France And China To Build An “Artificial Sun

China and France extended their nuclear cooperation beyond the building of power plants to include the quest for an artificial sun.

Since establishing diplomatic relations sixty years ago, the two nations have produced positive and productive development.

According to ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi, China has made major contributions to the global nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject known as the Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which is indicative of the country’s tremendous advancements in its domestic fusion program.

ITER is a global partnership of 35 countries that was initiated in 1985. Of the seven main project participants, China is in charge of developing and producing the entire magnet supporting system, or roughly 9% of the project’s building and operation.

The 500 megawatts of fusion power that the carbon-free “artificial sun,” or ITER, can produce from 50 megawatts of input heating power is intended to be produced constantly for at least 400 seconds.

Constructed in southern France by seven ITER members, including China, the EU, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the US, the facilities will house the largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor and the largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment equipment in the world.

“I’m really very impressed. When I worked in ITER in the 1990s, China was not part of the project. I gained a lot of experience more recently, and I also witnessed in my recent trip to China the level of development in fusion research in general,” said Barabaschi in an interview with Xinhua in December. [CONTINUE READING HERE]