Chapter 711: Scientists need to have a bit of gambling spirit

In the room.

Ren Nan sipped his tea, was silent for a moment, nodded slowly, and said the two words "quite good." He had a conflict with Zhang Zhi Gao, but that didn't mean he looked down on HL-3.

One thing cannot be denied: HL-3 is the most advanced tokamak device in the Xia Nation and even the world.

He couldn't persuade his old friend to leave.

As an older generation researcher, Ren Nan could better understand Chen Qiguang's thoughts. Once controllable nuclear fusion is successfully commercialized, it will be enough to change human history.

The temptation of this to researchers is self-evident.

This is the development of science and technology; by comparison, a little conflict between people is not worth mentioning.

Although Ren Nan couldn't see the internal data of the Southwest Institute of Nuclear Physics, the technical route was about the same. He said easily: "Your next plan, after upgrading the superconducting magnet, is to challenge the fusion triple product, right."

"Right, last month, the German W7-X stellarator achieved a triple product peak maintenance of 43 seconds through experiments; we can't fall behind here."

Chen Qiguang nodded.

Why is the stellarator viewed by many as something closer to nuclear fusion commercialization? It's because it has better continuous operation capability, significantly avoiding the fatal weakness of the tokamak.

Take the plasma current interruption risk of the tokamak; although the tokamak can generate plasma current through an ohmic transformer, the magnetic flux change is limited and cannot maintain steady-state current for a long time.

Simply put, it's like a toy car with a wound-up spring—when the spring is tight, the power is abundant (magnetic flux is power), but after the spring relaxes, the power disappears (magnetic flux is exhausted), and it must stop to reload and wind up again.

This leads to the tokamak having to stop after running for a period of time, while the stellarator doesn't have this problem.

"Fusion triple product..."

Academician Ren Nan narrowed his eyes and sighed with emotion: "Two years ago, when we were eating, we were still saying we didn't know when we would have a breakthrough."

Reaching the triple product means that fusion energy output will exceed input energy for the first time, which marks a fundamental turning point: moving from the scientific experimental stage of studying plasma physics to the energy engineering stage of obtaining net energy.

Simply put: scientifically proved that this path of "artificial sun" can indeed produce net energy and is feasible.

"The technological updates in the field of controllable nuclear fusion are too fast."

"Yeah~ developing at this speed, commercial controllable nuclear fusion will be at least 10 years ahead."

The two old professors sighed with emotion.

In the hotel.

Xu Qingzhou was lowering his head to perform verification.

Today, while listening to Professor Deng Yunxiang talk about plasma heating and drive scheme design, he noticed something—nanoporous tungsten film.

This thing is a material used on the first wall of the tokamak.

First wall, the solid structure that contains plasma and the vacuum zone.

Besides the superconducting magnet system and triangular plasma, one of the most important things in a spherical tokamak device is it.

This thing, currently mainstream, is a special metal composite material based on tungsten (or tungsten alloy), which acts as the innermost barrier, directly facing the plasma, undertaking heat load management and radiation shielding functions.

Figuratively speaking, it is the "ultimate armor" of the nuclear fusion device, like a radiation shield under cosmic rays, isolating billion-degree high temperatures and neutron storms, ensuring the device continues to run in "stellar-level flames."

According to the goal in Xu Qingzhou's heart, the first wall/divertor material must reach 20MW/m heat load + 5-year lifespan + near-zero irradiation damage, while the current best tungsten-copper alloy has 10MW/m heat load and 2-year lifespan, still having a 50% performance gap.

Finding suitable first wall/divertor materials is now also one of the most important tasks of the Materials Ding Liyan.

The nanoporous tungsten film he is currently focusing on is one of the improvement methods for tungsten-based composite materials.

Professor Deng from the Institute of Plasma Physics mentioned it at the seminar, saying the experiment failed and the nanoporous tungsten film technology wouldn't work. ===== CHAPTER 712 =====