Yeah, that’s basically what I had understood to the the case, I guess my real question is - is there anything unusual about this new Chinese project? Or is it just more of the same?
They have achieved over a minute of sustained firing now. I personally, highly doubt that the problems are unsolvable, it’s just a matter of doing sustained investment in the tech which hasn’t really been done at this scale before. Meanwhile, the solution to plasma control problem is AI, Chinese team successfully developed a system that can do early detection of disruptions.
15 min would be huge, it’s going to be really interesting to see what this all looks like in a few years. Honestly, China cracking fusion would be the real new Sputnik moment for the world.
The article says they, and another facility in France, achieved over 1000 seconds last year. I dunno, we’ve been told we’re getting close to fusion power for about 70 years, now. I’m not optimistic.
If you look at the amount of funding fusion has been receiving up to now, it’s not really surprising that not much progress has happened. If China ends up devoting resources towards making it happen at state level, that’s a whole different game.
Yeah, that’s basically what I had understood to the the case, I guess my real question is - is there anything unusual about this new Chinese project? Or is it just more of the same?
They have achieved over a minute of sustained firing now. I personally, highly doubt that the problems are unsolvable, it’s just a matter of doing sustained investment in the tech which hasn’t really been done at this scale before. Meanwhile, the solution to plasma control problem is AI, Chinese team successfully developed a system that can do early detection of disruptions.
I saw an article claiming north of 15 minutes of fusion at CAS - https://www.the-independent.com/tech/nuclear-fusion-china-artificial-sun-b2896015.html - admittedly not a scholarly article.
15 min would be huge, it’s going to be really interesting to see what this all looks like in a few years. Honestly, China cracking fusion would be the real new Sputnik moment for the world.
The article says they, and another facility in France, achieved over 1000 seconds last year. I dunno, we’ve been told we’re getting close to fusion power for about 70 years, now. I’m not optimistic.
If you look at the amount of funding fusion has been receiving up to now, it’s not really surprising that not much progress has happened. If China ends up devoting resources towards making it happen at state level, that’s a whole different game.