Great Country Academician

Four days is not long. With the efforts of the Energy Research Institute and the Nuclear Industry Group, the first domestic small-scale controllable nuclear fusion reactor was officially completed.

In Xu Chuan's view, this small controllable nuclear fusion reactor should be more appropriately called a compact fusion reactor.

Because it completely fails to achieve miniaturization technology.

A truly miniaturized fusion device should be able to break through the meter limit and be installed on various means of transportation such as cars, airplanes, and ships.

Of course, there are smaller ones, but that one can't be called a fusion device. It would be more appropriate to call it a 'fusion battery'.

But for human civilization, or those who are researching miniaturized and controllable nuclear fusion technology, just as Liang Qu said, this road has no way forward, and everything has to be done in the dark. Feel your way forward.

It's even more impossible to think about fusion batteries without even miniaturization.

Even after he was reborn, he didn't know how to take the path of miniaturized and controllable nuclear fusion.

After all, in the era before the rebirth, controllable nuclear fusion technology had not been realized, so how could we talk about miniaturization?

But after all, he had an extra twenty years, and he still had some new insights and control over the future direction.

This time, the year-on-year reduction of the Dawn Fusion Reactor, which has been successfully commercialized, is undoubtedly the most worthwhile path to try.

However, to be honest, Xu Chuan is not very optimistic about scaling down the Dawn Fusion Reactor.

Although the Dawn Device has achieved controllable nuclear fusion technology, to be honest, it is actually a trick, and some problems have not been fundamentally solved.

For example, problems such as plasma magnetic surface tearing, distortion, and plasma magnetic islands have not been completely solved. Instead, they are suppressed through superconducting materials with strong critical magnetic fields and structures that change the magnetic field in the outer ring of the fusion reactor. of.

It is undeniable that it has been able to achieve stable operation in large-scale fusion reactors, but no one knows whether the scaled-down device will encounter these problems that have already been solved again during operation.

But no matter what, he had to try.

After all, the development of science is achieved by accumulating data bit by bit, then conducting research, and finally succeeding.

Without past data and mistakes, how can we usher in the final fruits of victory?

Of course, the small device created this time was not just for collecting data. Xu Chuan and others still had a glimmer of hope as to whether it could achieve a compact fusion reaction.

After all, theoretically speaking, there is still some hope for miniaturized operation of the miniaturized equipment that replicates the Dawn Fusion Device.

If it succeeds, although it cannot be applied to space shuttles, it is completely sufficient to be applied to aircraft carriers.

The core stack of five meters * five meters * five meters, even with the supporting control and power generation equipment, there is enough space on the aircraft carrier to load it.

An aircraft carrier equipped with a fusion device as a power source can be said to be a true mothership on which the sun never sets.

This is enough for Xinghai Research Institute to give it a try.

On March 3, with the efforts of Xinghai Research Institute and Nuclear Industry Group, China's first miniaturized compact fusion reactor completed its final debugging.

In the research institute based on the transformation of Qixia's controllable nuclear fusion experimental project, even the main control room has not changed, and everything has transitioned so naturally.

Standing in the main control room again, Xu Chuan gave the order to start the test as usual.

With the passing of the order, everything here seems to have returned to the time when controllable nuclear fusion was studied.

The staff in each group's control room became busy again.

Adjustment of the magnetic field of the external coil, cooling of liquid nitrogen and liquid helium, formation of the constrained magnetic field, and injection of helium-3 simulation raw materials

One familiar task after another started again, but this time, they stood on the shoulders of giants and looked into the more distant future.

When the first simulation experiment was completed, it was already afternoon.

The collected data was processed with the help of the supercomputing center at the Daybreak Demonstration Reactor Project, which worked overtime. Because of its relevant experience, the supercomputing center completed the analysis the next day.

The processed data was sent back to Xinghai Research Institute, and Liang Qu, director of the Energy Research Institute, personally delivered it to Xu Chuan.

"How's it going?"

After receiving the processed data, Xu Chuan asked casually.

"Not optimistic."

Liang Qu shook his head and replied: "Many problems have appeared in this operation."

"For example, problems such as plasma magnetic surface tearing, distortion, and plasma magnetic islands in the reactor chamber are too serious."

"I didn't expect that after the fusion reactor becomes smaller, these problems that have been solved will appear again."

"And this is helium-trihydrogen simulation experiment data. If real deuterium and tritium raw materials were used, I can't even imagine what the result would be. Would it explode and tear the entire fusion reactor apart, causing a big explosion?"

Xu Chuan listened to Liang Qu's report while flipping through the report in his hand.

Judging from the experimental results, this miniaturized controllable nuclear fusion experiment can be said to be a failure.

As he expected, the problems that had been solved on the Dawn Fusion Device reappeared on the shrunken fusion reactor.

The miniaturization of the Tokamak route will most likely not work.

After flipping through the test report in his hand, Xu Chuan put it on his desk. After thinking for a while, he said with a smile: "Since the tokamak route is unavailable, we might as well find another route."

Hearing this, Liang Qu was stunned. He hesitated for a long time before asking: "Change? Change a route??"

"Are you saying that we have to completely abandon this small fusion device we just built?"

He thought that the boss would find a way to solve these problems. After all, with his mathematical abilities, there should be hope in solving problems such as magnetic surface tearing, distortion, and plasma magnetic islands.

Unexpectedly, he immediately changed his research route as soon as he opened his mouth?

Isn't this a bit exaggerated?

If you change the route directly, this means that all the early investment will be basically wasted.

Xu Chuan smiled, thought and organized his words, and then said: "From the experimental data, the main problem of this test is that problems such as magnetic surface tearing, distortion, and plasma magnetic islands that have not been completely solved before are once again It exploded."

"This is a fatal flaw and something that the Tomamac device cannot solve."

After a slight pause, he looked at Liang Qu with a confused and tangled look on his face, as if he knew what he was thinking, and said with a smile:

"Don't think that I can mathematically solve the problems of magnetic surface tearing, distortion, and plasma magnetic islands. I have tried it as early as the period when I was studying the Dawn Fusion Reactor."

"If I could do that, I wouldn't let these problems remain until now."

"This is not a mathematical problem, but a problem in the structure of the tokamak device itself. Its overall structure remains unchanged. No matter how we adjust the angle and direction of the external field coil, it is impossible to eliminate the tearing and distortion of the magnetic surface. , plasma magnetic islands and other issues.”

"Considering the uncertainty of the current inside the plasma, even if we can perfectly construct the magnetic field we need through the external field coil, it will be difficult to control the magnetic field inside the reactor."

"If it is a large tokamak device, we can also perform micro-control through strong magnetic fields and mathematical models. But for a small tokamak, we may not be able to react until it breaks through the first wall after it occurs."

Hearing this, Liang Qu had a look of shame and embarrassment on his face. After thinking for a moment, he asked: "If we change the route, which one can we change, the star simulator? The ball bed? The anti-field tight hoop? Or give up magnetic constraints and adopt inertial constraints?"

The stellarator was denied by this boss in the early days. The pebble bed also has the shortcomings of tokamak in this aspect, while the anti-field tightening technology is not yet mature and is too niche. As for the final inertial constraint, To be honest, there is not much research in this area in China.

For a while, he really didn't know which route the boss wanted to take.