By Karl Sanchez
karlof1’s Geopolitical Gymnasium
One of China’s Fusion Factories under construction at Hefei, Anhui Province
Another look from above of the same project.
Guancha writer Lei Yigu used a recent NY Times article as a foil for her article, “China is making every effort to tackle the “ultimate plan” of human energy, what is the US government doing?” I find greater value gained from Guancha than the NY Timesbecause IMO there’s a clearer perspective and focus on the topic. As in many technological realms, China is ahead of or at par with the Outlaw US Empire, and that worries or infuriates a particular class of Americans. Empire policy has opted to exclude/bar China from participation in joint scientific pursuits and has urged its vassals to do the same, although with limited success. This policy of containment has harmed the Empire far more than China. But let’s allow Lei to tell the story:
During the Trump administration, the United States focused on the extraction and overseas sales of oil, natural gas and coal; China, its main economic competitor, has long become the world’s largest supplier of clean energy products such as solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles.
Therefore, the US media New York Times has paid attention to the new battlefield of Sino-US wrestling--nuclear fusion. Its report published on the 13th pointed out that this technology, which contains unlimited clean energy potential, may reshape the energy landscape of the two countries and even the world.
The US media compared in the report that the nuclear fusion research and development paths of China and the United States are completely different: the United States hopes that private industry and market innovation will drive technological breakthroughs, but its government’s support for this field has been repeatedly criticized. On the other side of the world, China has made nuclear fusion a national priority and is mobilizing resources to promote R&D and build large-scale experimental facilities at an astonishing speed, with a clear goal of achieving key technological breakthroughs in the next few years.
The report pointed out that this energy race is not only about who can be the first to master the scientific problem of nuclear fusion, but more importantly, the winner will have the ability to reshape the global energy landscape and geopolitical alliances to dominate the clean energy market in the future.
Liu Chang, a nuclear physicist who returned to China at the beginning of this year and joined Peking University, revealed his personal feelings in an interview with the US media: During his work at the Plasma Physics Laboratory in Princeton, his team was unable to recruit young researchers due to lack of budget. He bluntly said that the lack of support from the U.S. government is one of the important reasons why many fusion researchers have switched to start-ups.
In stark contrast, China is investing a lot of resources in this technology that could be the “ultimate solution” for human energy. Liu Chang emphasized, “China can really continue to invest in important areas.”
US media reported that China, the United States and other countries are now competing to develop nuclear fusion devices that can operate stably, operate repeatedly and meet grid-connected power generation standards. But looking back 20 years ago, China was still a small player in the field of nuclear fusion, growing through cooperation with other countries.
China has worked closely with France to develop the fully superconducting tokamak nuclear fusion experimental device (EAST); it is also a core contributor to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Program, in which 33 countries participate; For most of the past decade, Chinese and American researchers have also carried out many joint experiments in the field of plasma physics.
At present, the R&D progress of China and the United States will soon usher in a head-on competition:
The Federal Fusion Systems Corporation (CFS), the most well-funded nuclear fusion company in the United States, announced earlier that its experimental facility built in Massachusetts will achieve a key goal by 2027: to produce more energy than is needed to operate. This will be a signal that nuclear fusion is expected to power data centers, steel plants and other facilities in the future.
On the other hand, Mao Ning, spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and director of the Information Department, shared the latest progress of the Compact Fusion Energy Experimental Device (BEST) project in Hefei with the world on overseas social platforms, “It is expected to be completed in 2027 and is expected to become the first device in human history to realize fusion power generation.”
According to Xinhua News Agency, according to the research plan, after the completion of the device at the end of 2027, it will conduct deuterium-tritium combustion plasma experimental research to verify its long-pulse steady-state operation ability, strive to achieve fusion power of 20 megawatts to 200 megawatts, achieve output energy greater than energy consumption, and demonstrate fusion energy power generation.
On October 1 this year, the first key component of the BEST project to enter the host hall, the Dewar base, was successfully installed marking a new stage in the construction of the main project of the project, and the development and installation of components began to “accelerate”.
And in January last year, ITER’s British-French physicist Richard Pitts visited the BEST site, which was still just an open space. Today, the project is more than half complete.
Dr. Pitts said that China has accumulated a lot of experience from the ITER project and is now turning this experience into a driving force for independent innovation, “Every time I visit, I am struck by its huge manpower investment and high execution efficiency.”
US media quoted experts as saying that even if the core technology is broken through, nuclear fusion reactors need to be built and operated on a low-cost, industrialized scale in order to truly supply power to the world. In this regard, China’s engineering construction expertise gives it a clear advantage.
Jimmy Goodrich, a senior fellow at the University of California’s Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, bluntly said, “The risk for the United States is that even if we take the lead in finding a viable technological path, China may complete engineering and scale before us.”
Federal Fusion Systems has experienced China’s R&D speed firsthand.
Last year, the company’s scientists published paper showing the giant D-shaped magnet it developed for a new tokamak device in Massachusetts. This magnet is made of ultra-low resistance material and is capable of generating an ultra-strong magnetic field.
This summer, a Chinese start-up focusing on the research and development and commercial application of fusion energy technology also published a paper showing a magnet with similar performance.
While still clamoring about so-called “reverse engineering,” CFS co-founder Dennis Whyte admits that China’s ability to quickly mobilize supply chain and manufacturing capacity to complete the development and testing of magnets is itself a demonstration of “amazing technological prowess.”
Alain Bécoulet, the French chief scientist of ITER, directly refuted the “imitation theory”. He emphasized: “China now has the ability to innovate, no longer simply imitate or copy.”
While technology research and development is making great progress, China has also shown an open and shared cooperative attitude. On the morning of November 24, in the BEST host hall of Hefei Future Science City, Anhui Province, the “Burning Plasma” international science program project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was officially launched, and the BEST research plan was released for the first time to the global fusion community.
On the same day, fusion scientists from more than 10 countries, including China, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Austria, and Belgium, jointly signed the Hefei Fusion Declaration. The declaration advocates the spirit of openness, sharing and win-win cooperation, and encourages researchers from all over the world to carry out cooperative fusion research in China.
“The door (for collaborative research) is always open,” said the head of external cooperation at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
On the other hand, the United States is a posture of “isolation”. ITER’s Bekule has long understood this. When he attended the IAEA’s annual fusion conference in Chengdu in October this year, he found that there was no U.S. representative at the scene. Three researchers told the New York Times that the Trump administration’s Department of Energy discouraged U.S. scientists from attending the meeting at the time, and the department did not respond to a request for comment.
At the same time, as the importance of energy security to industries such as artificial intelligence is increasing, some U.S. government and industry people with Cold War hegemony still on their minds also regard nuclear fusion as a “win or lose” global influence battlefield.
Ylli Bajraktari, head of the Special Competition Research Project at the Washington Research Institute, exaggerated, “Whoever wins and implements technology will set the pattern for the rest of this century.”
In May, Trump signed a series of executive orders on nuclear energy, including overhauling the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and revising regulatory processes to speed up nuclear reactor testing. A senior White House official said the administration hopes to “test and deploy” new nuclear reactors before the end of Trump’s second term in January 2029.
The U.S. Department of Energy also released a new roadmap in October, planning to help the nuclear fusion industry develop and commercialize in the 2030s, calling for the construction and upgrading of multiple scientific facilities, but canceled the previously proposed plan to “lead the design and construction of nuclear fusion demonstration power plants in the 2040s”.
The Department of Energy said the cancellation was due to U.S. startups already rapidly advancing the construction of such power plants. But many scientists believe that the U.S. government needs to do more.
U.S. media analysis pointed out that although the Trump administration supports nuclear fission technology to supply energy to existing nuclear power plants, it has not shown the same interest in nuclear fusion, which has made the field increasingly dependent on venture capital to promote development. In addition, while China is focusing on cultivating nuclear fusion talents, the Trump administration is cutting scientific research funding, which has also cast a shadow on the development of nuclear fusion in the United States.
CNN pointed out last year that although the United States was one of the first countries in the world to try nuclear fusion power generation research, the pace of China, a “latecomer”, is significantly “accelerating”. The report quoted industry data as saying that since 2015, the number of nuclear fusion patents in China has surged, surpassing that of other countries in the world.
The report also mentioned that Chinese companies have built the world’s first all-temperature superconducting tokamak device. Andrew Holland, CEO of the Washington-based Fusion Industry Association, admitted that in contrast, tokamak installations in the United States are generally aging and have to rely on equipment from Japanese, European and British allies to advance research.
“We don’t have anything like that. The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory has been upgrading its tokamak unit for 10 years. Another operating tokamak unit in the United States is 30 years old. The U.S. national laboratory does not have a modern nuclear fusion device,” he said. [My Emphasis]
China has several operational tokamaks with EAST and HH70 being the most advanced, BEST is being built and will be operated based on what’s been learned at the other facilities. But other nations are also building tokamaks: Japan, South Korea, and of course Russia where the name originated. Some European nations continue to be involved in research but most are too broke to do their own thing. I’ve reported on fusion advances and must say that its commercial application is still several years away. With BEST starting as 2027 ends, there remain numerous obstacles to overcome that will continue to be tested at the existing tokamaks.
Cutaway image of a tokamak showing its D-shaped magnets
Russia has its latest research tokamak at the Kurchatov Institute that’s called the T-15MD and is small relative to other tokamaks:
T-15MD tokamak at Kurchatov Institute
In research for this article, I came across this little gem for those interested in science history, “Tokamaks: from A D Sakharov to the present (the 60-year history of tokamaks),” that was published in 2012 in English, and from which I provide this captivating excerpt:
In 1950, an undistinguished event occurred, whose description by the well-known theoretical physicist and a future Full Member of the RAS Vitaly Dmitrievich Shafranov would open with the humorous couplet:
Listen, guys, to the story of yours, It all commenced with a soldier who served.
The case in point is sergeant Oleg Aleksandrovich Lavrent’ev, who served in the Army on Sakhalin and wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) (CC CPSU) on 22 July 1950 to propose: (i) the use of lithium-6 deuteride instead of liquefied deuterium and tritium in a hydrogen bomb; (ii) the development of a system with electrostatic confinement of hot plasma for realizing controlled thermonuclear fusion.
And so it began and still evades human ability to harness and put into commercial production. 2030 will make 80 years since Andrei D Sakharov and Igor E Tamm formulated the suggestion. In 1961, the following statement was made by an at the IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in Salzburg by the American M N Rosenbluth:
“While it is unfortunately true that theorists have not told the experimentalists how to build a thermonuclear machine, it is also true that we have been looking hard for very many years for a fundamental reason why a plasma fusion reactor should be impossible and we have not found any such reason.” Next, he added: “If I may make a statement from the heart, I believe the chances are very good that in twenty years or so mankind will have solved the problem of controlled fusion if only he has not lost in the meantime the far more difficult struggle against uncontrolled fusion.”
A year later, that struggle was almost lost.
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