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China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) recently became the first facility in the world to generate plasma temperatures of 100 Million degrees Celsius (180 Million Fahrenheit).
For comparison, the temperature at the core of the Sun is a paltry 15 Million degrees Celsius (27 Million Fahrenheit)
EAST is part of the multi-billion dollar International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project which seeks to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a power source. ITER is funded by the EU, USA, India, Russia, South Korea, Japan, and China.
China's quest for clean, limitless energy heats up
Wu Songtao, a top Chinese engineer with ITER, conceded that China's technical capabilities on fusion still lag behind more developed countries, and that US and Japanese tokamaks have achieved more valuable overall results.
But the Anhui test reactor underlines China's fast-improving scientific advancement and its commitment to achieve yet more.
China's capabilities "have developed rapidly in the past 20 years, especially after catching the ITER express train," Wu said.
In an interview with state-run Xinhua news agency in 2017, ITER's Director-General Bernard Bigot lauded China's government as "highly motivated" on fusion.
China is also planning a separate fusion reactor that it hopes will be able to generate commercially viable fusion power in about thirty years and has already promised six billion yuan ($890 million) to that project.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday April 29 2019, @10:26AM (5 children)
> The Chinese tend to build cheap and crap
Citation needed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Monday April 29 2019, @12:09PM (2 children)
Reference: close to half a century of buying "made in china" stuff. Overall: it's cheap, mostly works, doesn't last particularly long, but (again) it's cheap.
In a lot of ways I would prefer to buy higher quality stuff which lasts "forever", but it is difficult to find it these days - often you find you've just paid more money for something that is in fact made-in-china with a western brand name stuck on it, so might as well go for cheap-Chinese in the first place.
In terms of buildings, some large recently built stuff does collapse (structural/engineering cause, not natural disaster) in China, e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8123559.stm [bbc.co.uk] I think in the UK Ronan Point back in the 60s was the last large building structural failure. On the other hand, China builds a lot more (look at Shanghai 30yrs ago vs. today) so the failure rate may well be acceptable given the rate of progress.
With the tech input they get from joining ITER coupled with the rate stuff gets built, I would be entirely unsurprised if China was first to commercial fusion. Ditto first feet back on the Moon and Mars - although SpaceX may beat them, but that is purely because Musk has a very un-NASA (and more Chinese) like attitude to risk.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 29 2019, @01:17PM
China, more than the US or Europe, serves the target market. You can have a yacht built in China to higher standards than in a U.S. shipyard, they know how to do it and will do it - for the actual price it costs to do it, which would be just marginally less than you would pay a U.S. shipyard... so few people bother. China will also build yachts to much lower standards than U.S. shipyards - again for the actual price it costs to do so, and these are the ones which are popular for export because they look very similar to the better made yachts and can be sold for marginally less in the U.S. market, with a much bigger sales commission cushion built in - so, of course US yacht sellers push those.
Same goes for WalMart level products - the Chinese can, and occasionally do, build good stuff for a good price, but with suppliers like WalMart demanding ever increasing margins year after year, the quality goes down until you have 0% Aloe content in your Aloe Vera gel, because there's no other way to achieve the cost targets.
In other words: China exports to us the quality level we demand, in a very real sense we: the post Great Depression penny pinching nation, get the products we deserve.
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(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday April 29 2019, @02:20PM
What about Charles De Gaulle airport?
https://www.thoughtco.com/charles-de-gaulle-airport-terminal-collapse-3972251 [thoughtco.com]
Or - dare I say it - Grenfell tower (the cladding which caused problems was pretty new). Nb: I don't think this anecdotal cherry-picking demonstrates anything, rather it shows that by picking some BBC news story or other all you get is confirmation of whatever bias you happen to have this week.
> Reference: close to half a century of buying "made in china" stuff.
That's like saying USians can't manufacture stuff because of McDonalds. McDonalds is a great product - it performs exactly as designed, cheap and tastes like ****; much like the cheap Chinese rip-off stuff you are buying.
I would also add that tarring 1.4 billion people with the same brush is ridiculous. It's like slagging off Scotland because of Italy, or vice-versa.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Monday April 29 2019, @12:12PM
the Great Leap Forward [wikipedia.org]. That mentality has guided Chinese civil engineering and manufacturing since.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 29 2019, @01:10PM
The Three Gorges Dam, that's a cheap piece of crap, amirite? /s
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