China's trillion-dollar 'artificial sun' breaks a new record

The South China Morning Post reported that China's 'Artificial Sun' has broken a record, managing to generate and maintain extremely hot, highly confined plasma for seven minutes.

The South China Morning Post highlights this breaks a previous record set in 2017 of 101 seconds and makes the country (and the rest of humanity) closer to finally developing high-efficiency, low-cost, thermonuclear fusion reactors.

China has been developing for years this “artificial sun”, an energy source with a power capacity that is comparable to our closest star.

Pictured: The beginnings of the project.

It goes without saying that harnessing a seemingly infinite power source with an amount of energy equivalent to the sun is a game-changer for the whole world.

China's “artificial sun” goes by the name of Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). It's a nuclear reactor capable of reaching and surpassing the temperature of the sun.

In the past, EAST reached 70 million degrees Celsius for 17 minutes, as reported by the Xinhua news agency and picked up by The Independent. That is roughly five times the temperature of the sun.

Image: Unsplash / NASA

The aim of the project is to go from nuclear fission, which is what nuclear plants currently use, to nuclear fusion, which could be the cleanest source of energy yet.

“Nuclear fusion could be the cleanest energy source available because it replicates the sun's physics by merging atomic nuclei to generate large amounts of energy into electricity”, writes Elizabeth Gamillo for The Smithsonian Magazine.

Several international news sources claim that China has invested over one trillion US dollars in this artificial sun.

Replicating the sun would translate into a seemingly infnite source of clean energy. It would not consume fuel, such as coal, gas, or oil. Scientists also claim that it would not produce radioactive waste.

China isn't the only one working on this type of project, although probably it is the most advanced yet.

The United States, the European Union, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and India are all working together in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or ITER. A total of 35 nations are collaborating on this project.

ITER, which is located in the southern French region of Provence, is scheduled to start working by 2025.

Advocates for nuclear fusion argue that this type of power source is safer than nuclear power since it generates reduced radioactivity and little high-level nuclear waste.

There's also no risk of a meltdown, meaning fears of scenarios like Chernobyl, Fukushima, or Three Mile Island would be a thing of the past.

However, there are a few people who are skeptical about nuclear fusion. “I’m not very excited,” said Chary Rangacharyulu, an expert in nuclear physics at the University of Saskatchewan, per BBC World.

Rangacharyulu and other critics point out that, right now, nuclear fusion can only consume more energy than it can provide in return.

Another con is that we haven't figured out yet how we can repurpose all that raw power into electricity for everyday use.

Image: Unsplash / Anthony Indraus

Despite all this, research marches on. If the project is successful, China would have an important edge when it comes to energy production worldwide.

The most optimistic forecasts set 2050 as the year humanity would have managed to exploit and channel the sun-like power of nuclear fusion.

The latest country to bet on nuclear fusion is the United Kingdom, which is currently seeking a location to build its own experimental nuclear reactor.

Imagen: Unsplash / Martin Sepion

Bloomberg reports that investors believe that nuclear fusion is a safe bet and in 2020 they invested up to 300 million US dollars in private enterprises linked to these projects.

Image: Unsplash / Pepi Stojanovski

The idea of harvesting the energy of something as powerful as the sun might have sounded like an idea out of fantasy or science fiction just a few years back. Now, it's around the corner of becoming a reality.