Chapter 742: Approaching the Integrated Assembly Phase

We don’t eat charity food.

Xu Qingzhou chuckled twice, glanced at the soft white feet, and remained unmoved, calm and composed.

“Crazy.” Song Yao wrinkled her nose, as if asserting her claim, and placed her other leg atop Xu Qingzhou’s.

“Ask me nicely.” Xu Qingzhou still held firm.

“Please.”

Song Yao blinked repeatedly, playing along.

“Itadakimasu.”

“.”

Don’t force me to kick you.

You don’t really think I’m going to suck your toes, do you?

Seeing Song Yao’s wary gaze, Xu Qingzhou felt offended.

“Hmph, who knows where your bottom line is.”

You misunderstand me.

“What if you just haven’t seen yourself clearly?” Song Yao scrolled through messages, not looking up.

Xu Qingzhou sighed, said nothing in rebuttal, gripped the foot, and picked up his pen again: “Confining lisio tritium breeder within two-dimensional material nanocavities to enhance lithium-ion diffusion efficiency via van der Waals forces.”

【Neutron capture reaction: n+li→t+he】

The cold front passed; the North China air mass weakened, and temperatures gradually rose. By late March, Beijing had entered spring, with tender buds sprouting on trees along the institute’s roads.

The early spring atmosphere was palpable.

But the researchers had no time to pause and admire the season.

Compared to usual, a faint heaviness hung in the air; researchers hurried about, each seeming to race against time.

Achieving a plasma temperature of 100 million °C and sustaining a steady state for thousands of seconds—these were the established goals for the first ignition.

Everyone bore heavy burdens.

Especially in the final testing phase—the negative triangular plasma, superconducting magnets, quantum magnetic field monitoring system, first wall—each researcher held their breath, fearing another failure that would force re-tuning or redesign, slowing the entire project.

After a year of silence, everyone had been holding their breath, waiting for the day to shock the world.

March 28, Sunday, Testing Center.

“You’ve all worked hard these past weeks. Take the weekend off, rest well, and recharge.”

Xu Qingzhou turned to Ren Nan and the others.

Today, they completed testing of the two-dimensional confined lisio particles; results showed that the confinement effect boosted tritium breeding ratio to ≥1.25, effectively solving the problem of rapid fuel consumption in the negative triangular configuration.

What does this mean?

In the same field, the ITER bulk design achieves a tritium breeding ratio of only 1.05—insufficient to reach the “breakeven line” of 1.1 required for fuel self-sufficiency.

In simple terms, if a household’s minimum monthly expenses are 11,000 yuan, and income is ≤11,000 yuan, you must keep draining savings (external tritium supply) just to sustain life (fusion reaction).

ITER earns 10,500 yuan monthly, so it must dip into savings (external tritium replenishment) to keep the household running (experimental device operation).

Achieving fuel self-sufficiency is essential for long-pulse operation of the experimental device.

Although their negative triangular design improves plasma confinement, it increases particle escape rate at the curved sections by 30%, accelerating fuel consumption and making a high-efficiency tritium breeding system even more critical.

The quantum magnetic field monitoring system, combined with nano-pore tungsten films and two-dimensional confined lisio particles and other self-healing technologies, has removed major obstacles to achieving thousand-second steady-state operation in the negative triangular tokamak.