Infinite Life: Trapped in a lifetime

The half-life of tritium is only a dozen years.

In other words, natural tritium almost does not exist in nature.

All sources of tritium are man-made and have a short shelf life.

The man-made source is neutron bombardment of lithium-6.

The actual only source is that each fission reactor was able to produce a very small amount each year.

The amount of lithium produced by each suitable fission reactor is roughly measured in grams.

Therefore, at this stage, not only have domestic fission reactors not been banned, but if the problem of tritium proliferation is not completely solved, there may be plans to build more fission reactors specifically used to produce tritium.

In this case, the cost of tritium can be imagined.

Of course, more critical than cost is the supply of output.

As for the tritium problem, the only solution lies in the controllable fusion reactor itself.

A controllable nuclear fusion reactor can produce tritium by itself during the entire operation process.

Including the Suiren demonstration reactor in front of Mo Dao at this moment, they are all capable of producing tritium.

After the fusion reaction of deuterium and tritium, neutrons can be produced,

When neutrons bombard lithium-6, tritium can be produced.

In other words, as long as enough lithium-6 is continuously placed next to the fusion reaction in the tokamak device, tritium can be continuously produced.

In that way, the entire controllable nuclear fusion reactor only needs to consume deuterium and lithium-6 to continue operating for a long time.

Of course, this is an ideal situation, that is, the amount of tritium produced is greater than the tritium consumed in the fusion reaction.

In other words, the self-sustaining rate of tritium reaches 1.

This support rate does not need to be dozens or hundreds of times like the energy output-input ratio.

Just one tritium is enough, and it is enough if it can sustain itself.

But the problem is that it cannot be achieved.

Including the current Suiren demonstration reactor and even the commercial reactor under construction,

You still need to add some tritium to it regularly, otherwise you will have to lie down.

This problem has been half solved so far in the Suiren Demonstration Pile.

This is because the current long-term average self-sustainability rate of the Suiren demonstration reactor can reach more than 99%.

This is the result of countless controllable nuclear fusion researchers in the previous life, until Mo Dao passed away.

Although Mo Dao had not yet broken through the most critical problem of plasma confinement at that time, many researchers did not give up studying this problem, which was not yet available at the time.

At the same time, it is also the result of the efforts of the researchers of the Suiren Demonstration Reactor led by Mo Dao in this life.

The current situation is,

Every sixty-five days of operation of the Suiren Demonstration Reactor, some deuterium needs to be re-added, about three kilograms.

The rest is tritium produced by bombarding lithium 6 with neutrons during the reaction, consuming lithium 6, and flowing back into the reaction.

only,

Even compared to the continuous energy output of the demonstration reactor, this consumption is very small.

But in this case, the tritium consumed will still hinder the popularity of controllable nuclear fusion commercial reactors in the near future.

The maximum amount of tritium that can be produced each year limits the number of commercial reactors that can be operated.

The best thing is to solve the problem of tritium proliferation before that, so that the self-sustaining rate of tritium exceeds 1.

In this way, the commercial pile built earlier does not need to be modified.

The tritium consumed can be used directly with the extra tritium produced during the subsequent commercial reactor reaction.

This is also the reason why commercial reactors were built before tritium was fully self-sustainable.

…

Mo Dao looked at the main body of the Suiren demonstration pile, feeling very calm.

It is a very troublesome thing to realize the self-sustaining and even proliferation of tritium.

It seems that the self-sustainability rate is now over 99%, and the distance of more than one seems to be just a stone's throw away.

But in fact, this is the difference between being able to self-sustain and being unable to do so. It is a question of whether it is possible or not.

However, this problem is still simpler than the turbulence problem.

This is already just a problem at the design and manufacturing level.

Under a more ideal environment, theoretically, this self-sustainability rate can exceed one.

However, the Suiren Demonstration Reactor project has advantages in solving this problem.

Mo Dao solves the constraint problem from the turbulence model instead of the material, which limits the size of the controllable fusion reactor and cannot be reduced for the time being.

However, the stability of the plasma confinement in the Suiren Demonstration Reactor and the grasp of the plasma confinement,

It also leaves considerable design margin for tritium self-sustainment issues, tritium reflux, tritium extraction and other aspects.

Mo Dao looked at the Suiren demonstration pile and thought for a while.

He can be said to be the person who knows the most about demonstration reactors, or controllable nuclear fusion.

His powerful thinking and memory abilities allow him to map almost every aspect of the entire demonstration pile in his mind.

He has mastered the basic situation of the demonstration reactor from restraint to power generation, from the whole to each system.

After another pause,

Mo Dao stood up and left here.

When I left, I saw the person in charge of the site who had not gone very far.

"I'm causing trouble for you."

"No, no. Chief Master Mo, won't you watch for a while?"

Although I know that Mo Dao is more familiar with this huge thing than him and everyone here,

But the person in charge of the scene still felt inexplicably worried that he might have hit something somewhere.

I was in a daze for a moment before I realized what I was doing.

Although Mo Dao was obviously less than forty years old, he subconsciously thought that Mo Dao was seventy or eighty years old.

This is a side effect of too much respect.

Too worried about the safety of Mo Dao, the de facto leader in the field of controllable nuclear fusion.

"After reading it, I have some ideas. After that, we may make some modifications to the demonstration reactor."

"Okay, Commander Mo."

…

The process of overcoming the tritium proliferation problem is somewhat similar to the original theoretical design of the Suiren demonstration reactor.

Of course, design work cannot be done by one person.

Most of the time, Mo Dao distributed the design goals to each team.

Let each team solve some detailed problems, and then he will come up with an overall plan.

This method of research and discussion is somewhat unique, but after going through the theoretical demonstration process of previous demonstration reactors,

All the researchers are basically used to it.

As long as we move in the direction indicated by Chief Master Mo, as long as we meet Chief Master Mo's requirements, the problem always seems to be solved in the end.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that other researchers don’t do research work.

It's just that the entire theoretical team is operating according to Mo Dao's will and ideas.

To some extent, this was a blind trust in Mo Dao.

It's just that this is almost inevitable.

Because in the field of controllable nuclear fusion research, from night reactors to demonstration reactors, Mo Dao has never missed a beat.

…

And just as the demonstration reactor project team continues to further tackle the issue of tritium proliferation.

That year, Mo Dao was elected as an academician of both houses of Congress. And once elected,

There is a rank.

Apart from adding a title to Mo Dao, there was almost no change in this incident.

From the inside out, no one felt surprised.

There was nothing but congratulations.

In fact, they are not just academicians.

Outside of China, there are many places that Mo Dao has never been to in this life.

There are some places where self-sufficiency is given a bunch of titles such as academician.

also,

This year, there is another thing.

The first batch of large-scale commercial reactors covering ten cities has been completed.

Start connecting to the grid to generate electricity.

The huge pressure that the power sector has been under in the past two years has been relieved, and we are relieved.

As for the Suiren Demonstration Reactor project team.

More than two years after the construction of the Suiren demonstration reactor was completed,

A transformation of the demonstration reactor was started again.