Black technology starts from the steel suit

Chapter 246

The two most influential energy projects in the world today, one is the fourth generation nuclear technology, and the other is the controllable nuclear fusion project.

The latter, in particular, is known as the ultimate source of energy for mankind. Once conquered, mankind will no longer have the kind of energy crisis.

However, whether it is fourth-generation nuclear technology or controllable nuclear fusion, they are all technically difficult projects, especially the latter, which is known as 50 years forever, and its difficulty even once made scientists despair.

among them:

(1) Fast reactors not only increase the effective utilization rate of uranium resources by dozens of times, but also increase the uranium resources themselves by hundreds of times.Because, once fast reactors are used in large quantities, the uranium ore that is currently considered to be of little mining value will have mining value.In this way, the utilization of fast reactors may provide human beings with extremely abundant energy.

(2) The fast reactor nuclear power plant is the best continuation of the thermal neutron reactor nuclear power plant.The development of the nuclear industry has accumulated a large amount of depleted uranium (uranium-235 containing very little uranium-238), and it is depleted uranium that is consumed by fast reactors.Using depleted uranium to generate electricity and multiply fuel at the same time is really a good thing that kills multiple birds with one stone.When the thermal neutron reactor nuclear power plant develops to a certain level, it is an inevitable development plan to introduce the fast reactor nuclear power plant in time and use the fast reactor to breed nuclear fuel.

(3) Fast reactor nuclear power plants have good economic prospects.Because it has the outstanding advantage of multiplying nuclear fuel, the cost of power generation can still be kept relatively low even when the fuel price rises.It is estimated that if the price of oil rises by 100%, the power generation cost of oil power plants will increase by 60%; if the price of natural uranium rises by 100%, the power generation cost of light water reactor nuclear power plants will increase by 5%, while the power generation cost of fast reactors will only increase by 0.25%.

But just behind this series of numbers are the years when scientists tackled key problems with age-old technology.It has been quite a long time since the fast reactor was proposed, but the fast neutron value-added reactor project has been delayed again and again. Even Russia, which ranks high in nuclear technology strength, cannot avoid it.

Wang Feng summarized the problems as follows:
In a fast reactor, the possibility of fission due to the interaction between fast neutrons and nuclei in nuclear fuel is much smaller than that of thermal neutrons. In order to continue the chain reaction, the concentration of nuclear fuel used (generally 12-30 %) is higher than that of a thermal neutron stack, and the amount of charge is much larger, which makes the danger difficult to control.

The nuclear fuel contained in the unit volume of the active area of ​​the fast reactor is much larger than that of the thermal neutron reactor, and its power density is several times higher than that of the thermal neutron reactor, generally about 400 kilowatts per liter.With such a high power density, it is technically complicated to take heat out of the stack and apply it.

Fast reactors cannot use water as a coolant, but liquid metal sodium is generally used to bring out the heat.In addition, the manufacturing of fuel elements for fast reactors is much more complicated and difficult than that of thermal neutron reactors, and the resulting manufacturing costs are high.

At the same time, the control of the fast reactor is the function of controlling neutrons. Due to the short lifetime of fast neutrons in the fast reactor, the proportion of delayed neutrons in plutonium is small, which makes the problem much more complicated.Moreover, the requirements for the protection of the operating system of the reactor are also very strict.

The above reasons have caused the slow development of fast reactors.

In fact, the reason is probably this: since uranium 238 cannot spontaneously undergo a continuous chain reaction, it must be converted into plutonium 239, which involves a series of problems. 238 can spontaneously carry out a chain reaction, then basically all the above problems can be solved.

After all, at present, general-purpose nuclear technology has developed to the third generation, and both safety and utilization efficiency have been greatly developed.

So looking at the giant steel beast in front of him, Wang Feng was extremely excited: because the superconducting magnetic technology has developed quite maturely, the design difficulty this time is much less.

After solving the Yang-Mills equation, he has successfully linked the strong interaction with the electromagnetic interaction and realized its practical application.

Of course, he must not dare to think about controllable nuclear fusion for the time being. Although, when it comes to fusion news, journalists often blind us with a bunch of numbers and terms, such as: China's all-superconducting tokamak nuclear fusion experimental device EAST has successfully achieved an ultra-high temperature long-pulse plasma discharge with an electron temperature exceeding 5000 million degrees and a duration of 102 seconds. The established goal of EAST is 1 million degrees for 1000 seconds and so on.

These numbers look very convincing, but in the face of real technical difficulties, these are just younger brothers. Could it be that someone's nuclear reactor only runs for a few thousand seconds and is done?
At present, we use deuterium-tritium nuclear fusion. Among them, the market price of heavy water is about 10000 yuan/kg, and 1kg of heavy water can theoretically generate nearly [-] million kilowatt-hours of electricity. It can be seen that the cost of heavy water preparation is negligible.Tritium is prepared by neutron bombardment, which is more complicated and more expensive.

Tritium is obtained entirely by bombarding lithium with neutrons, and the cost is about 3/g. Yes, it is one gram, and the price is US dollars.

The second is the temperature. The nucleus is positively charged. The closer the two nuclei are, the greater the repulsive force, but you can’t pinch the nuclei to twist them into a ball, so you usually let them collide at high speed. As long as the speed is fast enough, they can be offset. This repulsive force twists into a nucleus.This principle is simple enough!

What is the temperature?The essence of temperature is the movement speed of particles. The air at 100 degrees is different from the air at 10 degrees, but the speed of molecules is different.In order for the atomic nuclei to collide with sufficient speed, sufficient temperature is required, so twisting the atomic nuclei is very hot!This principle is not difficult, right?

But the question is how do you accommodate the high-temperature plasma with hundreds of millions of degrees?
Whether it is magnetic confinement or inertial confinement, it has been proved to be unreliable, especially magnetic confinement, the room temperature superconductor was solved by Wang Feng's team.

And even if it can confine the high-temperature plasma, is this over?
Still a long way to go!
The device can generate enough heat to allow its own nuclear reaction to continue. According to the current actual situation, for magnetic confinement, Q needs to reach 5~8, and for inertial confinement, Q needs to reach 50~100.

For commercial use, considering the cost, it is necessary for the magnetic confinement to have a Q of more than 22. If you consider the civil construction cost, service life and dismantling costs of the device itself, it may be necessary to have a Q of more than 30.

The Q value is the ratio of output energy to input energy. At present, we are probably staying in single digits, and we are moving forward with the goal of 10.

Existing tokamak devices, spherical tokamak devices, in order not to damage themselves, the density of the fusion plasma is too low to maintain the reaction for a long time, and the output power is lower than the input (it is possible that the total energy output is greater than the input, but the thermal energy The energy of neutrons and neutrons cannot be completely converted into electricity), which cannot be used as an energy source, but it is very close.

The highest practical efficiency of an existing tokamak device is the 1997 Joint European Toroidal Accelerator (JET) output of 16 MW/total input of 24 MW (fusion energy gain factor Q=0.67), lasting less than one second.

Japan's JT-60U uses experimental data to calculate the deuterium-tritium fusion paper Q=1.25, which can output 30 megawatts of power to the outside world, but it does not have the ability to use radioactive tritium, and has not carried out the ignition test - but according to JET's experience , the actual Q will be about half of the paper value.

Among the tokamak devices that are about to be completed, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) has started construction and is expected to start plasma experiments in 2025 and full deuterium-tritium fusion experiments in 2035.It is designed for 500MW output/50MW input, Q=10, long pulse duration of 400-600 seconds, and plasma exceeding 10 billion degrees Celsius.

It's beautifully designed, let's just say I hope it won't be delayed any longer
With these considerations in mind, Wang Feng's psychological pressure can be imagined.

"Professor Wang, do you think this experiment will be successful?" Director Lu asked curiously, but at the same time he was a little embarrassed.

"It's okay. There's nothing wrong with science." Wang Feng is used to talking about facts instead of making things up.

"However, based on our calculations and simulations, there should be no problem." Wang Feng added.

"That's good, that's good, I hope it will work!" Chief Lu prayed.

Don't blame him for this. After all, the foreign exchange reserves they spend on energy imports every year are really amazing, and that is in units of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Especially when people still pay Carney from time to time, or adjust the price at zero time. It's disgusting.

"You said that if this is successful, can our electricity price be lowered in the future?" Director Lu asked, at the same time as if he was talking to himself.

"Why are you asking this, your family can't afford the electricity bill?" Wang Feng joked.

"It's not that my family can't afford the electricity bill, but it's true that many factories have almost been unable to pay the electricity bill and rent in the past two years. We can see the slump in the manufacturing industry and worry about it, but it's hard to do anything. .”

"That should be the case. It will be up to you to adjust yourself at that time, but don't expect to reduce it too much. Nuclear power itself is not a cheap energy source, even the third-generation nuclear technology."

"And it is estimated that the reduction will not be very fast, because the construction period of nuclear power is quite long!" Wang Feng replied after pondering.

"That's better than nothing!"

"By that time, cheap electricity can rejuvenate the entire industrial system. Many industrial equipment is a bottomless pit of electricity, and the power consumption of a single device of some electric tigers can catch up with the civilian power of a small city."

"And this kind of equipment is usually located in the initial stage of the production process of modern industrial society, such as metal smelting, chemical industry, machinery, etc. Therefore, the cost of many industrial products we use will usher in a sharp dive, such as construction, automobiles, kitchen utensils , electrical appliances, textiles, etc.”

"The cheapness of metal and other materials means that we can change the physical structure of the world more freely - taller and bigger buildings, more and denser bridges, deeper and wider underground spaces... and the use intensity of such facilities And years can also be better at a lower cost."

"The result of all this is that our city will gain a new dimension of development, and a large number of building spans of tens of thousands of meters will come into reality. Landforms such as mountains and oceans are no longer obstacles to urban construction. If necessary, the Bohai Bay It is just around the corner to become China’s inner lake.”

"The underground living environment will be greatly improved, the fan can continuously supply fresh air, and the electric lamp can use greater power to provide illumination that is not inferior to sunlight and a more healthy wavelength; the enclosed space isolates flies, The harassment of cockroaches, mosquitoes, mice and other small animals; cheap metal components can create a huge underground space spanning thousands of meters; huge LED screens cover the ceiling to simulate the appearance of the sky..."

"Cheap electricity will fundamentally change the way water resources are used. Sea water is converted into fresh water at an acceptable cost and transported to arid areas. This means that the desert at the center of the continental plate can also be turned into a tropical rainforest or a water town in the south of the Yangtze River .”

"Super cities have set up agricultural areas underground, completely classified agriculture into the category of industry, and farmers have completely become a profession rather than a status (and the requirements for academic qualifications will be very high). Crops are placed on multi-layer shelves. Above, under the light of electric lights, regardless of the solar terms, the fruit will be produced."

"The refined management of agriculture will reach an unprecedented level. Closed planting factories can absolutely isolate harmful organisms, and underground farmland that does not use pesticides at all will become the mainstream and the norm."

"If the crops in the field in 2020 are like living in a cheap apartment, then the crops at that time will be like living in a luxurious palace with a hundred servants. A series of dense monitoring equipment will take care of the daily life of the crops in units of leaves around the clock. , anyway there is plenty of electricity.”

"Thanks to the agricultural revolution caused by nuclear fusion, the earth's population limit will soar from less than 200 billion to trillions. The concept of "yield per mu" of traditional agricultural products will be replaced by "cubic mu", and a "cubic mu" The annual wheat yield of the "mu" farmland will easily exceed a thousand tons."

"Based on the per capita consumption of [-] catties, such a farmland the size of a small building can feed tens of thousands of people a year. In other words, only an "agricultural production area" the size of a city can feed hundreds of billions of people."

"The scope of application of electric vehicles will expand explosively-electric vehicle charging is permanently free, the road surface is so smooth that no shock absorption measures are required, and metal wheels similar to trains can even be used. Autonomous driving technology basically eliminates the The sickness of parking and waiting.”

"In addition, thanks to the development of battery technology, its use cost and benefits will be much better than fuel vehicles. Even freight vehicles, large ships, and construction machinery will move closer to electric vehicles, thereby further improving the performance of its Huaneng batteries. development benefits."

"Professor Wang, the experiment has been prepared, please give instructions!" Just as Director Lu was thinking about the future, a staff member ran over.

"Professor Wang, congratulations, everything is ready, I only owe Dongfeng!" Director Lu said happily. From his debut to now, he has never seen Wang Feng fail. He has a mysterious confidence in Wang Feng.

"Oh, let's get started, I can't wait!"

(End of this chapter)