China has just launched its biggest nuclear fusion research facility as it continues to pursue the construction of an “artificial sun”. A recent report included images of the interior of the completed main building of the facility in east Chain’s Anhui province. The facility is formally known as the Comprehensive Research Facility for Fusion Technology (CRAFT). It has been nicknamed “Kuafu” who was a mythical giant who attempted to capture the sun. According to an ancient Chinese fable, the giant Kuafu tried to chase and captured the sun to end a drought. Even though the giant died of thirst before he could catch the sun, he is seen to be a symbol of bravery.
The report showed pictures of some of the facility’s experimental components. There are images of a prototype of one of eight huge orange segment-inspired pieces. The segments come together to form a hollow doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber where the fusion experiments will take place. Also shown in the report was a seven hundred seventy-one-ton superconducting magnet used for magnetic confinement fusion. CRAFT is expected to be finished by the end of 2025. Scientists have already started working on projects at the complex.
Nuclear fusion occurs when two lighter nuclei combine to form a heavier single nucleus. This process releases massive amounts of energy. It powers the sun and all the stars in the sky. As global demand for carbon-free energy grows. Fusion could be a way of “capturing the sun”.
Fusion is powered by deuterium and tritium. These two hydrogen variants are found in water around the globe. One quart of seawater has enough deuterium to produce fusion energy equal to burning seventy-nine gallons of gasoline.
Fusion power generation does not emit greenhouse gases. Instead, it releases helium. The radioactive waste produced by the process can be recycled within a century. Fusion does not use uranium or plutonium. There is no risk of a meltdown at a fusion reactor.
CRAFT is part of China’s plan to replicate the power generation process in the sun.
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) is a superconducting magnetic fusion energy reactor. It utilizes magnetic fields to confine plasma at very high temperatures. This facility is also located in Anhui. It has had multiple breakthroughs in the generation of fusion energy. These breakthroughs are expected to contribute to the development of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France which is the biggest fusion experimental reactor in the world.
Hu Jiansheng is the deputy director of the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He told an interviewer in 2022 that China had already achieved eighty percent of the key technology for fusion power. He estimated that China could have usable energy in thirty to fifty years.
CRAFT is a critical stepping-stone to working nuclear fusion as it will be used to test key technologies for the Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) which is a proposed tokamak device for large-scale power generation expected to be completed around 2035.