The real-life "Kua Fu chasing the sun": Controllable nuclear fusion of the "artificial sun" is expected to be achieved in a decade.
Energy is the "lifeline" for the survival and development of human civilization. From the human and animal power relied on in the agricultural era to the coal that powered steam engines and the oil and natural gas that "lit up" cities after the Industrial Revolution, every upgrade in energy form has directly driven leaps in productivity and social changes.
However, with social development and the progress of civilization, the demand for energy is increasing. The current energy system that humans rely on is facing severe challenges. For example, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind energy have intermittent shortcomings due to the influence of day and night and weather, while traditional nuclear energy faces the problem of nuclear waste disposal. In order to pursue a cleaner, more sustainable, and more efficient energy source, nuclear fusion has come into the research vision of the world's scientific and technological community.
After decades of development, where has nuclear fusion research progressed? What challenges does it face? How far is it from practical application? A reporter from IT Times tried to find answers at the "Future Energy: Controllable Nuclear Fusion" special forum of the 2025 Pujiang Innovation Forum held recently.
The Artificial Sun is Becoming a Reality
Controllable nuclear fusion is known as the "artificial sun" and is hailed as the "ultimate dream" in the energy field. It mimics the principle of the sun's light and heat generation, mainly using deuterium and tritium, which are abundant in seawater, as raw materials. Under extreme high temperature and pressure, it controls the speed and scale of the nuclear fusion reaction, causing light atomic nuclei to combine into heavier ones and releasing a huge amount of energy. In addition, since the product of the fusion reaction is non - radioactive inert gas helium, it produces almost no pollution.
According to a set of data in a research paper published earlier by Feng Kaiming, a researcher and deputy chief engineer of the Institute of Fusion Science at the Southwestern Institute of Physics of the Nuclear Industry, the sun fuses 657 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second, and the lost mass is converted into huge solar energy, which becomes the energy source for all activities in the solar system. The deuterium - tritium fusion reaction will release a huge amount of energy. One liter of seawater contains 30 mg of deuterium, and the energy released through the fusion reaction is equivalent to that released by burning more than 300 liters of gasoline, and the reaction product is non - radioactive. In other words, 1 liter of seawater can produce energy equivalent to 300 liters of gasoline.
"Nuclear fusion energy has the advantages of safety, abundant fuel, and high energy efficiency." In the view of Rodolphe Houdré, the deputy director of the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) Organization, nuclear fusion has high safety. Once an accident occurs, the fusion reaction will immediately stop, and there will be no risk of long - term heat generation and large - scale radioactive leakage like in a fission reaction, and the half - life of the products is much shorter than that of fission waste.
Obviously, the "artificial sun" is gradually becoming a reality.
"There are mainly three technical routes to achieve controllable nuclear fusion, which can be divided into magnetic confinement, inertial confinement, and magneto - inertial confinement." China Fusion Energy Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as China Fusion), which was officially established on July 22 this year, is a secondary unit of the China National Nuclear Corporation and manages the Southwestern Institute of Physics of the Nuclear Industry on behalf of the corporation. It is called the "national team" of nuclear fusion by the media. According to General Manager Zhang Libo's on - site introduction, the mainstream device of magnetic confinement technology is a toroidal container called "tokamak", and the core component of inertial confinement technology is a laser driver.
The industry consensus is that magnetic confinement technology is the most promising solution in nuclear fusion research. The "Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak" (EAST) of the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the HL - 2M Tokamak of the Southwestern Institute of Physics of the Nuclear Industry are representative. Take the EAST, which was officially completed in 2006, for example. It is the world's first fully superconducting device independently developed by China. In May 2021, it successfully operated at 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds.
China Fusion also uses magnetic confinement technology, and its device is a compact magnetic confinement fusion device using high - temperature superconducting materials. In the past, tokamak devices used low - temperature superconducting materials, and the volume of the fusion reactor was very large. In contrast, high - temperature superconducting materials have the advantages of high critical temperature, high critical magnetic field, and high current - carrying capacity, which can reduce the volume of the fusion reactor to a fraction of that of traditional fusion reactors and significantly speed up the commercialization process of fusion energy.
Broad Prospects, Numerous Challenges
Driven by the global energy transition and the "dual carbon" goal, Chinese scientists are staging a real - life version of "Kuafu Chasing the Sun". The toroidal magnetic field of the tokamak and the laser beam of inertial confinement intersect, driving a qualitative change in fusion technology from following to running side by side with the world.
The complexity of the technology, financial issues in international cooperation... The principle of nuclear fusion is extremely complex. Simply reaching high temperatures is not enough to achieve the practical application of nuclear fusion, and the industry still faces many challenges. Therefore, practitioners often joke that nuclear fusion is always "50 years away".
"Currently, fusion research mainly faces three core problems: first, the steady - state self - sustaining operation of burning plasma; second, maintaining the performance of materials in high - heat and high - energy neutron environments; third, the recycling and self - sufficiency of tritium." Xu Min, a professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Technology at Fudan University, said in a keynote speech.
Zhang Libo also introduced the challenges faced by China Fusion on - site. On the one hand, there are technical problems caused by the steady - state self - sustaining operation of burning plasma, materials resistant to high - energy neutron bombardment and high - heat loads, and tritium breeding and self - sustaining cycles; on the other hand, there are engineering problems in strong - field high - temperature superconducting magnets, plasma operation and control, and heat conduction.
Is Fusion Energy Achievable in a Decade?
Thankfully, a group of Chinese commercial nuclear fusion enterprises are rising and stepping into the spotlight of the nuclear fusion industry.
According to an earlier report by Jiemian News, currently, the main commercial nuclear fusion companies in China include Shaanxi Star Ring Fusion Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Star Ring Fusion), Shanghai Energy Singularity Energy Technology Co., Ltd., Anhui Fusion New Energy Co., Ltd., Chengdu Ocean Fusion Energy Technology Co., Ltd., and ENN Group. These companies have entered the public eye through device construction breakthroughs and financing information.
"The fundamental reason for the stagnation of fusion development is not a technological bottleneck but the lack of social demand." Tan Yi, a tenured associate professor at Tsinghua University, founder and chief scientist of Star Ring Fusion, compared a set of data during his speech "Fusion Energy: From 'Always 50 Years Away' to Achievable in a Decade" at the forum and found that fusion investment is highly correlated with oil price fluctuations. In the 1970s and 1980s, when oil crises occurred frequently, fusion research reached a climax; after the 1990s, as oil prices declined, investment in fusion also cooled down.
In Tan Yi's view, from the 1950s to 2000, the growth rate of key indicators such as energy conservation and tritium self - sufficiency in fusion energy even exceeded Moore's Law. In theory, it should have been commercially available around the turn of the millennium. However, with the successive shutdowns of international large - scale scientific facilities such as TFTR (Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor) and JET (Joint European Torus, one of the world's largest nuclear fusion experimental devices), fusion research entered a "plateau period", and social investment dropped sharply, leading to the public's stereotypical impression that "fusion is always 50 years away".
"Now, this situation is undergoing a fundamental change. Since 2020, despite the lack of a significant increase in oil prices, global fusion investment has soared against the trend. The urgent social demand for green energy is the fundamental driving force for accelerating fusion research." Tan Yi further introduced that currently, not only are international large - scale scientific projects such as ITER continuing to advance, but also many innovative enterprises are actively exploring the possibility of commercialization through different technical paths. A number of high - performance tokamak devices such as HL - 3 DT, BEST, SPARC, Long - 2, and Star Ring One will be intensively built and put into operation between 2027 and 2030, marking that fusion energy has officially entered a new stage of rapid iteration and engineering verification.
"All children start learning to walk before their muscles are strong and their balance is stable. The same goes for fusion. We need to solve problems in the process of iteration and accumulate experience in the process of construction." Tan Yi used the example of "a child learning to walk" to call on fusion researchers to bravely take practical steps. He firmly believes that through rapid iteration, it will be possible to achieve the demonstration application of fusion energy within a decade. As Lev Artsimovich, the father of the tokamak, once said, fusion will be achieved when the whole society needs it.
Public information shows that currently, Star Ring Fusion is committed to accelerating the commercialization process of fusion energy through the spherical tokamak repetitive reconnection fusion route. In addition, according to media reports, China Fusion will follow the general law of nuclear energy development from experimental reactor to demonstration reactor to commercial reactor and aim for the commercialization goal of fusion energy in 2050, conducting joint research in Shanghai and Chengdu.
This article is from the WeChat official account "IT Times" (ID: vittimes). Author: Sun Yonghui, Editors: Hao Junhui and Sun Yan. Republished by 36Kr with permission.