Chapter 366 Dead End
Chapter 366 Dead End
One day later, at the Institute of Plasma of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Luzhou.
Academician Zhong Weijian was presiding over a technical seminar on the improvement of the Oriental Super Ring equipment.
The main topic of the meeting was the structural optimization of the first wall and the replacement of the material of the super-strong neodymium magnet.
Zhong Weijian first analyzed the damage to the first wall in the last ignition experiment, and believed that by slightly improving the reflection angle of the structure, the magnetic field can be effectively utilized to reduce the impact of the escaping ions on the first wall.
However, he seemed a little evasive about the replacement of the material of the super-strong magnet. The main reason was that the Oriental Super Ring was actually just the Chinese branch of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, and it was one of the open platforms of the International Thermonuclear Fusion Device.
There are scientists from more than 30 countries and more than 100 units around the world, accounting for as much as 40%.
This kind of international cooperation project is actually about everyone working together to build experimental devices, and then using the devices to conduct experiments together and share the experimental results.
As for the parts and materials for building these devices, it doesn’t matter who made them. Anyway, whoever comes up with something better will use theirs, and no one has the right to ask others to share these technologies.
Wherever there are people, there are rivers and lakes, let alone this kind of heavyweight international cooperation project.
Basically, each participant will keep a hand more or less, and no one will expose their own special skills without reservation.
Although everyone only contributes 60-80% of the effort, after all, there is strength in numbers. Everyone brainstorms, learns from each other, and makes progress together, which is usually better than individuals exerting 100% of their efforts.
This is also the reason why international cooperation projects still exist despite everyone’s own ulterior motives and often bickering.
Therefore, Zhong Weijian simply announced the performance of this new material, which is 90MGOe, without mentioning any technical details of this material.
After hearing Zhong Weijian’s analysis, the venue immediately presented two completely different reactions.
Although Chinese scholars showed surprise and curiosity, they were generally calm. They had heard a little about this 90MGOe super-strong neodymium magnet.
In fact, this thing is no longer a secret in China. Many heavy truck motors have already used this magnet.
They even knew that Zhong Weijian submitted an application to the Ministry of Science and Technology to upgrade the magnetic material of EAST last year.
But this application was rejected for some unknown reason.
There is a rumor that the Ministry of Science and Technology decided to reject this application after consulting Kang Chi’s opinion.
This is somewhat surprising.
After all, it makes no sense not to use materials that can be used on electric trucks for EAST…
And if they don’t use it, then don’t use it. Why are they suddenly allowed to use it now?
I don’t quite understand what it means…
As for foreign scholars, they are even more surprised.
Foreign scholars have always only speculated that China has produced N90-level super-strong neodymium magnets, and have never received any official confirmation, but today Zhong Weijian has confirmed this matter.
“It seems that the rumors are true. Datang Heavy Industry has already produced N90-level super-strong neodymium magnets…”
”90MGOe, another world-leading material…”
”If the magnetic confinement system of the Eastern Super Ring is upgraded to super-strong neodymium magnets, under the same input power, the steady-state strong magnetic field strength of the Eastern Super Ring magnetic confinement system can theoretically be increased from the current 452,200 Gauss to 492,800 Gauss, an increase of up to 9%!”
Although the magnetic confinement system mainly depends on the performance of superconducting materials, the improvement of magnetic material performance is not that great, but the 9% improvement is not big, but it is not small.
Maybe, it can increase the ignition time by one or two hundred seconds? This performance improvement is indeed worth stopping all experimental projects and upgrading the equipment.
Seeing that everyone has no objection to this, the next step is the specific time arrangement and cost accounting for this upgrade and transformation.
After all, it is an international cooperation project, and the money is contributed by everyone in proportion. Therefore, the cost of each major equipment upgrade must be made public, and this link is usually the most likely to cause disagreements.
Some meaningIn a sense, this is an equipment “procurement meeting”. Everyone hopes that their products will win the bid. However, at today’s “procurement meeting”, everyone quickly reached a consensus.
After all, the performance of 90MGOe is here, and no one can make it except Datang Heavy Industry.
After the meeting, Zhong Weijian finally breathed a sigh of relief.
After returning to his office, he immediately sat on the chair and lit a cigarette.
At this time, the door was suddenly knocked.
“Come in.”
After the door was opened, Professor Cheng Tao from the School of Engineering of Huazhong University of Science and Technology came in. After he closed the door, he couldn’t help asking, “Why did the higher-ups suddenly approve this application that had already been rejected?”
“I don’t know either.” Zhong Weijian shook his head and handed a cigarette to Cheng Tao. “I thought this application had been put into the trash can a long time ago. I didn’t expect that they not only dug it out and approved it, but also looked very anxious…”
Cheng Tao took the cigarette, lit it and took a puff, then thought for a moment before saying, “In fact, I analyzed it carefully later and felt that Dr. Kang’s suggestion to the Ministry of Science and Technology was correct…”
“Although the 9% increase in magnetic field strength is not small, it can’t play a qualitative role except making EAST’s ignition results look better. Instead of upgrading, it takes a lot of time to upgrade the device. ”
”Replacing the magnetic material is almost equivalent to dismantling and rebuilding the entire device. The workload is too large. We can wait until other materials or technologies have made significant progress before upgrading them uniformly…”
Zhong Weijian also nodded: “You have discussed this issue with me several times. I have been convinced by you a long time ago. In fact, I also stated your point of view yesterday…”
”But the problem is that now it is not us who apply, but they give a death order… To be honest, I am still a little confused now, and I always feel that this matter is a bit strange.”
The two of them pondered for a long time but could not figure out the above meaning. Professor Cheng finally sighed and gave up thinking about this problem that was more brain-consuming than doing research.
“Putting this aside, I feel like we have reached a dead end…”
”Dead end?” Zhong Weijian looked at Cheng Tao in surprise, “When did you become a pessimist?”
”In the past, major research theories came one after another, and the optimization schemes for the device structure came one after another…”
Professor Cheng smiled helplessly, ”But now an upgrade of magnet materials can make everyone feel like they have grabbed a life-saving straw, even such a big upgrade feels worthwhile… This is actually enough to show that EAST is facing a huge bottleneck.”
”You and I know that if the Q value cannot be improved, no matter how much the constraint time is improved, even if it is constrained for a few hours or even a few days, it is just a placebo for everyone to persist…”
Zhong Weijian fell into silence after hearing this.
He can actually fully understand Cheng Tao’s “pessimism”.
The current research progress and breakthroughs in nuclear fusion are mainly reflected in the ignition time, but the Q value is rarely mentioned.
Because just mentioning it makes people feel somewhat desperate.
When the Q value is equal to 1, it means that the energy generated by the nuclear fusion reaction is equal to the external energy it consumes.
But in fact, the Q value must be greater than 5 for the reactor to be self-sustaining. If the conversion between thermal energy, kinetic energy and electrical energy is taken into account, the Q value must reach at least 10 to have benefits, which means that it can be initially commercialized, but the benefits are not large.
For mature commercialization with relatively large benefits, it needs to be more than 30.
The highest Q value that humans have truly achieved at present is John Bull’s JET reactor, its Q value is only 0.67…
Although the island country’s JT-60 has achieved a theoretical value of 1.25 through simulation experiments with deuterium-tritium,
but that is only a theoretical value, and no actual experiments have been done at all.
They are dismantling JT-60 and rebuilding JT-60U for verification.
Whether it is 0.67 or 1.25, facing the huge number of 10-30, the difficult advancement speed inevitably makes people feel a little suffocated and desperate.
(End of this chapter)