China makes breakthrough in 'man-made sun' research

Beijing, March 17  An artificial sun experiment developed by Hefei Institute of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Science, has successfully realised UHT long pulse plasma discharge at a temperature of more than 50 million degrees.

As of January, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion device, nicknamed "artificial sun", made a 102-second-long pulse plasma discharge at a central electron temperature of 50 million degrees-plus, the People's Daily reported on Thursday.

"An artificial sun can provide limitless clean energy through controlled thermonuclear fusion," said Xu Jiannan, a researcher at the China Academy of Engineering Physics.

The light and heat of the sun come from two of hydrogen's family members: deuterium and tritium. 

These release a huge amount of energy during the process of fusion into a helium atom. The artificial sun imitates this fusion process.

According to Xu, the academy and the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (SIOM) have established an independent study on inertial confinement fusion and have also developed laser driving devices as well as a PTS device. 

The output current of the PTS device reaches 8-10 million amps.