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China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

en.people.cn

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Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#41

Post by wallace_f »

jimmaswell wrote: post #26
fatman13gg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just watched a video giving some quick background on fusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZsaaturR6E Informative and concise. Thought it was extremely hard to do though...

The "nuclear waste is.. nuclear waste" bit is a thoughtless, easy jab that plays on the unfounded fear of nuclear energy. Safely stored nuclear waste isn't a danger to anybody. I also don't like how the rest of the video continues to try to put nuclear in a bad light, going as far as implying it's not "clean energy".

>implying it's not "clean energy".

Well, it's not. Whether it's "cleaner" than alternative fossil fuels is an interesting debate, however.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#42

Post by Apocryphon »

Razengan wrote: post #19
djsumdog wrote: post #4

Anyone remember that really old game Outpost? It ran on Windows 3.1; used a CD recording of The Planets as its soundtrack. That's the first time I've heard of Tokamak reactors. What these are trying to achieve is pretty amazing. I hope one day, one of these reactors will be able to sustain a greater output than input. It has the potential to move the planet into a completely different energy age. Imagine if we could…

I remember that game! Mini black hole starts gobbling up planet Earth. :) And the voxels.

You're thinking about the novel Earth by David Brin. Outpost 2 had gray goo gobbling up a space colony that was made up of the last remnants of Earth that escaped an asteroid strike.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#43

Post by vilhelm_s »

Trombone12 wrote: post #14

Weird, as far as I can tell this result was essentially achieved in February; at least that's when the register reported on it: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/06/china_shows_how_fusi... EAST seems to be connected to ITER, and is testing confinement methods like those planned for ITER. Here is an ITER press release about EAST hitting that 32 s H-mode confinement: https://www.iter.org/newsline/291/1783 And here i…

Hm, so I think the experiment this article alludes to is not exactly the same as the February one. This article seems to be based on this press release: http://www.ipp.ac.cn/xwdt/tpxw/201611/t20161102_352924.html which (using Google Translate) says "In a new round of physical experiments launched in August 2016, the EAST team achieved steady-state, high-confinement-mode plasmas for more than 60 seconds in mid-October by further optimizing the steady-state operation integrated control at long pulse time scales".

It seems they reported their latest results at the IAEA Fusion Energy Conference (17–22 October 2016); I'm guessing that they did a press release based on that, and that's why it's getting picked up by news.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#44

Post by debt »

narrator wrote: post #33
ars wrote: post #3

It's unfortunate that it's like this, but I automatically do not believe any scientific breakthroughs that come from China. There has simply been too much fraud for me to believe anything they say. http://www.sciencealert.com/80-of-the-data-in-chinese-clinic...

There was a reddit AMA in 2011 where a guy went to China and got stem cell treatments for his paralysis[1] and could walk now. Nobody on Reddit believed him. They basically spent the whole AMA trying to tell him it didn't happen. Then America did it 2016 and everyone was like "The Future is here and we did it first!"[2]. No, the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed, or maybe it's already happening…

there's zero evidence in 1. that he 1) had paralysis 2) went to china 3) got stem cell treatment.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#45

Post by akiselev »

ars wrote: post #3

It's unfortunate that it's like this, but I automatically do not believe any scientific breakthroughs that come from China. There has simply been too much fraud for me to believe anything they say. http://www.sciencealert.com/80-of-the-data-in-chinese-clinic...

Do you automatically disbelieve everything coming out of Europe, the United States, or any other country that carries out scientific research or has a regulatory framework for medicine? If you don't believe in the ability of China to run a life and death regulatory agency without systemic fraud, what is your reason for trusting their journalists?

It took only a few minutes to track down the original source for this claim to an article by the Economic Information Daily [1]. I don't speak or read the language but Google Translate did a pretty good job: the CFDA (Chinese FDA equivalent) report was neither made public nor shown to the journalist and the article is based on "an anonymous source within the agency." Putting aside the reliability of the source, according to the article their definition of fraud includes omission of adverse reactions and other clinical data.

I'm sorry to break it to you but no other medical regulatory agency on earth is much better. There have been no conclusive studies on omission of data in clinical trials in the US or Europe so for all we know 100% of their trials fall under the definition of fraudulent used by the SFDA. This is a problem the FDA is painfully aware of because of their very public failures, like Rofecoxib (Vioxx), which were due to clinical data withheld by pharmaceutical companies. Regulations for mandatory reporting were only enacted by the FDA in 2008 and since then the system has been plagued by fraud driven by our top institutions [2].

Without access to that report and the raw data, the article is classic FUD. The same problems are systemic in agencies like the FDA which has nearly a century more experience regulating drugs than the CFDA.

[1] http://www.chinanews.com/m/sh/2016/09-09/7998783.shtml

[2] https://www.statnews.com/2015/12/13/clinical-trials-investig...

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#46

Post by seanmcdirmid »

dghughes wrote: post #36
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utah had cold fusion, anyone remember that? Fusion research is tricky to evaluate (and false positive results are common).

You have to admit a bubble imploding and heating up to nearly 20,000C is pretty amazing even if it isn't fusion.

Sure, I will be more excited when it is independently replicated as any science of this type should no matter where it comes from.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#47

Post by mng2 »

akiselev wrote: post #6

For someone more knowledgeable about the state of fusion research: is this really a "breakthrough" or just another incremental step? It seems they only kept it stable for about twice as long as they did four year ago and that's not much of a breakthrough even if we did break the arbitrary one minute limit (or maybe its not arbitrary and becomes harder to keep stable approaching a minute for some reason?) At this poin…

It's an incremental step on a long road. To be sure, the ultimate goal is to understand how to control the plasma well enough to support indefinitely long pulses. But incremental improvements add up, or rather they compound like interest.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#48

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

maxander wrote: post #28
fooker wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a few decades, when most of the new inventions will start coming from China, this attitude is going to be very difficult to maintain.

It is quite possible that most of the new inventions will be coming from China, and also most of China's scientific production will be rubbish. China has been great with scaling up its scientific community, but the problem of establishing an academic culture of scientific honesty is harder.

I'm a bit confused by this comment. Are you implying that "an academic culture of scientific honesty" is something the non-Chinese world has but China doesn't?

I'll concede it's probably a matter of degree.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#49

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

mng2 wrote: post #47
akiselev wrote: post #6

For someone more knowledgeable about the state of fusion research: is this really a "breakthrough" or just another incremental step? It seems they only kept it stable for about twice as long as they did four year ago and that's not much of a breakthrough even if we did break the arbitrary one minute limit (or maybe its not arbitrary and becomes harder to keep stable approaching a minute for some reason?) At this poin…

It's an incremental step on a long road. To be sure, the ultimate goal is to understand how to control the plasma well enough to support indefinitely long pulses. But incremental improvements add up, or rather they compound like interest.

What is the plan to extract energy from these things?

Same old heat exchanger > supercritical steam > steam turbine > alternator?

Or is there some way of getting electricity out of the plasma directly?

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#50

Post by sbierwagen »

debt wrote: post #44
narrator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a reddit AMA in 2011 where a guy went to China and got stem cell treatments for his paralysis[1] and could walk now. Nobody on Reddit believed him. They basically spent the whole AMA trying to tell him it didn't happen. Then America did it 2016 and everyone was like "The Future is here and we did it first!"[2]. No, the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed, or maybe it's already happening…

there's zero evidence in 1. that he 1) had paralysis 2) went to china 3) got stem cell treatment.

You seem to have some cardinality issues in your numbering there.
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