The rise of nanometers

"It's okay..." Xu Guosheng was instantly shocked.

Academician Li smiled and said: "Xiuyuan is too humble. This control system of yours has opened a huge distance all of a sudden."

Huang Xiuyuan shook his head: "It is still too early to be successful. The plasma temperature is too low. If it is raised to hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius, the duration is expected to decrease."

"Even so, it's still a great improvement."

Qian Sizhen on the side also said hurriedly: "I will add a few more dishes tonight as a temporary celebration banquet."

Huang Xiuyuan shrugged: "It's okay for everyone to celebrate, but I'll forget it."

Academician Li wanted to say something else, but he saw that Huang Xiuyuan's arm with his sleeves rolled up turned out to be a bionic mechanical structure.

"This is……"

Huang Xiuyuan explained in a low voice: "This is my stand-in robot. There is nothing we can do for safety."

"Okay! I understand." Academician Li also understood immediately.

As a scientist and entrepreneur, Huang Xiuyuan plays a decisive role in the country.

Once something unexpected happens to him, the Suiren family is very likely to fall apart, and there are definitely not a few forces who want to kill Huang Xiuyuan, so they cannot afford to be careless.

Academician Li reacted instantly and ordered to Qian Sizhen: "Institute Qian, please go ahead and tell me that today's experimental conditions are absolutely not allowed to be revealed to the outside world. Do you understand?"

"Understood! I will make sure to keep confidentiality." Although Qian Sizhen is not good at scientific research, he is still very good at administrative work.

Everyone present understood the importance of the results of this experiment.

If the effect of the magnetic field-assisted control system is only to increase the continuous operation time by tens of seconds, then international colleagues probably won't care too much.

But this time, it increased to 2467 seconds, and it was still actively shutting down, not out of control. Once the news spread internationally, the Westerners would probably be envious and hateful, and they would directly separate.

Although China currently has great advantages, it does not mean that it can compete with the world.

Technologies such as controllable nuclear fusion, space colonization, gene editing, and artificial intelligence are all tickets to the next era.

Which country masters these technologies will mean that it can enter the next era and successfully advance to the primary interstellar civilization.

Before there is an absolute advantage, China will definitely not disclose the specific progress of controllable nuclear fusion, otherwise it will prompt other regions around the world to join forces, and may even trigger a world war.

The current global situation is in a strange balance, with East Asia and North America, Western Asia and Lucia all fearing each other.

Under this situation, no one dares to act arbitrarily. Although North America is actively wooing allies in the Asia-Pacific region, the little shrimps in the Asia-Pacific region have become extremely cautious, for fear of becoming cannon fodder in the game between the two sides.

Once controllable nuclear fusion technology appears, it will definitely break the current balance, and Westerners may jump to the wall in a hurry.

Therefore, the circumstances of this experiment must be kept strictly confidential. At least under the current situation, it is not appropriate to expose it.

That night, Hefei Plasma Research Institute held an internal celebration banquet and submitted two more reports.

One is the continuous running time of 62 seconds, which is data prepared to be made public; the other is the real running time, which only a few people know.

Huang Xiuyuan went offline at Hefei Science Island and temporarily stored the stand-in robot at the Oriental Hyperloop Base.

The next day, he used the stand-in robot again and came to the Oriental Super Ring Base again.

Borrowing the supercomputer simulation computing system, he, Academician Li and others, re-adjusted the parameters of the auxiliary control system.

"We need to experiment again."

Xu Guosheng nodded: "No problem, I'll arrange it right away."

Three days later, the re-adjusted Oriental Hyperloop conducted plasma operation experiments again. Sure enough, after fine-tuning, the plasma ran more smoothly this time.

However, the running time is still maintained at around 2400 seconds.

The reason is not that the plasma is out of control, but that the inner wall of the annular vacuum chamber cannot withstand the accumulation of thermal radiation from the high-temperature plasma.

Although the magnetic field constraint can avoid direct contact between high-temperature plasma and the inner wall material, at such a high temperature, some heat will be transferred to the inner wall material, gradually forming heat accumulation.

Over time, the inner wall material will definitely not be able to withstand it.

After reading the data from this experiment, Huang Xiuyuan rubbed his temples and sighed: "Controllable nuclear fusion has a long way to go!"

"Indeed." Academician Li felt the same way.

Although Huang Xiuyuan's magnetic field coordination system has extended the plasma operating time, the problem of inner wall materials is definitely a big problem.

Whether it is high temperature resistance or resistance to neutron irradiation, the requirements for inner wall materials are very high. There is no real deuterium-tritium nuclear reaction yet, and no thermal neutrons are generated, so there is no need to consider the issue of resistance to neutron irradiation.

Once it enters the real nuclear fusion experiment stage, the uncontrollable thermal neutrons alone will rapidly reduce the service life of the entire system.

This is also the reason why in the future, after the first controllable nuclear fusion power station is put into use, it has not been truly commercialized.

Unless helium 3-deuterium is used as the raw material for nuclear fusion, the problem is that the blue star itself has very little helium 3 and has to be mined on the moon. Of course, Mercury also has helium 3, and the abundance is still about 9 times that of the moon.

Everyone knows that helium 3 is good, but few people know that the reaction conditions of helium 3 are higher and require higher pressure and temperature. The reaction temperature starts at at least 1.5 billion degrees Celsius.

Nowadays, humans can't even handle the easiest deuterium-tritium reaction, let alone the more difficult helium-3-deuteron reaction.

And judging from the overall element abundance in the universe, the content of helium 3 is very rare. Helium 3 is a by-product of stellar nuclear fusion reactions. The helium 3 on the moon and Mercury is brought by the solar wind.

For the time being, it is okay as a transition for primary interstellar civilization. If the development rate of human society is followed, the helium-3 resources on the moon and Mercury can only support mankind for 300 to 500 years at least, or even shorter.

Why so short?

Many popular science articles say that the helium-3 resources on the moon can supply humans for tens of thousands of years?

This so-called tens of thousands of years is calculated based on human beings' current energy consumption. After entering interstellar civilization, spacecraft and the like alone will consume huge amounts of energy.

If we follow the development of society and add in the explosion of productivity after advancing to interstellar civilization, human beings' unit energy consumption will definitely increase by hundreds or thousands.

Therefore, helium 3 in the solar system can only be used as a transition.

The raw material that can really be used as nuclear fusion fuel for a long time is actually deuterium, which is between deuterium-tritium (DT) and helium-3-deuterium (DHe).

As an isotope of hydrogen and an isotope that can exist stably for a long time, deuterium has a very high abundance in the universe.

The oceans on blue stars are rich in deuterium, and the astonishingly large planets Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus are also rich in deuterium.

Therefore, deuterium deuterium (DD) is the main direction of attack in the future.

However, deuterium and deuterium, like deuterium and tritium, will produce dense thermal neutrons, and the requirements for inner wall materials are very high.

Huang Xiuyuan said distressedly: "Materials! Materials! We need materials that can deal with thermal neutrons."

Academician Li also made up his mind: "I plan to find a few other old guys who are working on tokamak to talk about the situation of the Eastern Super Ring. We will jointly submit a letter and we must increase investment in anti-neutron radiation."

"That's all." Huang Xiuyuan nodded in agreement.

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