How China could win the nuclear fusion race

It’s been seven decades since scientists first began working on nuclear fusion technology, the near limitless lure of clean energy proving too strong to resist. The US was among the first countries in the world to bet big on this futuristic gambit, working seriously on fusion research since the early 1950s. China’s incursion came much later.

However, China has made rapid progress over the past decade and now holds more fusion patents than any other country according to industry data published by Nikkei. In addition, Beijing pumps about $1.5 billion annually into fusion research, according to Jean Paul Allain, who heads the US Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences. That’s nearly double Washington’s merger payout at $800 million a year.

“For me, what’s more important than the number is actually how fast I do itAllain told CNN.

Even more alarming is the fact that a small, relatively unknown Chinese fusion company has managed to achieve what even from France. International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor (ITER), funded and run by seven countries since 2006, has failed to quit. based in Shanghai The Singularity of Energy has effectively completed high-temperature superconducting engineering feasibility verification for its Honghuang 70 (HH70) tokamak device, giving China a first-mover advantage in the critical field of high-temperature superconducting magnetic insulation fusion. Energy Singularity also became the first commercial company in the world to build and operate a fully superconducting tokamak.

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“Design work on the device began in March 2022, and overall installation was completed by the end of February this year, setting the fastest record for research and construction of superconducting tokamak devices worldwide.Yang Zhao, CEO of Energy Singularity revealed.

So how did this little-known Chinese company accomplish in two years what ITER failed to accomplish in nearly two decades?

According to Yang, the use of high-temperature superconducting materials can reduce the volume of a device to about 2% of that of traditional low-temperature superconducting devices, allowing the device build period to be shortened from ~30 years to just 3-4 years. years.

According to Yang, the company holds the independent intellectual property rights of the HH70, with a domestication rate of over 96%, adding that all magnet systems of the device are built using high-temperature superconducting materials. Despite its laudable success, Energy Singularity is not resting on its laurels, with Yang revealing that the company plans to complete the next generation high-temperature, high-magnetic-field superconducting tokamak device, called the HH170, with deuterium-tritium (Q) equivalent energy gain greater than 10. by 2027. In the language of nuclear fusion, the Q value reflects the energy efficiency of the fusion reactor, i.e. the ratio between the energy generated by the device and the energy input required to sustain the fusion reaction. Q values ​​greater than 1 mean that the reactor is generating more energy than it is consuming, which is essentially what fusion research has been trying to achieve in a commercial reactor for decades. Currently, the highest Q factor that scientists have achieved is only 1.53.

Big expenses

Energy Singularity has so far received approximately $112 million in private investment. In contrast, Charles Seifedirector of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, estimates that the costs of the ITER project have exceeded €20 billion ($21.8 billion), more than four times the initial budget of €5 billion (then 5.5 billion USD) and nearly a decade behind the 2016 delivery date.

That said, Energy Singularity isn’t the only fusion startup pursuing small reactor projects. Based in Deven, Massachusetts Commonwealth Fusion Systems collaborate with MIT to build their small fusion reactor. Called the Sparc, the reactor is ~1/65th the volume of the ITER reactor. The experimental reactor is expected to generate around 100MW of heat in pulses of around 10 seconds – bursts large enough to power a small city.

Small reactors are not unique to the nuclear fusion sector. The Biden administration has been a strong supporter of the small modular reactors (SMRs) that have made waves in the nuclear fission space.

Three years ago, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)8 approved Center Energy BodyThe request of . (NYSE:LEU) to make low-enriched uranium (HALEU) at its Piketon, Ohio, enrichment facility, becoming the first company in the Western world outside of Russia to do so. Applications for HALEU are currently limited to research reactors and medical isotope production; however, HALEU will be required for more than half of the SMRs under development across the globe. HALEU is currently only available from TENEXA Rosatom subsidiary

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

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