China has an artificial sun- a fusion reactor made to replicate the sun and stars nuclear fission. Read along to find out more about China’s artificial sun.
What is the artificial sun?
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) is a nuclear reactor that undergoes fission and creates heat. EAST set a record after running at 288 million degrees Fahrenheit for 20 seconds. Additionally, it heated up to 216 million degrees Fahrenheit for 1 minute 41 seconds just before.
However, there is a long way to go from its experimental step. But, “The breakthrough is significant progress, and the ultimate goal should be keeping the temperature at a stable level for a long time,” said Li Miao, the director of the Department of physics at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China.
More details on EAST
The advanced nuclear fusion device is in Hefei, China at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP). The device was made to replicate the sun’s nuclear power. Apart from EAST, HL-2M tokamak and J-TEXT are two other advanced tokamaks in China.
How does China’s artificial sun work?
The tokamak is developed to replicate nuclear fusion. What is nuclear fusion? It is a process by which we can produce very large amounts of energy. However, it does not produce a lot of waste. Previously, only fission could create such large amounts of energy.
Fission, on the other hand, creates energy by splitting a heavy nucleus into lighter ones. Fission is cheaper but, it creates more nuclear waste. Hence, we prefer nuclear fusion. In addition to that nuclear fusion is safer and generates fewer greenhouse gasses. Once achieved, it will pave out paths of greener power for the future.