ARTIFICIAL SUN

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CONTEXT:
China successfully powered up its “artificial sun” nuclear fusion reactor for the first time recently, marking a great advance in the country’s nuclear power research capabilities. The nuclear reactor is expected to provide clean energy.

MAIN POINTS:

• The HL-2M Tokamak reactor is China’s largest and most advanced nuclear fusion experimental research device, and scientists hope that the device can potentially unlock a powerful clean energy source.
• HL-2M Tokamak device is used in it to replicate the nuclear fusion process that occurs naturally in the sun.
• It uses a powerful magnetic field to fuse hot plasma and can reach temperatures of over 150 million degrees Celsius, approximately ten times hotter than the core of the sun.
• Located in Sichuan province, the reactor is often called an “artificial sun” on account of the enormous heat and power it produces.

OTHER SIMILAR EXPERIMENT:

International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is a collaboration of 35 nations launched in 1985. It is located in France.

AIM:

1. It aims to build the world’s largest tokamak to prove the feasibility of fusion as a largescale and carbon-free source of energy.
2. The tokamak is an experimental machine designed to harness the energy of fusion. Inside a tokamak, the energy produced through the fusion of atoms is absorbed as heat in the walls of the vessel. Like a conventional power plant, a fusion power plant uses this heat to produce steam and then electricity by way of turbines and generators.

NUCLEAR REACTIONS:

A nuclear reaction is the process in which two nuclei, or a nucleus and an external subatomic particle, collide to produce one or more new nuclides.Thus, a nuclear reaction must cause a transformation of at least one nuclide to another.

TYPES:
Nuclear Fission:

• The nucleus of an atom splits into two daughter nuclei.
• This decay can be natural spontaneous splitting by radioactive decay, or can
• actually be simulated in a lab by achieving necessary conditions (bombarding with neutrons, alpha particles, etc.).
• The resulting fragments tend to have a combined mass which is less than the original.
• The missing mass is usually converted into nuclear energy.
• Currently all commercial nuclear reactors are based on nuclear fission.

Nuclear Fusion:

• Nuclear Fusion is defined as the combining of two lighter nuclei into a heavier one.
• Such nuclear fusion reactions are the source of energy in the Sun and other stars.
• It takes considerable energy to force the nuclei to fuse. The conditions needed for this process are extreme millions of degrees of temperature and millions of pascals of pressure.
• The hydrogen bomb is based on a thermonuclear fusion reaction. However, a nuclear bomb based on the fission of uranium or plutonium is placed at the core of the hydrogen bomb to provide initial energy.

SOURCE: ANI