China turns on nuclear-powered ‘artificial sun’

China on Friday commissioned its first nuclear-powered ‘artificial sun’.

The China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) said the HL-2M Tokamak ‘artificial sun’ uses a ‘powerful magnetic field to fuse hot plasma and can reach temperatures of over 150 million degrees Celsius, Xinhua news agency reported.

The innovation is dubbed as huge advancement of China’s nuclear research capabilities. It will use hydrogen and deuterium gases as fuels. The giant device is located in Chengdu in southwestern Sichuan province.

The device is expected to provide ‘clean energy through controlled nuclear fusion.

The report added that the device is the country’s largest in scale and highest in parameters, with a more advanced structure and control mode than its predecessor, the HL-2A Tokamak.

‘The energy confinement time of international tokamak devices is less than one second. The shot discharge duration of the HL-2M is around 10 seconds, with an energy confinement time of a few hundred milliseconds,’ said Yang Qingwei, chief engineer of the HL-2M at the Southwestern Institute of Physics under the CNNC.