The Asian country’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor in Hefei broke a new record in fusion technology as it reached temperatures six times higher than the sun. Nuclear fusion is a staggering technical innovation in which hydrogen from sea water and readily available lithium is heated to more than 150 million°C. Atomic nuclei begin to fuse together releasing huge amounts of energy but without the massive amount of deadly radiation which our existing nuclear fission reactors create.
Nuclear fusion is the process which powers the sun.
However, for a sustainable nuclear fusion energy source, temperatures will need to reach seven times as hot as the sun (15 million degrees Celsius) in the reactors on Earth.
Associate professor Matthew Hole from the Australian National University told ABC: “It’s certainly a significant step for China’s nuclear fusion program and an important development for the whole world.
“The benefit is simple in that it is very large-scale base load [continuous] energy production, with zero greenhouse gas emissions and no long-life radioactive waste.
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“It provides a silver bullet energy solution, providing that one can harness it.”
However, plenty of others have hailed breakthroughs in the past which have come to nothing.
In 1989, US scientists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons claimed to have developed a way of generating nuclear fusion at room temperature, a process they referred to as “cold fusion”.
However, they were unable to replicate their findings, with the American Physical Society eventually concluding that it was an example of “pathological science”, whereby people are tricked into false results by subjective effects.
Nevertheless, the race to build a fusion reactor is hotting up, with numerous companies now devoting resources towards developing a successful method.
Experts predict it will become a reality within 30 years – and much quicker than that if Agni’s efforts prove successful.