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China made an artificial star that’s 6 times hotter than the sun
and it could be the future of energimage

Nuclear fusion could be the future of energy ,
replacing fossil fuels with our own artificial stars.
China built a fusion reactor that reaches temperatures of 100
million degrees Celsius that’s six times hotter than the sun.
The reactor is called Experimental Advanced Superconducting
Tokamak (EAST) and sustained nuclear fusion for about 10
seconds before shutting down.
While it was a milestone for EAST, we’re still a long way
from generating sustainable energy on Earth.
Imagine if we could replace fossil fuels with our very own stars.
And no, we’re not talking about solar power. We’re talking nuclear
fusion. And recent research is helping us get there. Meet the
Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, EAST for short.

EAST is a fusion reactor based in Hefei, China. And it can now
reach temperatures over six times hotter than the sun. Let’s take a
look at what’s happening inside. Fusion occurs when two lightweight
atoms combine into a single, larger one, releasing energy in the
process. It sounds simple enough, but it’s not easy to pull off.
Because those two atoms share a positive charge. And just like two
opposing magnets, those positive atoms repel each other.

Stars, like our sun, have a great way of overcoming this
repulsion. Their massive size. Which creates a tremendous amount of
pressure in their cores.So the atoms are forced closer together
making them more likely to collide. There’s just one problem: We
don’t have the technology to recreate that kind of pressure on
Earth.

But luckily, there’s another way. You can also generate fusion
with extreme temperatures. And that’s exactly what devices like
EAST do. The higher the temperature, the faster the atoms move
around and the more likely they are to collide.

But it quickly becomes a balancing act. If the temperature is
too hot, the atoms move too fast and zip passed each other. If it’s
too cold, the atoms won’t move fast enough. So, the ideal
temperature to generate fusion is around 100 million degrees
Celsius. That’s more than 6 times hotter than our sun’s core.

Only a few fusion experiments in the world have surpassed this
milestone. And the latest one was EAST. It sustained nuclear fusion
for about 1 0 seconds before shutting down. And while it
was a breakthrough for EAST, it’s a long way from generating
sustainable energy for the people of Earth.

And that’s actually on purpose. EAST is a tiny reactor. At only
a few meters across, it’s not meant to be a full-fledged power
plant. It’s an experiment. And right now, its job is to help us
design more effective fusion technology that could, one day, power
entire cities.

Like ITER. Short for International Thermonuclear Experimental
Reactor. It’s the world’s biggest fusion project to date. 35
countries have poured billions of dollars into its construction.
And is designed to be the first fusion reactor to ever produce more
fusion power than the power used to heat it up.

You see, you need to pour a lot of energy into these machines to
get them to work. This recent EAST test, for example, guzzled over
10 Megawatts of power. Enough to power 1,640 American homes for a
year. And it didn’t yield even half that amount. Since the entire
point of a power plant is to, well, produce power, it’s a pretty
important issue to work out.

But it’s worth the effort. Why? Well for one thing, fusion
reactors would produce practically no radioactive waste compared to
the kind of reaction we see in today’s nuclear fission power
plants. But even better. Fusion reactors can run
on seawater a renewable, sustainable resource.

For perspective, the amount of water just on the top inch of
Lake Erie is enough to produce more power than all of the fossil
fuels left on the planet. And unlike other energy sources, it
doesn’t need the sun to shine or the wind to blow.

In a time of dwindling resources and worsening climate change we
could sure use it.

 

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