FUSION

HOT TO TROT
China fires up ‘artificial sun’ 7 times warmer than the real sun to make unlimited energy – and wants to make it HOTTER

Fiona Connor
Dec 23 2021

CHINA has fired up a machine designed to make unlimited energy known as the "artificial sun" - and wants to make it even hotter than the real sun.

Tests being run on the Experiential Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) trying to get a higher temperature and longer duration at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science research centre.

2China has fired up its 'artificial sun' to raise its temperature higherCredit: Xinhua

The device is already close to seven times warmer than the sun, but scientists are trying to upgrade the EAST's auxiliary heating system to make it more "hot" and "durable", local media Xinhua News Agency reported.

Designed and developed by the Chinese, the EAST has been used since 2006 by scientists from all around the world to conduct fusion-related experiments.

More than 10,000 Chinese and foreign scientific researchers have worked together to bring to life the artificial sun.

The EAST harnesses extremely high temperatures to boil hydrogen isotopes into a plasma, fusing them together and releasing energy, Reuters reports.

China has already spent around 6 billion yuan (£701 million) on the project.

The energy will create almost no radioactive waste and only require small amounts of fuel.

Song Yuntao, deputy director of the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Hefei Institute of Physical Science, said he hopes to generate power by 2040.

He said: “Five years from now, we will start to build our fusion reactor, which will need another 10 years of construction.

"After that is built we will construct the power generator and start generating power by around 2040."

This would bring humanity a step closer to creating "unlimited clean energy", by mimicking reactions that naturally occur inside the solar system's sun.

The custom-built fusion reactor set a world record in June by running at a temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds.

The planetary sun hits temperatures of around 15 million degrees Celsius at its core.


The artificial sun was first announced by Chinese researchers in November 2018.

Nuclear Fusion – what is it?

Here's what you need to know...
Nuclear fusion is a process where two light nuclei (parts of an atom) are used to create a single "heavy" nucleus
This "nuclear reaction" releases huge amounts of energy
That's because the "heavy" nucleus is not as heavy as the mass of the two "light" nuclei combined
This "lost mass" can then be changed into huge amounts of energy
Fusion is a common occurrence inside stars, like the Sun at the centre of our own galaxy
This is how the Sun is able to provide so much heat and light
But kickstarting a nuclear fusion reaction on Earth is difficult
The goal is to start a nuclear reaction that releases more energy that you needed to start the reaction
The problem is that both nuclei have positive charges, and repel each other
To stop this, you need to make them hit each other at very high speeds – requiring high pressure and temperature
If scientists can develop a low-energy way of making this happen, they could generate enormous (and potentially "unlimited") amounts of clean energy

2Our sun hits temperatures of around 15million degrees Celsius at its coreCredit: Brand X - Getty