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Chapter 153 The Past and Present of Nuclear Technology
The energy crisis is the root of the problem.When a technology carries all the hope for the future of mankind, it should become a kind of belief, so that all mankind, even after tens or hundreds of generations, will work hard and strive for it.

For Huaxia, the energy issue is an immediate issue. The huge population base makes the per capita energy far lower than that of developed countries in the Western world.For thousands of years, the emergence and consumption of fossil energy has also made people realize that the resources on the planet are limited. Similarly, fossil energy has its own disadvantages and pollutes the environment.

Therefore, in order to solve the energy problem, clean energy emerged. However, the utilization efficiency of clean energy is too low. Even the optimization technology of photovoltaic power generation brought by Wei Lai cannot replace fossil energy as the main force in global energy consumption.Until the emergence of room temperature superconducting technology.

The emergence of room temperature superconducting technology has solved the existing energy crisis to a certain extent, but there is still a fatal problem. Metal resources are also limited, but for people, the consumption of metal resources is far higher than that of fossil energy. It takes longer to consume.

From the perspective of time span, compared with human beings, the sun is basically an eternal existence. The sun nourishes and illuminates all things. Then the principle of the birth of energy inside the sun and the principle of nuclear fusion have become what people yearn for. technology.

Regarding the use of nuclear technology, there is also the nuclear fission power generation technology used by nuclear power plants currently in service.However, nuclear fission power generation and room temperature superconducting power generation cannot be compared.The reason is that although normal temperature superconducting power generation is not as good as that of nuclear power plants, normal temperature superconducting power generation is better than safety.

Regarding the exploration of energy-efficient applications, human beings have never stopped their progress.After the emergence of room temperature superconducting power generation technology, nuclear fission power generation technology is also not as sweet and delicious as before.After all, the sweet and delicious nuclear fission has its deadly danger. The obvious example is the nuclear leak.

The principle commonly used in nuclear power plants is to use reactors to produce fission and chain reactions to occur continuously. At the same time, the loss of mass will generate huge heat, which will drive the steam engine, turn the generator, and generate electricity.The nuclear fission of nuclear power plant reactors is usually controlled by various means, and the nuclear reaction cannot be allowed to continue, otherwise it will explode and cause terrible consequences.

Nuclear fission is to produce fission by bombarding heavy nuclei, while nuclear fusion is to generate larger atomic nuclei through the combination of light nuclei, and release huge energy while generating larger atomic nuclei.During the reaction process of nuclear fusion, each nucleon emits 3 MeV on average, which is three times that of nuclear fission reaction.

Nuclear fission and normal-temperature superconducting technology also have limitations on raw materials, and the sources are all metals, but for nuclear fission, metals are toxic and scarce.The concentration of uranium 235 required for atomic bombs should basically reach more than 85%, while the uranium 235 required for nuclear power plants is usually 3%.

The radioactivity of uranium 235, the radiation produced is extremely harmful to the human body. Needless to say, compared to nuclear fusion, which can generate more energy, is cleaner, and has more abundant raw materials, nuclear fission is ordinary.On the one hand, it is because the raw material needed for nuclear fusion technology is hydrogen.

Compared with the extraction of uranium raw materials from uranium ores, the extraction of hydrogen and the production of its isotopes are more convenient.At the same time, the conditions for nuclear fusion to occur also make nuclear fusion safer. The high temperature and high pressure of hundreds of millions of degrees are difficult to achieve in the environment of the earth and stars.

Safety also means more difficult to achieve, which is why controlled nuclear fusion has been difficult to achieve for several years.On Earth, there is no material or substance that can withstand such high temperature and pressure.The appearance of the tokamak device is to solve the unbearable high temperature and high pressure.

As early as more than ten years ago, the EAST project achieved 1-second controllable nuclear fusion, and the temperature reached a temperature record of [-] million degrees. However, at the high temperature of [-] million degrees, the nuclear fusion reaction lasted only ten seconds. .After the continuous efforts and breakthroughs of scientists, under higher temperature and pressure, the time we can carry out sustained nuclear fusion reactions is also steadily increasing.

This kind of growth is quite slow, but even so, Huaxia is at the forefront of the world on the road to controllable nuclear fusion.

The reason for the major changes is also due to the room temperature superconducting technology. The emergence of room temperature superconducting also made the EAST equipment undergo a major upgrade and transformation.Compared with the previous device structure that used liquid nitrogen cooling to keep the equipment in a superconducting state, the emergence of room temperature superconductivity has made nuclear fusion technology more stable.

The once "ice and fire" device has become a device that only requires internal high temperature and high pressure, and no external device is required to maintain the superconducting state.Boiling water, growing the sun, humans have gone to great lengths to obtain energy.Whether it is nuclear fusion or nuclear fission, or the room-temperature superconductivity that is now being used on a large scale, they are all solutions that humans are seeking to solve energy problems.

The energy output of nuclear fusion is far higher than that of room temperature superconducting technology, and the by-products of fusion are seawater desalination and hydrogen.The heated seawater vaporizes after high temperature, and finally cools down and is naturally desalinated. The hydrogen produced at high temperature can provide a large amount of clean energy.It can be said that applying these fusion technologies to the national economy can greatly improve our quality of life.

Nuclear fusion, just like the information revolution and the semiconductor revolution, once realized, will revolutionize the entire human society.Technological revolutions are often accompanied by voices of worry and doubt: Is it unsafe if it is nuclear and high temperature?In fact, the conditions for the formation of nuclear fusion have already told us the result, which is quite safe.

For the large fireball with a temperature of hundreds of millions in the device, once something happens, the EAST control center can achieve instant cooling, stop fusion, and the fireball turns into gas again, basically without derivative disasters.However, the explosion was not accidental, because the temperature was out of control.

The reason for the runaway is that in the tokamak nuclear fusion experimental device, the boundary region of the highly confined plasma will periodically erupt an instability called the boundary localized mode (ELM), and the large ELM is similar to the solar flare eruption .Based on the previous successful exploration and realization of the weed-type small-amplitude boundary localized mode (Grassy ELM), the EAST superconducting tokamak team revealed the physical mechanism of the Grassy ELM, and then used this spontaneous high-frequency small Amplitude Grassy ELM, a high-performance steady-state plasma operation mode has been developed.

The problem lies in the lack of information and imperfect models. First of all, for nuclear fusion technology, there are still too many gaps to be filled.The cause of the explosion was similar to the eruption of a super-powerful solar flare, which was beyond the operating range of the model. At the same time, the high temperature also caused the inner wall of the entire device to be burned, completely out of control.

The reason for safety is also because the conditions of nuclear fusion are difficult to achieve. After the explosion, the temperature drop also stops the fusion reaction, and there is no loss after a violent explosion.

(End of this chapter)