China Approves Thermonuclear Reactor Construction, To Start Production By 2028 – Scientist

China has approved the construction of the world’s largest fusion energy facility, with plans to begin production by 2028, said Peng Xianjue, the project manager and a professor at the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik – 14th September, 2022) China has approved the construction of the world’s largest fusion energy facility, with plans to begin production by 2028, said Peng Xianjue, the project manager and a professor at the Chinese academy of Engineering Physics .

“Being the world’s first to achieve energy-scale fusion energy release will lay the most important milestone in the road to fusion energy for human beings,” Peng was quoted by the South China Morning Post newspaper as saying.

The construction of the thermonuclear reactor, also known as the Z-pinch machine, will be completed in 2025 in the city of Chengdu, located in southwestern China’s Sichuan province, Peng said, adding that it will be able to generate a current of 50 million amperes, which is about twice as much as a similar US-based Z-pinch machine.

On April 21, Hu Jiansheng, deputy director of the Chinese Institute of Plasma Physics at Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, said that China has almost completed the research and development of key technologies in the field of thermonuclear energy, adding that the country is expected to use thermonuclear energy in 30 to 50 years.

In the realms of depletion of natural energy sources, the search for new sources becomes more actual than ever, prompting countries like US, China and Russia to create Z-pinch machines. The thermonuclear energy based on the fusion reaction of light isotopes of hydrogen deuterium and tritium takes the lead among other sources. The main issues on the path of constructing the industrial thermonuclear reactor are extremely high temperatures and maintaining plasma equilibrium.