Super Copy of Great Power Technology

"Mr. Qiao, your control center is only a few hundred meters away from the fusion test reactor. Isn't it too dangerous? If the reactor gets out of control and explodes, this place will be razed to the ground!" A reporter from CCTV asked.

"There is a saying in the medical field that talking about toxicity without considering the dosage is foolish, and this saying also applies to nuclear reactions. During the ignition test phase, the deuterium and tritium gas added was only a few milligrams to a dozen milligrams. Even if it exploded completely, the power would be about the same as that of a large aerial bomb. Although our control center looks short and squat, the main building is actually underground. During construction, a several-meter-thick steel protective layer was poured in the surrounding walls, which can withstand even a nuclear bomb. There are several underground safe houses with the same protective performance around the fusion test reactor. When the ignition test is carried out later, other staff will evacuate to the safe houses to ensure their safety."

"So that's how it is. I was wondering why there weren't any high-rise buildings around this fusion test reactor. It turns out it's built underground."

Qiao Ruida led a group of people into a low-rise building with a plaque of "Fusion Experiment Control Center" and then took the elevator down for more than two minutes. When the elevator opened, the vision in front of everyone suddenly opened up. What came into view was a circular hall with a height of more than ten meters and an area of ​​more than 500 square meters. In the middle was a circular open space, with more than a dozen rows of tables and chairs evenly arranged around it, showing a radial shape. Various equipment, instruments and computers were installed on it, and dense cables stretched out from the ground and connected to the equipment and computers. There were more than a hundred staff members in white coats sitting at their respective workstations, busy with their heads down.

Seeing Qiao Ruida and others coming, He Zhixia came up with two middle-aged nuclear experts. "Mr. Qiao, Mr. Cao, and all media friends, welcome to the fusion control center. I am He Zhixia, general manager of Ruida Aerospace. Everyone follow me. The ignition test of the controlled nuclear fusion experimental reactor will begin soon. Everyone please find an empty seat and sit down. Please feel free to take photos or videos, but do not use flash and do not disturb our staff. If you have any questions, please wait until the test is completed."

He Zhixia led everyone to the back seats at the edge of the hall, apologized, and continued to work in the front.

Ten minutes later, a voice came from the loudspeaker, "Report to the control center, the deuterium and tritium fuel has been filled, the fusion test reactor area has been cleared, and the ignition test can be started at any time."

"Control Center received. Ground maintenance team, you are to evacuate immediately and enter the underground safe house and wait. I repeat, you are to evacuate immediately and enter the underground safe house and wait."

"Maintenance team understands, evacuating."

"Mr. Qiao, all the preparations for the fusion reactor ignition test have been completed. How about you give the instructions?" He Zhixia walked to Qiao Ruida and asked him with his head down.

Qiao Ruida waved his hand and said, "You have participated in the entire installation and debugging process of this fusion equipment. I believe you have already understood it. It is up to you to give the instructions."

"Okay, Mr. Qiao, just wait and see! Maybe we can break a few records once we start the machine this time." He Zhixia has a master's degree, but it's in electrochemistry, and he didn't know much about nuclear fusion before. However, after applying to become the general manager of Ruida New Energy Company, he learned that the company's main business was fusion power generation. He immediately searched the Internet for information and made up for the knowledge related to controlled nuclear fusion. In the past two months, he followed several nuclear energy experts to install and debug the fusion test reactor. Combining theory and practice, he has a very deep understanding of the composition, principles and work flow of the entire fusion reactor. It is not an exaggeration to say that he is half an expert. He just follows the startup process designed by Qiao Ruida, issues instructions, and conducts an ignition test of the fusion test reactor. He believes that there is no problem.

In fact, this controlled nuclear fusion experimental reactor was designed by Qiao Ruida based on the drawings and working principles of the large arc reactor of Stark Industries in the movie "Iron Man", combined with existing equipment and industrial level. Some of the core components cannot be produced domestically, and they cannot wait to be customized abroad, so Qiao Ruida had to use the gold finger to copy these core components. This includes an intelligent control system for the fusion experimental reactor, which uses powerful computing power to comprehensively monitor the readings of various sensors in the fusion reactor, regulate the magnetic field strength and distribution in real time, control the input speed of deuterium and tritium fuel, and ensure that the fusion reaction is stable and controllable. It is precisely because of this intelligent control system that Qiao Ruida can let He Zhixia, who is not a professional, give instructions and conduct ignition experiments without worrying about human operation errors and dangers.

"Turn on the power switch of the fusion experimental reactor, collect sensor data, and start the holographic simulation system." He Zhixia returned to his workstation, turned on the microphone, and issued the first instruction.

As the order was issued, the data displayed on the screens in front of many staff members jumped rapidly or fluctuated significantly, and finally stabilized to a number. At the same time, on the open space in the center of the hall, rays of light were projected, colliding and interweaving with each other in the air, forming a translucent donut-shaped facility. It was obvious that a medium-sized 3D holographic projector was hidden under this open space. The people at the scene were all nuclear energy experts and power experts. They had some understanding of controlled nuclear fusion. They could tell at a glance that this holographic image was a scaled-down schematic model of the controlled nuclear fusion experimental reactor they had just visited, and also a scaled-down model of a tokamak device.

"Turn on the superconducting confinement coil, open the valve, add deuterium and tritium gas into the reaction chamber, turn on the microwave heater, turn on the neutral particle beam injector, and heat the gas."

The second command was issued, and the superconducting coil was turned on, generating a strong spiral magnetic field. Due to the high power consumption, the lighting in the control hall showed obvious changes in brightness. This was the result of Qiao Ruida's special "development" of a room-temperature superconductor for making coils, which saved a lot of refrigeration facilities and reduced power consumption. If it were a conventional tokamak device using low-temperature superconducting coils, the energy consumption would be more than twice that of this fusion test reactor, and a dedicated power line and a substation would be required to ensure power supply.

At the same time as the command was issued, the coil part on the virtual fusion reactor model gradually turned blue and kept flashing blue light, indicating that the coil had been powered on and a strong magnetic field was generated. Above the coil, a box popped up, showing the magnetic field strength in the reaction chamber in real time. The reading was as high as 30 Tesla, equivalent to 30 Gauss, which is 20 times the magnetic field of the earth. After adding a small amount of deuterium and tritium gas to the vacuum chamber, a light red color appeared on the holographic model, which was slowly rotating in the annular chamber. As the microwave heater and neutral particle beam injector were turned on and worked at full power, the temperature of the gas became higher and higher, and the red on the holographic model became more and more intense, from red to bright, red to purple, and finally to rich purple. At this time, the deuterium and tritium gases had been converted into plasma at high temperature, circling rapidly in the reaction chamber and flowing continuously. The temperature marked above is also rising, 100 degrees, 500 degrees, 1000 degrees, 5000 degrees, 10000 degrees, 50000 degrees, 100 degrees, 3000 million degrees, 1 million degrees, 1 million degrees... After half an hour of heating, the temperature of the plasma flow in the reaction chamber has risen to about million degrees. Plasma with such a high temperature is like a wild horse running away and a flood that has broken through the dam. It can no longer be restrained by any solid material, and can only be restrained by a strong magnetic field.

"Reporting to Mr. He, the current plasma temperature has reached 1 million degrees Celsius, the magnetic field strength is 30 Tesla, and the plasma is currently operating stably, meeting the conditions for the ignition experiment." When all indicators met the ignition requirements, a staff member reported to He Zhixia.

"Keep heating up, ignition test begins."

Under the precise control of the equipment, the temperature of the ion flow formed by deuterium and tritium continued to rise, 10 million degrees, 50 million degrees, 100 million degrees, and 500 million degrees. At the moment when the temperature reading reached million degrees, the deuterium-tritium fusion reaction occurred, and the entire vacuum chamber was instantly dyed golden yellow, emitting a sun-like light. At the same time, the temperature of the plasma began to soar, billion degrees, billion degrees, billion degrees, and all the way to billion degrees, before gradually stabilizing.

"The sensor detected that the fusion reaction had occurred, the temperature began to soar, and the plasma flow was running stably. The first wall was hit by neutrons, the heat exchanger started to work, the thermal generator started to work, and the power input was gradually reduced. The fusion test reactor entered a state of self-sufficiency in electricity."

The staff's report indicated that the first ignition of the fusion reactor had been successful. The dazzling light emitted from the holographic projection model in the center of the hall proved that the fusion light had been ignited. The next step was to see how long the fusion reaction could run stably. After the report, warm applause rang out in the control hall. All the personnel on site, including experts, engineers, and media reporters, stood up and applauded the birth of this fusion light. The successful occurrence of the fusion reaction means that the fusion reactor was successfully ignited and can operate normally. This is not easy for a private enterprise that is conducting a controlled nuclear fusion experiment for the first time.

Several major ways of generating electricity for human beings are inseparable from boiling water, including thermal power, nuclear fission power generation, and the fusion reactor in front of us. The large amount of heat conducted from the reaction chamber is used to heat fresh water and generate a large amount of water vapor, which is used to drive the turbine to rotate and generate electricity. This set of power generation equipment has been used in nuclear power plants for many years, and its stability and conversion efficiency have been optimized to the extreme by countless scientists and engineers. Qiao Ruida has a power generation method with higher conversion efficiency, that is, magnetohydrodynamic power generation, which can directly convert plasma gas flow into electrical energy, but that requires a large amount of plasma circulation. At present, this fusion reactor obviously cannot meet the requirements, so it can only settle for the second best and use the mature method of boiling water to generate electricity.

"A small amount of helium ash is produced in the vacuum chamber. The divertor is opened to remove the helium ash."

In nuclear fusion reactions, light elements such as deuterium and tritium combine to form helium-4 (He-4), releasing a large amount of energy. These high-energy particles will be ejected to the boundary of the fusion device during the reaction, forming the so-called "helium ash". These high-energy particles have a certain destructive effect on the container of the fusion device. In order to reduce the damage of these high-energy particles to the container, divertors are usually set in the fusion device. These divertors can block high-energy particles and reduce damage to the container. The divertor is usually located at the "grate" position composed of magnetic lines of force, separating the helium ash and impurities from the fuel, and pumping them out through a vacuum pump, thereby protecting the normal operation of the fusion device.

"The sensor sensed a large amount of neutron irradiation, the tritium multiplication device was turned on, and the tritium gas input was appropriately reduced. The current tritium self-sustaining rate is 86%."

As mentioned earlier, the preparation of tritium gas in deuterium-tritium fusion reactions is difficult and expensive. In order to reduce the consumption of tritium gas in fusion reactions, scientists have designed a series of tritium self-sustaining and tritium value-added equipment using the principle of neutrons hitting lithium metal to produce tritium. Qiao Ruida has learned from the strengths of many companies and designed a new set of tritium value-added equipment, which can theoretically increase the tritium self-sustaining rate to more than 95%. However, the theoretical conversion rate is only an estimated data under the most ideal conditions. After the equipment is installed, the tritium self-sustaining rate can only reach 86%, which is far from the ideal conversion rate of 95%. However, Qiao Ruida does not want to continue to optimize. The current deuterium-tritium fusion test is only to verify the availability of the fusion reactor, collect data, and prepare for the design and construction of the official version of the fusion reactor.

The manned lunar landing project of the neighboring Ruida Aerospace has been launched. It won't take long for astronauts to land on the moon and bring back a large amount of helium-3 gas collected in the early stage. Helium- not only requires lower reaction conditions, but also does not produce neutrons and has a higher energy density. Therefore, it is widely considered to be an ideal fuel for controlled nuclear fusion. Now this fusion test reactor can withstand the fusion of deuterium and tritium, and it is more than enough for helium- fusion.

When the fusion test reactor was ignited for the first time, it continued to burn for 300 seconds. During this period, it not only achieved self-sustaining electricity, but even produced a small surplus, which was transmitted to the neighboring Ruida Space City, setting a new world record for nuclear fusion reaction energy output.

"The first ignition test is complete and the reactor is being phased out."

The fusion reactor slowly stopped running, and the high-temperature plasma in the chamber quickly cooled down, and then the deuterium and tritium gases were separated by the equipment for recycling. When the fusion light on the holographic model slowly went out and the temperature dropped rapidly, warm applause rang out again in the control hall.

At this point, the first ignition test of the fusion reactor has been successfully completed. Next, we need to wait for the fusion reactor to cool down and send people to enter the fusion reactor to check some vulnerable parts to ensure that the fusion reactor can operate stably for a long time. (End of this chapter)