China turns on nuclear-powered 'artificial sun'

[satanboy]

China turns on nuclear-powered 'artificial sun' (Update)

China successfully powered up its "artificial sun" nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, state media reported Friday, marking a great advance in the country's nuclear power research capabilities.

phys.org

It uses a powerful magnetic field to fuse hot plasma and can reach temperatures of over 150 million degrees Celsius, according to the People's Daily—approximately ten times hotter than the core of the sun.

 

[Nicholas]

I read somewhere that the UK will be igniting its first fusion generator in 2030 or thereabouts.

 

[Y2K]

China turns on nuclear-powered 'artificial sun' (Update)

China successfully powered up its "artificial sun" nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, state media reported Friday, marking a great advance in the country's nuclear power research capabilities.

phys.org

It uses a powerful magnetic field to fuse hot plasma and can reach temperatures of over 150 million degrees Celsius, according to the People's Daily—approximately ten times hotter than the core of the sun.

South Africa will do this in the year 2300.

 

[Johnatan56]

AFAIK from reading up on it, this is not that "special".
Note that the italic and quotes, still good for China/fusion research in general, but this brings nothing new and there have been way hotter and longer reactions.

Scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider may have generated the hottest temperatures ever made by human beings, beating the previous record over a trillion degrees Celsius, reports Nature. Although the energy measurement has not yet been officially converted into degrees, the team announced its findings at this week's Quark Matter 2012 in Washington, DC. According to the current best measurements, the quark-gluon plasma scientists created momentarily reached temperatures of about 5.5 trillion degrees Celsius (9.9 trillion degrees Fahrenheit), trouncing the RHIC's record of 4 trillion degrees, which is already about 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun.

CERN scientists may have set new man-made heat record: 9.9 trillion degrees Fahrenheit

Scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider may have generated the hottest temperatures ever made by human beings, beating the previous record over a trillion degrees Celsius, reports Nature....

www.theverge.com

This also did not generate more power than it consumes and is not really bringing anything new to the table.

The ITER is currently the largest/world leading project, and that one will definitely have another iteration after, stealing from Wikipedia:

Upon completion, ITER will be the largest of more than 100 fusion reactors built since the 1950s.[4]Its planned successor, DEMO—which for some ITER consortium countries may now be a phase rather than a specific ITER consortium machine—is expected to be the first fusion reactor to produce electricity in an experimental environment. The DEMO phase is expected to lead to full-scale electricity-producing fusion power stations and future commercial reactors.

Note the successor bit.

As a prototype commercial fusion reactor, it was estimated in 2006, that DEMO could make fusion energy available by 2033, but proposed operations have now been delayed until the 2050s

DEMO is probably going to be the first one to deliver fusion if any fusion reactor can.

In regards to ITER background on why the Chinese one really isn't that special:

Background​

​

ITER will produce energy by fusing deuterium and tritium to helium.

Fusion power has the potential to provide sufficient energy to satisfy mounting demand, and to do so sustainably, with a relatively small impact on the environment. 1 gram of deuterium-tritium mixture in the process of nuclear fusion produces an amount of energy equivalent to burning 8 tonnes of oil.[15]

Nuclear fusion has many potential attractions. Firstly, its hydrogen isotope fuels are relatively abundant – one of the necessary isotopes, deuterium, can be extracted from seawater, while the other fuel, tritium, would be bred from a lithium blanket using neutrons produced in the fusion reaction itself.[16] Furthermore, a fusion reactor would produce virtually no CO2 or atmospheric pollutants, and its radioactive waste products would mostly be very short-lived compared to those produced by conventional nuclear reactors (fission reactors).

On 21 November 2006, the seven participants formally agreed to fund the creation of a nuclear fusion reactor.[17] The program is anticipated to last for 30 years – 10 for construction, and 20 of operation. ITER was originally expected to cost approximately €5 billion, but the rising price of raw materials and changes to the initial design have seen that amount almost triple to €13 billion.[10] The reactor is expected to take 10 years to build with completion originally scheduled for 2019, but construction has continued into 2020.[18] Site preparation has begun in Cadarache, France, and procurement of large components has started.[19]

When supplied with 300 MW of electrical power, ITER is expected to produce the equivalent of 500 MW of thermal power sustained for up to 1,000 seconds[20] (this compares to JET's consumption of 700 MW of electrical power and peak thermal output of 16 MW for less than a second) by the fusion of about 0.5 g of deuterium/tritium mixture in its approximately 840 m3 reactor chamber. The heat produced in ITER will not be used to generate any electricity because after accounting for losses and the 300 MW minimum power input, the output will be equivalent to a zero (net) power reactor.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

Note the last sentence as well.

Oh and why ITER is so important:

Check the Q value. Would like to know the artificial sun's one.