The rise of nanometers

November 06.

Hefei, Plasma Research Institute.

Huang Xiuyuan came to the institute's Oriental Hyperloop base through the stand-in robot.

"Xiuyuan, long time no see." Academician Li Jiangang, who is in charge of the project, smiled and shook hands with him.

Huang Xiuyuan also smiled and nodded: "Academician Li, you are well."

The two exchanged pleasantries, while Qian Sizhen, director of the Hefei Plasma Research Institute, looked a little embarrassed.

When the Suiren Department first established the Nuclear Fusion Research Institute, they poached directly from the Hefei Plasma Research Institute, pulling away more than 80 technical backbones, and almost paralyzing the Oriental Hyperloop Base.

Qian Sizhen, who could not retain people, was almost kicked out by his superiors. In the end, he quickly reformed the internal management mechanism, improved the salary of researchers and the scientific research environment, and the Plasma Research Institute gradually recovered its vitality.

Now that Huang Xiuyuan came over in person, Qian Sizhen was afraid that the Suiren Department would come to poach him again. If it happened again, he probably wouldn't need to be the director.

Inside the Eastern Hyperring Base.

Huang Xiuyuan naturally noticed that the administrative staff of the Plasma Research Institute were wary of him, while the scientific researchers were much more enthusiastic.

He smiled and said nothing about this, and if he didn't put any pressure on these guys, they wouldn't make changes.

Academician Li on the side is also happy to see the results. Many state-run research institutes in the country do have many problems. Let Suiren be a catfish and stir up troubles to get them to move on their own.

Next to the experimental computer room of the Oriental Hyperloop Base.

Huang Xiuyuan stood in the corridor on the third floor, looking down at the experimental equipment. The prototype of the Eastern Hyperloop was bought from Lucia in the 1990s and was a tokamak device.

After more than ten years of transformation and upgrading, especially in the past few years, the advancement of materials and precision instruments in the Suiren System has led to further upgrades of the Oriental Hyperloop.

At present, helium atoms are used as reaction raw materials to form plasma, mainly for experiments on magnetic binding control and plasma heating, and have not entered into real nuclear fusion experiments.

Because real nuclear fusion experiments require the use of deuterium and tritium as raw materials, a large number of thermal neutrons will be generated, which will cause great damage to the equipment.

In the past, domestic research was conducted on a budget. Naturally, it was impossible to directly use the deuterium-tritium reaction. Instead, helium-4 atoms were used as raw materials, which can extend the service life.

"Xiuyuan, we have initially completed the transformation you requested." Academician Li pointed at the Eastern Hyperloop unit equipment and said.

Half a month ago, Huang Xiuyuan sent out the details of the transformation and allocated a sum of 500 million to allow Oriental Super Ring to cooperate in the experiment.

Qian Sizhen is also more cooperative. After all, not only Hefei Plasma Research Institute is working on tokamak devices in China, but there are also several other research institutes that are also working on tokamak devices.

Cooperating in an experiment, with 500 million research funds, and both parties sharing data, there is no reason to refuse.

Huang Xiuyuan's transformation plan is relatively simple, just adding 210 magnetic field co-controllers and three independent control systems.

"Start testing!" After he said that, he took a suitcase from Xiao Yingnan and opened the suitcase. There was only a special storage device inside.

In the control room, he inserted the memory into the chassis, and implanted the set parameters from the memory into the three independent auxiliary control systems.

Chief researcher Xu Guosheng turned around and whispered: "Mr. Huang, I'm ready."

"My side is also fast." After Huang Xiuyuan hit the Enter key, the parameters of the magnetic field assistance control system were loaded:

"Researcher Xu, let's start the magnetic field restraint first. I'll test the operation of the magnetic field assistance control system."

"Okay." Xu Guosheng nodded.

The superconducting magnetic field system of the Oriental Super Ring was activated, and then the three magnetic field assistance control systems were also activated.

Huang Xiuyuan conducted control tests on the 210 co-controllers one by one to ensure that the local magnetic field intensity could be accurately controlled.

During the operation of plasma, it is very easy to generate local turbulence, causing the plasma to suddenly lose control, causing the system to be forced to shut down.

After many upgrades and transformations, the Oriental Hyperloop can currently only achieve an electron temperature of 85 million degrees Celsius and a plasma temperature of 11 million degrees Celsius, and can operate continuously for 55 seconds.

It can be seen that the difficulty of controllable nuclear fusion is really not ordinary.

This is just a problem of plasma operation control. After solving this jacket, we still need to face the more difficult problem of neutron irradiation.

After testing for more than an hour and confirming that the magnetic field assistance control system was accurate, Huang Xiuyuan stood up and said: "Researcher Xu, you can start plasma injection."

"Okay." Xu Guosheng also became slightly excited.

Everyone present is also looking forward to it. Throughout the year, they can only do a handful of experiments, mainly because it is too expensive.

Now the Suiren Department is willing to pay for experiments, which is what they want.

Twenty minutes later, the various systems of the Oriental Super Ring came into operation, and a stream of helium-4 plasma was injected into the vacuum cavity of the magnetic ring.

The plasma is running faster and faster, and the temperature is also rising rapidly. After reaching the current maximum temperature, the powerful low-temperature superconducting magnetic field seems to firmly restrain the high-temperature plasma.

But Xu Guosheng and others in the control room stared at the instrument data with solemn expressions.

At 41 seconds, the system detected the generation of a large amount of turbulence.

In an instant, the three sets of programs that assisted the control system started the co-controller according to the parameters of the database. The sudden change in the binding magnetic field disturbed the turbulence in the plasma and instantly disintegrated it.

At 57 seconds, turbulence reappeared on a large scale, and the coordination system intervened again.

The two sides were in a tug-of-war, with the irregular turbulence and the magnetic field assisting the control system fighting each other unwillingly.

156th second.

244th second.

…

Academician Li Jiangang, Xu Guosheng and others in the control room stared blankly at the time on the instrument. The time beat second by second, as if fists were beating their hearts.

This situation really made the researchers present doubt their lives.

After all, they worked hard for decades to increase the continuous operation time of high-temperature plasma to 55 seconds.

And now the running time has exceeded five minutes.

In the end, the inner layer of high-temperature-resistant material reached a critical point. In order to avoid accidents, the experiment was stopped.

The running time was finally fixed at 2467 seconds, which is more than 41 minutes.

"Hoo... Oh my god!" Academician Li sat down and took a breath, calming his pounding heart, and then joked: "When you get old, you can't be excited."

Xu Guosheng was so excited that his tone was slightly trembling: "This assistance control system is so powerful. I seem to see controllable nuclear fusion right in front of me. I am worthy of Mr. Huang."

"It's okay!" Huang Xiuyuan smiled. He didn't expect that the running time would exceed his expectations.

Only then did he realize that this assistance control system, although very rough, was not the final version.

But when research started in the future, the plasma temperature of the tokamak device was already as high as 510 million degrees Celsius.

The current Eastern Super Ring, both in temperature and plasma density, is an order of magnitude lower.

Naturally, it will be easier to control. Compared with the 5 minutes expected by Huang Xiuyuan, it was suddenly increased to more than 41 minutes.

Thank you for your support (ω｀)