China Moves Out Full-Throttle on Developing Nuclear Fusion
July 25—An article in Xinhua on July 23, indicates the Chinese government’s determination to quickly develop thermonuclear energy. In January, the government officially made fusion part of their future energy mix, confident in its eventual development. Xinhua’s feature, titled “China New Growth: Controlled Nuclear Fusion Emerges as Frontier for China’s Venture Capitalists,” is datelined Hefei, the site of China’s Institute of Plasma Physics and the EAST tokamak reactor, and indicates the establishment of new joint ventures aimed at contributing to the development of fusion.
The article begins, “Controlled nuclear fusion, a novel experiment within the confines of research labs until recently, is starting to step into the spotlight, capturing the interest of Chinese commercial investors. With the potential to blossom into the country’s new industry in the coming decades, it stands poised to revolutionize the energy landscape and tackle humanity’s pressing issue of energy scarcity.”
Xinhua explains the successful operation of the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, or EAST reactor, which was able to maintain a steady-state high-confinement plasma for 403 seconds, a record for the tokamak, the real work-horse of China’s fusion program. It also points to the development of a new reactor, Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak, or BEST, hosted in Hefei. BEST will begin to investigate the engineering requirements of using fusion to produce electricity. (A Fusion Engineering Device was on the agenda for development in the Magnetic Fusion Energy Engineering Act of 1980, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Mike McCormack (D-Wa), which although passed into law and signed by President Jimmy Carter was never really funded.) It seems that BEST will also be aimed at looking at the engineering issues associated with the production of electricity from fusion.
The new public-private joint venture, NeoFusion, which will build BEST, has attracted funding from China National Petroleum Corporation, Hefei Science Island, Hefei’s electric car producer NIO, and Anhui Province Energy. Fusion development is now at a pivotal juncture, transitioning from the realm of scientific inquiry to the practical domains of engineering and commercial viability, according to a statement of Anhui Province Energy.
Xinhua describes how other companies, Startorus Fusion, in Xi’an, which was started by graduates of Tsinghua University in order to develop a fusion verification device. Energy Singularity in Shanghai, which had built a new tokamak in a two-year record time and in June, achieved a groundbreaking milestone with the successful plasma discharge of a fully high-temperature superconducting tokamak device.
In China, the creation of a mechanism for ensuring increased funding for industries of the future has been written into the resolution on further deepening reform to comprehensively advance Chinese modernization, that was adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China last week.
Moreover, Xinhua highlights some of the spinoffs from the development of EAST, including a non-intrusive device for detecting metals, liquids and powders, used in security for Hefei’s metro line; and a Chinese-Russian development of a cutting-edge superconducting proton radiotherapy system for cancer treatment.
Despite such promising developments and statements of support, the global failure to back fusion research in a significant way has seriously set back any realistic timetable for bringing fusion on line as a power source, in any but limited ways. The "break-troughs" at various research facilities, including in the United States, at Princeton University, place commercial fusion still at anywhere from 10 to 15 years off, although this might change if a global, cooperative fusion program, without restrictions on sharing information between for example the world three great nuclear powers—Russia, China and the United States—were initiated. What is required to bring fusion and its spinoffs online quickly is exactly what the statesman and founder of the Fusion Energy Foundation, Lyndon LaRouche, advocated more than 50 years ago and continued to fight for until his death in 2019, a global, unrestricted Manhattan Project for fusion, referring to the massive program which marshsaled the best scientific minds working together, in that case, to develop the atomic bomb before the Nazis did. NATO's geopolitics sabotaged those plans as it did the implementation of the McCormack Act.
Several sources doubt that any one country could solve all the problems and engineering hurdles quickly, regardless of how much money is thrown at the problem. The best way to proceed is with a global approach. Scientists from Russia, China, the United States and other nations favor such a program. "The problem are the governments," said a source. "Especially in the west. We need to get the people behind the idea and force the governments to stopping preventing scientific collaboration—and with it progress for the betterment of all mankind."