China nuclear fusion plant

probe

The People's Daily has photographs of China's first nuclear fusion plant. Looks much more advanced compared with the EU's ITER in the south of France.

"The full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, nicknamed "artificial sun", can generate infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy."

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200603/27/eng20060327_253827.html

probe

Nukem

Hoax perhaps? It didnt happen untill its in CNN remember

More links though http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054909004

probe

If you think the Chinese fusion reactor is a hoax, try wading through the 207,000 references to it in Google!

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=Tokamak+fusion+device&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

probe

Crucifix

If it's a hoax it's a good one, I've been hearing news about this all the way along.
Here's hoping the thing works.

css

Who knows if it's a hoax or not, but do remember these guys were blowing things up when westerners were still slaughtering each other with slashhooks! They're no eejits..

lostinsuperfunk

It's not a hoax, but the reporting is a little breathless. It's another research tokamak, not a reactor prototype. Many tokamaks have been built around the world since they were invented in the 50's in Russia. That's why searching for "tokamak fusion reactor" produces many results, almost all of them unrelated to this machine.
Looks interesting though. China is a partner in ITER so some of the experiments on this machine may prove to be useful. This machine is the first to have superconducting poloidal and toroidal magnetic field coils, as will ITER. The field generated by these coils provides the high pressures needed to compress the "fuel" (deuterium/tritium nuclei) in order to get them to react (fuse).

Viking House

So what is it in laymans terms?

Crucifix

Viking House wrote:

So what is it in laymans terms?

As far as I know, an apparatus that will run the kind of fusion we eventually hope to use for power generation, but this one won't actually be used to supply electricity.

lostinsuperfunk

As far as I know, an apparatus that will run the kind of fusion we eventually hope to use for power generation, but this one won't actually be used to supply electricity.

Yes, this machine will be like a smaller, cheaper version of the real thing, to test new ideas, This is similar to the wind tunnel experiments that are done on scale models of new airliners before the aerospace company goes to the trouble and expense of attempting to build a full size working prototype.
This device will probably produce some fusion energy but it won't generate any electricity. This is like building a small furnace to burn coal, but without any of the electricity generating plant that goes with it. That might sound mad, but getting the fusion device to work is the difficult part. Once that's achieved, it will be (relatively) easy to convert the energy produced to electricity.
In fact, most current fusion research machines consume far more energy than they produce (and the produced energy isn't extracted anyway). However these machines are useful for investigating the technologies that will be needed to build an electricity-producing prototype.