China has set its sights on a new fusion-fission power plant that could be up and running by the end of the decade.
The reactor is called Xinghuo; it will reportedly cost $27.6 billion and will be built on central China’s Yaohu Science Island, according to the South China Morning Post. Because Xinghuo is a fusion-fission plant, it will make use of both technologies in its production of energy.
Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more light nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus, releasing a huge amount of energy in the process. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers stars like our Sun, and though humans can catalyze nuclear fusion in Earth-based reactors, scientists have not yet made the process efficient enough to produce more energy than it takes to power the reaction.
Nuclear fission, conversely, produces energy by splitting heavy nuclei into other nuclei, producing energy and waste in the process. Nuclear fission is already used widely as an energy source, but clean, net-positive fusion energy production has remained a vauntedā€”and as-yet-unattainedā€”goal.
Xinghuo is not the only fusion project in China. Earlier this year, the country’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST)ā€”the country’s so-called “artificial sun”ā€”hit a new world record: maintaining steady-state high-confinement plasma for 1,066 seconds, more than doubling the tokamak’s (and the world’s) previous record of 403 seconds, according to a Chinese Academy of Sciences release.
There have been fusion breakthroughs stateside, too. In 2022, the United States’ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility achieved net energy gain in a fusion reaction, meaning theyĀ wereĀ able to get more power out of the reaction than they put into it. But that doesn’t take into account the power “from the wall” necessary to power up the lasers used in the reaction. Nevertheless, the accomplishment was a major step forward in fusion science and the scientists repeated the trick the following year.
A 2023 collaboration agreement stated that the Chinese reactor aims to achieve an energy gain factor (Q) of more than 30. Q is a scientific benchmark in fusion experiments that represents the fusion energy output from a reaction compared to the energy used to power the reaction. A Q of 30 is unprecedented; for reference, the huge ITER tokamak collaboration has a goal of Q of 10 or greater, and the National Ignition Facility’s significant result had a Q of 1.5. Importantly, the latter experiments are purely fusion reactors, whereas Xinghuo will be a fusion-fission plant.
Last year, the United Kingdom’s JET tokamak produced 69.26 megajoules of energy, exceeding the 59 megajoules produced by the National Ignition Facility’s earlier achievement. The landmark also more than tripled JET’s peak fusion power record of 22 megajoules. However, the Department of Energy’s achievement produced net gain in its fusion reaction, while the record-breaking JET figure was still a net loss.
Xinghuo is currently undergoing an environmental impact assessment which is expected to wrap up by the end of the year, the South China Morning Post reported.
In 2021, a collection of scientists told Gizmodo about the promise of nuclear fusion as a power sourceā€”like a branch to Tantalus, always just out of reach. But the project in China, stateside, and elsewhere is laying the groundwork for the world’s energy future.
