"Yes, I'm more optimistic about the future of stellarators than tokamaks!" While stellarator technology development is far more challenging than tokamaks, and unlike tokamaks, where there's a wealth of experience to draw on, it's still just a concept, requiring a complete overhaul. However, the potential for future applications and technological advancements is proportionally greater.
Although the current international mainstream of controlled nuclear fusion is the tokamak, according to the information Wu Tong has learned, the tokamak device has already reached a bottleneck if it is put into use for a while. It is still progressing in seconds, and the progress is quite difficult. There is almost no hope of success!
The current record for the longest discharge is held by Huazhong University of Science and Technology's "EAST" at 102 seconds, which almost marks the ceiling of the "discharge time" of the tokamak device technology route. Anyone who wants to increase this record by one second will have to pay a high price.
The future prospects of controlled nuclear fusion are undoubtedly very bright. However, like the darkness before dawn, this darkness is too long!
The current situation of the ITER project is not optimistic. The annual expenditure is exceeding the target by billions. However, the progress of the project has not made remarkable progress. The governments of various countries, including those across the sea, have gradually lost their patience.
"I agree. I'm quite interested in stellarators, too!" Lu Xiao nodded affirmatively. Even if Wu Tong couldn't see, he'd certainly considered them. Otherwise, he wouldn't have immediately thought of them based on Wu Tong's mere comment. Of course, he'd previously considered them more as a field of exploration for fighter jet engines.
"Controlled nuclear fusion is a systemic issue. Tokamaks and stellarators, magnetic confinement and inertial confinement... To accomplish all of this, we still have to return to the progress of materials and engineering. Stellarator devices have one advantage over tokamaks.
Thanks to the design advantages of the stellarator device, we fortunately do not need to use an ohmic transformer to start the plasma current like the tokamak device, nor do we need to consider problems such as distorted membranes, magnetic surface tearing, and resistive wall membranes!"
"This transfers the difficulty to engineering and materials!" Lu Xiao said with a smile. However, similarly, if they take the path of stellarator devices, this is also their strong point, especially Wu Tong's strong point!
"We need a larger electromagnetic field to complete the magnetic confinement of plasma, and we also need to effectively control the magnetic field. Therefore, we need a material that can achieve superconductivity at room temperature, or at least under less extreme conditions, so that we can create a larger and controllable magnetic field to confine the plasma!"
Plasma confinement is a technology that limits plasma to a certain area and prevents it from flying away.
The particles in the plasma have kinetic energy, they will move around and disperse, and some particles can even bombard the walls of the vacuum chamber, causing the loss of the number of plasma particles and their energy.
When particles hit the wall of the vacuum chamber and the material on it is sputtered into the plasma region, the plasma energy is lost in the form of radiation, resulting in a decrease in the temperature of the plasma.
In order to reduce the number of plasma particles and energy loss, the plasma can be confined by using the characteristic of "field" energy transfer interaction. The field can be a magnetic field, an electric field, or a gravitational field.
Thermonuclear fusion reactions in the sun and other stars rely on gravitational fields to confine plasma. These stars have large masses and strong gravity, which is enough to hold the plasma together and carry out thermonuclear reactions.
However, it is impossible to confine the high-temperature plasma on Earth and make it undergo thermonuclear reactions by relying on weak gravity. Other confinement methods must be used.
The main methods of confining plasma in thermonuclear fusion research are magnetic confinement and inertial confinement. Tokamak devices and stellarator devices both use magnetic confinement to reduce the loss of plasma particles and energy.
In controlled nuclear fusion, the temperature of the plasma during the fusion reaction starts at billions of units. Therefore, they need a larger and more controllable magnetic field to achieve the fusion reaction and confine the plasma to make it controllable. This is also one of the important cores of the entire controlled nuclear fusion.
"Water coolers, plasma confinement, superconducting materials, and wall materials that can withstand the high temperatures of fusion reactions starting from billions of times... these are all technical fields that we must break through!" Wu Tong pointed out one by one. To build a stellarator device, they need to overcome those difficulties. They are on a pioneering path. Currently, both internationally and domestically, they cannot give them much experience, especially now that the tokamak has reached its ceiling.
"I've been researching water cooler design and plasma confinement for the past two days. I have some experience in this area!" Lu Xiao picked out his area of expertise and took it over. He would do the preliminary design and then work with Wu Tong on the final optimization, making sure to overcome these two major challenges!
"Superconducting materials, and reactor wall materials, these are all up to you!" "Materials have always been Wu Tong's forte!" He couldn't help but sigh, "If we could develop room-temperature superconducting materials, not only would we be able to control nuclear fusion, but other energy problems would also be easily solved!"
Thermal power plants can be built anywhere, but green power plants that use renewable energy must be carefully sited, because strong winds can only be found on the plateau, long periods of sunlight can only be found in the desert, and controlled nuclear fusion is still being tackled. Therefore, one of the biggest challenges in transitioning to green energy is how to transport electricity from remote areas to cities across distances of hundreds of kilometers.
The most advanced superconducting cables can transmit electricity over thousands of kilometers with only a few percent loss. However, the problem is that the cables must be constantly immersed in liquid nitrogen at 77K (approximately -196°C). Therefore, if such cables are to be installed, pumps and cooling equipment must be installed every kilometer or so, significantly increasing the cost and complexity of superconducting cable solutions.
Superconductors that can work at room temperature and pressure will make the dream of global electricity supply come true.
Room-temperature superconductivity has always been the ultimate challenge in the pursuit of superconductivity. It's a topic that causes so many superconductivity researchers headaches and heartbreak.
Wu Tong wrote down the topic of room-temperature superconductivity in his notebook. This was a hurdle that had to be overcome! If they could achieve a breakthrough in room-temperature superconductivity materials and magnetic field confinement, they would undoubtedly be able to break through their current predicament and truly integrate controlled nuclear fusion into their research and development process. This was the first challenge they had to overcome. At the same time, they also had to prepare for both scenarios: how to better utilize superconducting materials and, from an engineering perspective, increase the strength of the artificial magnetic field.
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