2 will also be designed by China's National University of Defense Technology.

The Chinese government is pushing the development of the country's supercomputing technology, according to Zhang Yunquan, a professor at the Institute of Software Chinese Academy of Sciences, who also keeps track of China's top supercomputers.

The government is aiming for China's supercomputers to reach 100 petaflops in 2015, and then 1 exaflop (1,000 petaflops), in 2018, he said. This comes from China's "863 program", which was founded in 1986 and is meant to help accelerate the country's development in key technologies.

"Taking the top spot in the world's fastest supercomputers gave us a lot of drive, and gave us more confidence to develop better machines," he said. But while China has largely relied on U.S. chips and software to develop its supercomputers, Zhang said this could gradually change as the country invests more in developing its own homegrown technology.

A clear example of this was when last year China's Sunway Bluelight supercomputer grabbed headlines for using a domestically developed processor, the Shenwei 1600.

"This showed that we can make a supercomputer capable of 1 petaflop of performance with our own technology," Zhang said. "I think in the future, as China tries to reach for exascale computing, the designs of these new supercomputers could fully rely on domestic processors. I wouldn't dismiss the possibility."

"But of course, we could take a different road, and end up using both foreign and domestic chips," he added.

China isn't the only one aiming to deliver 100-petaflop computing by 2015. The European Union, Japan and the U.S. have similar ambitions, said Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee who also compiles the list of the world's top 500 supercomputers.

"At this point future statements are easy," he said in an e-mail, noting that there were still technical and financial challenges in building more powerful supercomputers.

China's homegrown supercomputing industry is also still behind the U.S., said Chen Dexun, a senior engineer at the supercomputing center where China's Sunway Bluelight machine is housed.

"This was like a trial," he said of the government decision to use domestically developed processors in the Sunway Bluelight. "Before, we were always using U.S. chips, and so we wanted to see our abilities in making these processors."

As the industry develops, China could also move toward selling its supercomputing technology to places such as Japan and Europe, Chen said.

"But obviously, this technology would never reach the U.S.," he said, referencing the recent U.S. government concerns over the security of Chinese telecommunication equipment being used in the country.

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China first experimental fast neutron reactor passed official checks on Wednesday after 20 years of developments by Chinese scientists, according to the China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE).

Experts organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) conducted examinations on the reactor, the CIAE said.

The experimental fast neutron reactor is regarded as a major breakthrough in China's three-step strategy in developing its nuclear power, namely, from pressurized water reactor, fast neutron reactor, to fusion reactor.

Dubbed as China Experimental Fast Reactor, the development makes China one of a few countries in the world that has experimental, power-generating fast reactors, according to the CIAE.

The experimental fast neutron reactor, with nuclear heat power of 65 megawatts and a power-generating capacity of 20 megawatts, is a large fast reactor power plant in terms of layout and reference. Its safety requirements have reached those of a fourth-generation nuclear power plant.

According to the CIAE, fast neutron reactor is a major type of fourth-generation nuclear power plant, and it sets the direction for the development of such power plants. A fast reactor can make better use of nuclear energy by increasing the utilization rate of uranium to 60 percent, from the 1 percent utilization rate of a traditional pressurized water reactor.

Fast reactor technology can also minimize radioactive discharge and raise security levels of the nuclear energy system.

CIAE president Wan Gang said the fast reactor was developed, set up, operated and managed independently by Chinese professionals.

"China has got patents for many innovation achievements and cultivated its own research and development capabilities and expertise via the building of the experimental fast neutron reactor," he said.

"As an advanced and large sci-tech research and development platform, the experimental fast reactor will boost technological progress in the field and contribute to sustainable development of nuclear power in both China and the world," he said.

Initiated in 1992, the fast-reactor program has been jointly organized by the MOST, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, and the China National Nuclear Corporation, while the CIAE has carried out the program in collaboration with hundreds of universities, research institutions and enterprises.

In May 2009, the experimental neutron fast reactor conducted its heat debug operation and it reached its first nuclear criticality on July 21, 2010. It generated electricity that goes into the grid for the first time on July 22, 2011.

Chinese scientists are now engaged in developing key technologies, such as demonstration fast reactor and mixed-oxide nuclear fuel, in order to develop commercial fast reactors and set up a recycled nuclear fuel system, the CIAE said.

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