Chapter 751: An Unbelievable Goal

The news of the Institute of Materials' first ignition continued to be hot and, with time, spread to the entire field of controlled nuclear fusion.

The official media made a special report, highly evaluating the achievements obtained by Q1-NTST.

And on Wednesday, the first batch of visitors to the institute arrived—not a scientific research institution, but the team of An Haofeng, the main person in charge of Xia Nation's technology.

After the entire visit ended and everyone went back to rest, An Haofeng pulled Xu Qingzhou into his office to drink tea.

"Please, have some tea."

Xu Qingzhou poured tea for the old man, knowing that An Haofeng must have something else to say.

"I have already read the technical report given by the experts. The data is very perfect, and the higher-ups also attach great importance to the development of the Qiankun No. 1 device. This time, besides expressing affirmation and support for your achievements, I want to represent the ministry to understand your future plans."

An Haofeng got straight to the point.

Previously, the institute had already submitted the complete monitoring curve of plasma current/temperature for 1000 consecutive seconds and data for every part to the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The person in front of him was not just a 24-year-old youth, but more importantly, a world-renowned mathematician and Nobel Prize winner.

In the 14th Five-Year Plan, the country's strategic focus in the battery field shifted from solid-state batteries to lithium-sulfur batteries. It can be said that this youth in front of him changed the country's policy.

"We expect to reach the Lawson ignition threshold within two months and complete net energy gain within one year."

Xu Qingzhou didn't hide it and said with a smile.

"2 months to Lawson ignition threshold, 1 year to net energy gain?!"

An Haofeng was stunned for a few seconds, a bit suspicious that he had heard wrong. He slowly said, "Professor Xu, although I am not an expert in the field of controlled nuclear fusion, I clearly know the difficulty of these two goals. Are you sure you can achieve them in such a short time?"

No matter how you look at it, it sounds like a fantasy.

Controlled nuclear fusion has been developed for decades, and currently, only three devices have clearly reached the Lawson ignition threshold, that is, a triple product of 3×10kev·s/m.

The Circulation No. 3 that recently had a breakthrough, Germany's W7-X stellarator, and the US National Ignition Facility (NIF).

The first two only reached the Lawson ignition threshold, and the latter, although claiming to have achieved net energy gain, had a very short maintenance time and belonged to a "castrated" version.

"I am not a prophet and cannot guarantee that it will definitely succeed. I can only say that, after comprehensive consideration, with the existing technology of our Qiankun No. 1, achieving these two goals in a short time is difficult, but not impossible."

During these days, Xu Qingzhou used the data from the first ignition to create several models to simulate the subsequent experiments, and the results were quite good.

Although they shared some first-ignition data with the outside world, the core equipment parameters were still kept in their own hands, so everyone didn't know the actual situation of their equipment.

An Haofeng asked in a deep voice, "How much confidence do you have?"

"60 percent, I guess."

Xu Qingzhou smiled and gave a conservative estimate.

"It seems you are very confident in the performance of Qiankun No. 1," An Haofeng couldn't help but say.

If someone else had said this to him, he would definitely have sneered and thought the other person was crazy, but he couldn't help but take the words of the person in front of him seriously.

Xu Qingzhou smiled and sipped his tea.

Actually, in his heart, he had at least 90 percent confidence. Qiankun No. 1 was designed by him personally, and he knew best where the limits of this equipment were.

It basically could meet all the experimental conditions for the construction of the demonstration reactor.

Of course, although it is like this in theory, the real experimental process will still encounter many uncontrollable variables. ===== CHAPTER 752 =====