The cooling system, the cooling module...these will be the key areas for improvement. Once all personnel are in place, Wu Tong will deploy them and assign dedicated personnel to be responsible for their research and development. She will optimize and deduce based on the situation, which can save a lot of effort and also help gather everyone's strength to tackle the tough issue of controlled nuclear fusion.
Including the later "Tritium recovery in plasma exhaust gas and deuterium-tritium fuel supply" and "Tritium safety containment", these have a certain R&D foundation in China. The people recruited and dispatched this time include the experts in these topics, all of whom are invited to be dispatched.
Once the higher-ups make up their minds and put all their efforts into doing something, all obstacles will be wiped out. When the forces directly mobilized from above are truly put into doing something, it will be like an unstoppable army pouring down.
As the saying goes, "A red flower blooms when it is near a red flower." After working on many projects and learning from experienced seniors for a long time, Wu Tong has become very experienced in planning and arranging projects, and can be considered a good project leader.
Thanks to the great trust in her, Wu Tong was given the identity of the person in charge and chief designer of this large scientific research project. She was not too nervous, but she was definitely willing to participate in the research and development and to be self-disciplined.
When she reported to her superiors, she already had a comprehensive blueprint for how to overcome the difficulties in controlled nuclear fusion technology and design a controlled fusion reaction demonstration reactor. Now, everyone is working hard to realize this grand blueprint.
Wu Tong never thought that she was the only capable person in the world. She left professional matters to professionals. She controlled the core, strived for excellence, broke through the biggest difficulties that ordinary people found difficult to overcome, and focused on the big things and let go of the small things. Wu Tong was a good student and naturally learned these management and project operation experiences very well.
She alone could not realize the blueprint of the fusion reaction demonstration reactor. It was common sense to follow the wisdom and experience of her predecessors and unite all the forces that could be connected. Wu Tong always knew that many hands make light work. She never planned to take on all the technical difficulties alone. She was a human, not a god. There were so many technical areas. By the time she learned them one by one and made breakthroughs one by one, it would be too late.
There are reasonable ways to accelerate, why not use them? Professional foreign aid is used reasonably, without any embarrassment.
Therefore, Wu Tong planned to break this massive project into smaller, specialized areas, assigning them to the right people. She would single out the hard-to-solve areas and lead the effort, focusing on solving them. For example, there was currently no progress being made on first-wall materials worldwide.
After trying various angles and a few days of pause, Wu Tong came up with a new idea. If he couldn't block the neutron beam, why not let it pass? Then, through certain means, he could recycle the neutrons produced in the DT fusion reaction. Although this would inevitably constitute a key part of the entire nuclear fusion reactor technology.
But after all, the price of tritium resources is tens of thousands of times more than that of deuterium. Not only is it sold by gram, but the cost of one gram is as high as tens of thousands of dollars. Their resources are limited and cannot be wasted. Diligence and thrift are traditional Chinese virtues!
This idea was like opening up the Ren and Du meridians. Wu Tong instantly seemed to be looking down from a higher angle. His thinking was clear and sharp, and new deductions and designs were presented one by one in his writing.
Neutron helium ash recovery system, recyclable first-wall material... Each unique conceptual technology name was listed in detail in Wu Tong's notebook, and then turned into continuous deductions on draft paper.
It is impossible to release the neutrons; they must be retained at all costs. If the neutrons generated by the reaction cannot be recovered, not only will a large amount of energy be lost, but the loss of tritium will also cause the reactor to "shut down."
In an ideal fusion reactor, both tritium and neutrons should be preserved as intermediate products, and the only waste products produced in the end are helium and heat.
Letting them go does not mean letting them go.
Wu Tong tried to design the structure of the first wall from many theoretical and technical perspectives to make it possible to avoid the impact of neutron beams. However, from many angles, it was impossible to avoid the damage to the metal bonds. The most fundamental reason for this was that the metal bonds had poor self-repair capabilities and there was also the difficult-to-solve transmutation problem.
In the end, Wu Tong's focus shifted to metal materials and determined the final research and development direction, with carbon material graphene as the main focus. The stability of carbon materials and the special porous structure of graphene materials were Wu Tong's preferred starting points.
Wu Tong pondered the matter. She planned to develop a new material, based on a first wall designed to allow neutrons to pass through and possess strong self-repair capabilities. Liquid lithium would then be used to recycle the neutrons behind the first wall. The other side of the liquid lithium would be coated with a layer of directional metal to reflect any neutrons that passed through the liquid lithium without reacting.
This design is equivalent to sandwiching liquid lithium between the first wall and the directional metal, forming a special sandwich design, one ring inside another, combined with a cooling system and other technical support, to finally achieve an ideal solution.
To achieve this project proposal, the requirements for the first wall material shifted from extreme high-temperature resistance to neutron impact radiation. High-temperature resistance was still required, but the focus shifted from complete resistance to neutron impact radiation to transmission.
Graphene, a carbon material alone, isn't strong enough to withstand such intense heat. So what about a composite? What materials could be combined to maintain the porous, permeable properties of graphene while also ensuring sufficient ductility and repairability?
One question after another popped up in Wu Tong's mind, colliding with his accumulated knowledge and scientific imagination. So far, Wu Tong's research has entered uncharted territory, which also means that there is no longer any previous experience to refer to. What to do next, how to solve these problems, depends entirely on Wu Tong's own thinking, definition, and design.
Based on the unreliability of metal materials, non-metallic materials became the focus of Wu Tong's attention. Ceramic-based materials were used at this time and are now in front of Wu Tong.
Ceramic matrix composites are a type of composite material that uses ceramic as a matrix and is composited with various fibers.
The ceramic matrix can be made of high-temperature structural ceramics such as silicon nitride and silicon carbide. These advanced ceramics offer excellent properties such as high-temperature resistance, high strength and stiffness, relatively low weight, and corrosion resistance. However, their fatal weakness is brittleness. When under stress, they can crack or even break, leading to material failure.
The use of high-strength, high-elasticity fibers and matrix composites is an effective way to improve the toughness and reliability of ceramics.
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