Infinite Life: Trapped in a lifetime

The core idea of ​​realizing nuclear fusion through magnetic confinement is actually not that complicated.

Nuclear fusion occurs at ultra-high temperatures and ultra-high pressures.

Although the latter-dominated occurrence conditions may be the most common in the universe,

But humans are currently neither able to do it nor have any imaginable direction for its realization.

Then we can only focus on the former and constantly try to increase the temperature of the material where nuclear fusion occurs.

Tens of millions of degrees, hundreds of millions of degrees.

Then, at this point, an obvious question arises.

If you just want it to explode and nuclear fusion occurs in an instant,

Then leave it alone.

But now if we want to use it as an energy source, we need it to continue to fuse.

In other words, it is always maintained at a temperature of more than 100 million degrees.

With such a high temperature, what kind of container should be used to hold it?

The material with the highest melting point currently available to humans can withstand three to four thousand degrees.

Obviously, it is several orders of magnitude different from the hundreds of millions of degrees that nuclear fusion occurs.

Then, in order to solve this problem, a genius idea came up.

The ultra-high-temperature plasma is magnetically restrained so that it stays in the container without coming into contact with the inner wall of the container.

A strong magnetic field is used to control the plasma in violent reactions, and the magnetic field is used to heat the plasma temperature and density.

It perfectly solves the problem of excessive temperature when nuclear fusion occurs.

At this moment, the EAST in front of Mo Dao is the product of this principle.

At this point, it seems that the problems of controllable nuclear fusion have been solved.

——If you just need a toy that can produce nuclear fusion.

But the problem is, people want to use nuclear fusion to generate electricity.

We have to face the biggest problem with controllable nuclear fusion at this moment.

The problem of self-sustainability of controllable nuclear fusion devices.

In order to maintain nuclear fusion of plasma in the tokamak device and at the same time constrain the movement of these plasmas,

Don't let these ultra-high temperature plasma burn a hole in the entire device and the entire experimental center.

When the current tokamak device is turned on, a large amount of power needs to be supplied to it.

Now, the electricity that all tokamak devices can generate is not enough to maintain nuclear fusion.

That is to say, in a general sense,

The current controllable nuclear fusion device not only cannot generate electricity, but also consumes electricity.

The reason for this embarrassing situation is, in the final analysis, that

In a tokamak, the plasma is not strong enough to fuse.

So why not increase the intensity.

Because the constraints that the coils of current tokamak devices can provide are not enough.

Using superconducting materials to make coils can improve constraints.

But now, room temperature superconducting materials have not yet been born, and outside the plasma that has only exceeded 100 million degrees,

The superconducting coil also has to be covered with a device that maintains a temperature of minus one to two hundred degrees. The design difficulty can be imagined.

And starting from the other direction,

There is no way to achieve miracles with great force, so how about improving the grasp of the laws of plasma motion and cleverly constraining the plasma motion to a fixed range.

This involves the content of fluid mechanics,

And anyone who has some knowledge of fluid mechanics,

Everyone knows what this state is.

There are a large number of approximate formulas and empirical formulas.

This means that mankind’s current theoretical understanding of this aspect is actually far from touching the essential laws.

In some places, this empirical formula that disgusts traditional physicists can still work.

But when it comes to constraining plasma motion in controllable nuclear fusion, it is somewhat insufficient.

besides,

There's also the neutron issue,

Neutrons that lose their confinement during nuclear fusion will impact the first wall of the tokamak device.

This often results in the first wall not being able to be used for a long time and having to be scrapped.

At the same time, it also makes the controllable nuclear fusion device that should not produce radiation at this stage actually produce nuclear contaminated materials.

Before the end of Mo Dao's previous lives,

In fact, in the research on controllable nuclear fusion, the confinement time of plasma has reached a considerable level.

According to ordinary principles, in fact, when the plasma confinement time reaches a certain level, it seems that it should be able to operate intermittently.

But actually,

The confinement of plasma has never been perfect.

Every time the controllable nuclear fusion experimental device is operated, it is more or less damaged after one operation.

It’s not that you don’t want to run it for a certain period of time, and then continue running it again after a while.

In fact, after running it once, I just fell asleep.

It must be re-inspected, maintained, and replaced before it can operate again.

then,

When the principle seems to be quite complete,

If we really want to achieve what most people expect, controllable nuclear fusion that can provide nearly endless energy.

As long as you continue to move forward, you will find that there are actually countless difficult problems lying ahead.

Like a branching tree, each core question is followed by several questions.

…

After walking around the eleven-meter-tall tokamak device for a while,

Mo Dao and the doctors led by Professor Hong as tour guides all stopped one after another.

"Actually, if you look at this stuff too much, there's nothing interesting about it."

Professor Hong led the doctor and said with some emotion,

"Strictly speaking, this is just an experimental device for verifying high-temperature plasma confinement. It is still far from a real controlled nuclear fusion reactor."

"Honestly speaking, let alone Professor Hong, I don't think I can see it."

Mo Dao nodded and didn't say much.

At this moment, compared to the beginning of this life, after investing in the study of related fields,

he has a more specific understanding of the research and development of controlled nuclear fusion.

This is destined to be an extremely difficult thing.

If you think about it carefully, you will find that.

The three directions he was thinking about at that time to improve productivity,

which were not fully realized before the previous lives, are controlled nuclear fusion, general artificial intelligence, and room temperature superconducting materials.

In addition to the fields of aerospace,

the development of these technologies is actually involved.

To a certain extent, the lack of key breakthroughs in the field of materials has greatly affected the realization of controlled nuclear fusion.

Otherwise, as long as there are room temperature superconducting materials, many problems in the process of realizing controlled nuclear fusion can be easily solved.

Even more exaggerated, if there are better materials, controlled nuclear fusion can be achieved by using a strong brick-flying method.

The same is true for general artificial intelligence. If this technology can be broken through, it will certainly be able to greatly help plasma confinement,

and also accelerate the realization of controlled nuclear fusion.

The lack of controlled nuclear fusion has also led to a certain extent that the aerospace field has been slow to develop and even hit the ceiling due to limited transportation capacity and energy.

On the other hand, if you want to truly and thoroughly realize controlled nuclear fusion, you will most likely need to achieve breakthroughs in multiple fields.

Mo Dao has already expected that it may take more than a lifetime to achieve a breakthrough in controlled nuclear fusion.

Moreover,

it is difficult for him to complete this alone.

Controlled nuclear fusion is a huge, systematic project.

Perhaps one day he will be able to find a breakthrough idea to achieve controlled nuclear fusion,

but the design, manufacture, and design of controlled nuclear fusion devices and controlled nuclear fusion reactors... all of these require people.

In this life, and even the next life, on this road to achieving controlled nuclear fusion, he needs a lot of like-minded people.

Just like the young people of Kerna in the past.