Step toward controllable 'artificial sun'

A team from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has successfully developed a key system for fusion reactions — the one-eighth vacuum chamber and its overall installation system. The vacuum chamber in an actual nuclear fusion facility is eight such chambers added together to make a whole.

This is another step forward in mankind's march toward controllable nuclear fusion. Often referred to as the "artificial sun", controllable nuclear fusion mimics the process that powers stars, where light and heat are generated by nuclear fusion reactions. The primary materials for nuclear fusion are isotopes of hydrogen, namely deuterium and tritium, which are abundant on Earth. Also, there is no risk of nuclear contamination unlike in nuclear power plants where nuclear fission produces radioactive waste.

The system provides a full-scale experimental platform for the installation, inspection, debugging, and remote operation of internal components of future fusion reactor vacuum chambers. As the subsystems of the comprehensive research facility for fusion reactor components are successively developed and put into operation, a complete chain from basic research to technological verification and engineering application is gradually forming, laying a solid scientific and technological foundation for the design, construction, and operation of fusion reactors. The related technologies can be extended to fields such as particle accelerators, precision machinery, electronic technology, and semiconductors.