'Artificial sun' source of vast nuclear energy
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-01-23 11:49

An "artificial sun," an experimental nuclear fusion device to generate potentially infinite energy, will be built this spring in Hefei, capital of Anhui Province.

It will be the world's first such device. The aim is to use nuclear fusion to produce energy by extracting deuterium from seawater under enormous temperatures.

The fusion process would require temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius, making it equivalent to an artificial sun in terms of energy.

The full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, which aims to generate infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy, will be built in March or April in the east China province.

Experiments with the advanced new device will start in July or August. If the experiments are successful, China will become the first country to build a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, or "artificial sun," experts said.

The project, dubbed EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak), is being undertaken by the Hefei-based Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It will cost nearly 300 million yuan (US$37 million) in investment.

It will be an upgrade of China's first superconducting Tokamak, dubbed HT-7. That was also built by the plasma physics institute, in partnership with Russia, in the early 1990s. HT-7 made China the fourth country, after Russia, France and Japan, to have such a device.

"The research results will be significant for the International Thermonuclear Experiment Reactor, or ITER, for basic research in engineering technology and physics," said project director Wan Yuanxi.

Controlled nuclear fusion is seen as an efficient way to generate infinite, clean energy to offset the shortage of fossil fuels such as oil and coal.