Chapter 755: 30 Billion Dollar Project

In the office, Xu Qingzhou sipped coffee to stay alert, his thoughts continuing to wander: besides neutral and opposing countries, a significant portion of European nations offered support.

For example, France had taken a notably hardline stance.

According to Xu Qingzhou’s knowledge, France’s Framatome, as the nation’s nuclear energy giant, relied on Xia’s supply chain for its divertor tungsten-copper materials and accident-tolerant fuel technologies.

Yet the French government constantly wrestled with itself—seeking to boost its influence within the EU by adopting a tough posture toward Xia, while frequently turning around to seek cooperation.

“What needs to be considered now is international cooperation.”

“Given the U.S.’s nature, it will definitely apply pressure through ITER.”

ITER is one of the most influential international cooperation organizations globally and Xia’s largest scientific collaboration project, in which Xia bears roughly 9% of the procurement package development tasks.

If Xia were truly excluded, ITER’s progress would certainly be delayed.

For Xia, the years of influence accumulated in the field of controlled nuclear fusion might also suffer a blow.

“Fortunately, Xia has improved significantly now—even without ITER’s data sharing, it can still achieve this on its own.”

“The way to break the deadlock: achieve overwhelming superiority through generational gaps, forcing the enemy to submit.”

Xu Qingzhou’s gaze grew heavier.

Commercializing controlled nuclear fusion is merely the first step; humanity’s goal should be the stars and the sea—only the future holds true prosperity.

After standing before the floor-to-ceiling window for several minutes, Xu Qingzhou was driven back to his seat by the scorching sun.

“Alright, back to work.”

He opened his computer—this was yesterday’s ignition experiment data.

Beyond key breakthrough objectives such as the triple product threshold and net energy gain, the Qiankun-1 device frequently conducts small-scale ignition experiments to validate critical sub-technologies.

Yesterday’s experiment tested coil current parameters to optimize the distribution of the negative triangular magnetic field configuration.

“The device’s routine ignition experiments will focus on three core sub-items: configuration control, engineering limits, and auxiliary systems.”

Before the July triple product experiment, they will sequentially conduct magnet power supply compatibility tests, cooling system load capacity checks, and divertor heat dissipation validation.

Through dense, repeated testing and iterative optimization of data, they will verify the likelihood of reaching the nuclear fusion ignition threshold by July.

“Conduct a fusion triple product experiment at the 3×10 keV·s/m level on July 12.”

“Time is tight.”

Xu Qingzhou stared at the data on the screen, his fingers lightly tapping the desk, pondering where to begin.

Start with Song Yao’s report.

Each ignition costs around 2 million RMB, covering liquid helium coolant consumption, electricity usage, deuterium-tritium fuel and target materials, plus approximately 300,000 RMB in equipment maintenance due to wear.

In addition to the main controlled nuclear fusion project, the institute’s 100+ researchers have their own individual projects.

Combined with ZeroPoint Tech’s external investments, the company’s annual operating budget remains stable at $800 million to $900 million, averaging $64 million to $69 million monthly, or $2.1 million to $2.3 million daily.

Every day, upon opening his eyes, he faced a daily expenditure of over two million U.S. dollars.

This is thanks to the institute’s vast resources—revenue from superconducting thin-film and battery patents covers expenses and even yields a monthly profit of $30 million.

Whenever they use the battery patents to produce mobile phone batteries, electric vehicle batteries, or computer batteries, they receive a share.

“First, establish a plasma boundary turbulence model, describe turbulence evolution using nonlinear stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs), and finally predict the optimal angular range.”