Here’s something we can all agree on: the reliance on fossil fuels to keep our economy going poses insanely detrimental effects on the current climate, and even more so in the future. Money has been put into pursuing cleaner sources since the year 1860, when the world’s first solar energy system was invented in France. Since then, breakthrough after breakthrough has occurred, but none of enough magnitude for a country to completely switch its energy source — big oil still runs the world. However, a recent breakthrough in China might point us in a different direction when we finally go “clean.”
How does it Work?
From solar plants, to wind turbines, to nuclear energy, scientists and politicians alike have been pushing money into pursuing renewable energy sources — ones that can become big-scale energy systems. One example of this is the creation of an “artificial sun,” where the lab replicates the sun’s physics by merging atomic nuclei, and this then generates large amounts of electricity. It requires no use of fossil fuels (coal and natural gas), leaves behind zero radioactive waste, and is a safer alternative to other sources of nuclear power.
China recently was able to establish a new world record in how long their “sun” ran for — an astonishing 17 minutes (that is a huge deal, longer than any other project with an artificial sun so far). In the most recent experiment, the superheated plasma that is the “fake sun” reached an astounding 126 million degrees — that’s five times hotter than the sun. “The recent operation lays a solid scientific and experimental foundation towards the running of a fusion reactor,” says Gong Xianzu, a researcher at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Looking to the Future
The company building the reactor, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, better known as “East” is being used to test technology for an even larger reactor being constructed in France. In a collaboration with 35 countries, it could potentially be the world’s largest reactor, and if it works, it holds the hope that every country could “make the switch.” The United States, the United Kingdom, China, India, and all states in the European Union are involved in the project — the more the merrier for a technological advancement like this. Scientists expect the reactor to begin working in the year 2025, and with that, hopefully a cleaner future awaits.