News on China's scientific and technological development.
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vesicles
Colonel
I don't think plasma and fusion are the same thing. Forming plasma is required for fusion. However, having a plasma does not mean you have successful fusion. It just means that you've established a favorable environment for fusion to occur.
Blackstone
Brigadier
The whole point of commercial fusion research is to have dependable energy generation with, for all practical purposes, nearly limitless fuel source. So, if Japan's process of sustained plasma could actually produce more energy than it consumes, then it'd already be championed by energy-hungry nations all over the world, including Japan. The fact Japan's process isn't being used anywhere, including Japan, tells us it isn't a viable method to generate energy for consumption.
SamuraiBlue
Captain
At the moment fusion reactor research have not reached research concerning commercialization. It's still at HOW to successfully achieve continuous nuclear fusion within the reactor.
The QUEST research reactor achieving 5 hours continuous encasement of plasma is one step closer to that stage.
The problem with plasma electro-magnetic encasement is when the encasement fails and the plasma touching the reactor's inner walls resulting to cascade collapse of the plasma due to cooling of the plasma.
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vesicles
Colonel
I thought you were the one who brought up how advanced Japanese fusion research is immediately after the news piece about the Chinese advancement on fusion was posted... Everyone was happy for the Chinese until you did the th chest thumping... And now you blame others for trashing other nations' achievement.
Another thing. If you want to brag about anything, be sure to know what you are talking about.
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There is no need for insults, on either side...and responding to insults with another one does not help...it only leads to more of the same, then anger, flame wars, moderation, warnings, suspensions, etc.
I suggest, particularly for people who harbor ill will against certain ethnicities and cultures, that you very quickly either button it up and stop...or you will be suspended from SD for a long time...and ultimately banned permanently.
It's gone far enough.
If the show fits...wear it. But this now has gotten attention and we are watching.
Finally, this is a thread about China's scientific Research...bringing up questions about Japanese research and then continuing a discussion about that is Off Topic.
DO NOT RESPOND TO THS MODERATION.
I suggest, particularly for people who harbor ill will against certain ethnicities and cultures, that you very quickly either button it up and stop...or you will be suspended from SD for a long time...and ultimately banned permanently.
It's gone far enough.
If the show fits...wear it. But this now has gotten attention and we are watching.
Finally, this is a thread about China's scientific Research...bringing up questions about Japanese research and then continuing a discussion about that is Off Topic.
DO NOT RESPOND TO THS MODERATION.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
China will soon make the phrase "China syndrome" obsolete . A self regulating Nuclear pebble reactor will soon come to realization. NO more Fukushima
my comment
China Could Have a Meltdown-Proof Nuclear Reactor Next Year. I have been waiting for this progress We heard about pebble fuel reactor with helium gas coolant for a while . I am glad they are going to be realized soon. I guess they took the right approach instead of recoiling and banning nuclear reactor they forged ahead and improve the reactor In the end they will dominate the safe, plentiful, cheap energy of the future
In what would be a milestone for advanced nuclear power, China’s Nuclear Engineering Construction Corporation plans to start up a high-temperature, gas-cooled pebble-bed nuclear plant next year in Shandong province, south of Beijing. The twin 105-megawatt reactors—so-called Generation IV reactors that would be immune to meltdown—would be the first of their type built at commercial scale in the world.
Construction of the plant is nearly complete, and the next 18 months will be spent installing the reactor components, running tests, and loading the fuel before the reactors go critical in November 2017, said Zhang Zuoyi, director of the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, a division of Tsinghua University that has developed the technology over the last decade and a half, in an interview at the institute’s campus 30 miles south of Beijing. If it’s successful, Shandong plant would generate a total of 210 megawatts and will be followed by a 600-megawatt facility in Jiangxi province. Beyond that, China plans to sell these reactors internationally; in January, Chinese president Xi Jinping signed an agreement with King Salman bin Abdulaziz to construct a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor in Saudi Arabia.
“This technology is going to be on the world market within the next five years,” Zhang predicts. “We are developing these reactors to belong to the world.”
Pebble-bed reactors that use helium gas as the heat transfer medium and run at very high temperatures—up to 950 °C—have been in development for decades. The Chinese reactor is based on a design originally developed in Germany, and the German company SGL Group is supplying the billiard-ball-size graphite spheres that encase thousands of tiny “pebbles” of uranium fuel. Seven high-temperature gas-cooled reactors have been built, but only two units remain in operation, both relatively small: an experimental 10-megawatt pebble-bed reactor at the Tsinghua Institute campus, which reached full power in 2003, and a similar reactor in Japan.
During a recent visit to the Tsinghua facility, technologists were testing the huge helium blower that will circulate the gas coolant at the Shandong site once it starts up. Such high-temperature reactors are immune to meltdown because they don’t require elaborate external cooling systems of the sort that failed at Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. The graphite coating protects the fuel from breaking down, even at temperatures well beyond those found in the reactor core during operation, and once the interior temperature passes a certain threshold, the nuclear reactions slow, cooling the reactor and making it essentially self-regulating. And while pebble-bed reactors do not totally solve the problem of nuclear waste, the fuel’s form also gives rise to multiple options for waste disposal. China’s eventual goal is to eliminate or greatly reduce waste by recycling the spent fuel.
One of the main hurdles to building these reactors is the cost of the fuel and of the reactor components. But China’s sheer size could help overcome that barrier. “There have been studies that indicate that if reactors are mass-produced, they can drive down costs,” says Charles Forsberg, executive director of the MIT Nuclear Fuel Cycle Project. “The Chinese market is large enough to make that potentially possible.”
Several other advanced-reactor projects are under way in China, including work on a molten-salt reactor fueled by thorium rather than uranium (a collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where the technology originated in the 1960s), a traveling-wave reactor (in collaboration with TerraPower, the startup funded by Bill Gates), and a sodium-cooled fast reactor being built by the Chinese Institute for Atomic Energy (see “China Details Next-Gen Nuclear Reactor Program” and “TerraPower Quietly Explores New Nuclear Reactor Strategy”).
Indeed, China is rapidly becoming a test bed for innovative nuclear power technologies that have stalled in the United States and Europe. “What you are seeing is serious intent,” says Forsberg. “They may kick greenhouse gases out of their power sector before we do because of that serious intent.”
my comment
China Could Have a Meltdown-Proof Nuclear Reactor Next Year. I have been waiting for this progress We heard about pebble fuel reactor with helium gas coolant for a while . I am glad they are going to be realized soon. I guess they took the right approach instead of recoiling and banning nuclear reactor they forged ahead and improve the reactor In the end they will dominate the safe, plentiful, cheap energy of the future
In what would be a milestone for advanced nuclear power, China’s Nuclear Engineering Construction Corporation plans to start up a high-temperature, gas-cooled pebble-bed nuclear plant next year in Shandong province, south of Beijing. The twin 105-megawatt reactors—so-called Generation IV reactors that would be immune to meltdown—would be the first of their type built at commercial scale in the world.
Construction of the plant is nearly complete, and the next 18 months will be spent installing the reactor components, running tests, and loading the fuel before the reactors go critical in November 2017, said Zhang Zuoyi, director of the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, a division of Tsinghua University that has developed the technology over the last decade and a half, in an interview at the institute’s campus 30 miles south of Beijing. If it’s successful, Shandong plant would generate a total of 210 megawatts and will be followed by a 600-megawatt facility in Jiangxi province. Beyond that, China plans to sell these reactors internationally; in January, Chinese president Xi Jinping signed an agreement with King Salman bin Abdulaziz to construct a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor in Saudi Arabia.
“This technology is going to be on the world market within the next five years,” Zhang predicts. “We are developing these reactors to belong to the world.”
Pebble-bed reactors that use helium gas as the heat transfer medium and run at very high temperatures—up to 950 °C—have been in development for decades. The Chinese reactor is based on a design originally developed in Germany, and the German company SGL Group is supplying the billiard-ball-size graphite spheres that encase thousands of tiny “pebbles” of uranium fuel. Seven high-temperature gas-cooled reactors have been built, but only two units remain in operation, both relatively small: an experimental 10-megawatt pebble-bed reactor at the Tsinghua Institute campus, which reached full power in 2003, and a similar reactor in Japan.
During a recent visit to the Tsinghua facility, technologists were testing the huge helium blower that will circulate the gas coolant at the Shandong site once it starts up. Such high-temperature reactors are immune to meltdown because they don’t require elaborate external cooling systems of the sort that failed at Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. The graphite coating protects the fuel from breaking down, even at temperatures well beyond those found in the reactor core during operation, and once the interior temperature passes a certain threshold, the nuclear reactions slow, cooling the reactor and making it essentially self-regulating. And while pebble-bed reactors do not totally solve the problem of nuclear waste, the fuel’s form also gives rise to multiple options for waste disposal. China’s eventual goal is to eliminate or greatly reduce waste by recycling the spent fuel.
One of the main hurdles to building these reactors is the cost of the fuel and of the reactor components. But China’s sheer size could help overcome that barrier. “There have been studies that indicate that if reactors are mass-produced, they can drive down costs,” says Charles Forsberg, executive director of the MIT Nuclear Fuel Cycle Project. “The Chinese market is large enough to make that potentially possible.”
Several other advanced-reactor projects are under way in China, including work on a molten-salt reactor fueled by thorium rather than uranium (a collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where the technology originated in the 1960s), a traveling-wave reactor (in collaboration with TerraPower, the startup funded by Bill Gates), and a sodium-cooled fast reactor being built by the Chinese Institute for Atomic Energy (see “China Details Next-Gen Nuclear Reactor Program” and “TerraPower Quietly Explores New Nuclear Reactor Strategy”).
Indeed, China is rapidly becoming a test bed for innovative nuclear power technologies that have stalled in the United States and Europe. “What you are seeing is serious intent,” says Forsberg. “They may kick greenhouse gases out of their power sector before we do because of that serious intent.”
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antiterror13
Brigadier
The thing is whether China would share the latest technology with ITER to crack it ... ITER has had some issues for a while and China may just leave it like the USA says they would. It seems ITER is just too complicated.
from Wiki
"Construction of the ITER Tokamak complex started in 2013 and the building costs are now over US$14 billion as of June 2015, some 3 times the original figure.[7] The facility is expected to finish its construction phase in 2019 and will start commissioning the reactor that same year and initiate plasma experiments in 2020 with full deuterium–tritium fusion experiments starting in 2027"
so ITER (if everything goes smoothly) will initiate plasma experiment in 2020, while China, the USA and Germany have started and somewhat successfully years ago. And building cost US$14B ... gooosh
My question: what would happen when the goal is achieved (100 million °C for 1,000 seconds ??? ... I believe it will be achieved before 2020
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SamuraiBlue
Captain
I wonder why they selected helium as the heat transfer medium?
Although helium is inert making it a very stable gas even at very high temperature it's also a very light gas next to hydrogen making it an inefficient medium to transfer energy.