Dubbed the “artificial sun,” the Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak (BEST) is under construction in Hefei, east China’s Anhui Province. The BEST facility represents one of China’s major ventures into controlled nuclear fusion and is poised to attempt the world’s first fusion energy power generation demonstration.
bonus article: https://english.cas.cn/newsroom/cas-in-media/202604/t20260417_1157472.shtml (Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak under Construction in Hefei, China’s Anhui)
I’m going to die laughing when China actually gets it done in the next ten years, whilst Europe’s ITER, and whatever the fuck the US have, have being faffing around for decades
I remember decades ago when i was in high school they took us on a field trip to ITER and they were all promising it would just be a few more years and fusion would be commercially viable. Feels like in Europe we are just treading water and getting nowhere… China really is humanity’s hope.
This may have become a possibility had Europe not expelled Russian nuclear fusion scientists, considering the Tokomak design originates from them. Still doubtful but I think that decision really sealed the nail in the ITER coffin.
I’m 38 and when I was 15 the school physics department was covered in posters about ITER. I was so hopeful for the future at that age.
Is it possible that oil related companies have been defunding and sabotaging nuclear fusion in the West, or am I being a conspiracy theorist?
I think it’s more accurate to say that the US and western market system is just fundamentally counter to fusion development.
The problem with fusion isn’t some impossible to solve puzzle that everyone is trying to crack, it’s that we don’t have the proper materials and expiremental data to just build one. In order to get those you need long term stable testing and continued steady improvements. There’s no secret shortcut that will give us commercially viable fusion, it requires longterm commited development.
However, western banks are never gonna finance something like that, at least not at a reasonable interest rate, becuase there’s no profit to be made during that long period. So in the US especially (though I’ve seen some stuff from Germany as well) you get these nuclear fusion startup schemes (advanced snake oil salesmen if you ask me) who market new fangled methods if producing fusion that promise create some breakthrough that doesn’t exist.
Here in California for example, we have a project, up in the bay area I believe, that’s trying to use lasers to sustain fusion. It’s a neat little idea, but the thing it needs is long term testing, and so the problem loops back around. The project attracts investors for a time with the promise of fusion but realistically it’ll fail not because their theories aren’t sound but because eventually investors will figure out it’s not going to produce any profits anytime soon.
The only real fusion project I think has any serious (it’s still barely any) potential is one on the east coast called Commonwealth Fusion which came out of a bunch of MIT alumni. I single that out just because they actually link their work to the development of chamber materials, which will likely continue getting renewed development. Even then, thet still need to do consistent testing that could only really be performed by a state, which this little startup of STEM nerds isn’t capable of doing.
China recognizes the needs for nuclear fusion development and doesn’t need to deal with the pointless puppet shows put on for investors. They are interlinking the entire nation’s resources for the sake of developing nuclear fusion, which itself is just another part of a dynamic system of technological advancement.
ITER had some potential in my opinion but was mired by the need for political dominace exhibited by the West. An international fusion project is frankly a wonderful concept and would ideally be the way to develop fusion as different nations contributed in whatever areas they were exceptional at. However obviously that’s not how international relations work under capitlist world hedghemony, so it was doomed to failure.
Very well explained. Scientific development and capitalism are ultimately at odds when results aren’t immediate
Exactly what happens, having been to one of said schemes.
And second commonwealth
I’m sure it’s a possibility. I’d also guess that inefficiencies caused by private companies are greatly to blame. At every stage of the process, from consulting, surveying to construction, some shareholders are going to have to take their cut. And because this is a new industry with no benchmark to measure against, they can drag their feet and string along the gravy train for as long as they like.
And with extra safety instead of shortcuts for bazillionaire profits.
They aren’t in competition. Quite the opposite, both programs exchange information with each other. For example 15 years ago, China was pushing the Tokamak technology forward, Europe worked on a alternative reactor without the tokamak designsa limitations: Back then it needed constantly increasing input to keep running, obviously limiting the maximal fusion runtime and preventing surplus energy production.
Back then they sometimes even exchanged personel, there are only a handful of welders qualified to work on fusion reactors.