Why create Artificial Suns?
China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak(EAST)was designed to potentially be used as a near-limitless supply of clean energy on Earth, the Xinhua News Agency reports.Jan 10, 2022
"The recent operation lays a solid scientific and experimental foundation towards the running of a fusion reactor," says Gong Xianzu, a researcher at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in a statement.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chinas-artificial-sun-reactor-broke-record-for-nuclear-fusion-180979336/#:~:text=China's%20Experimental%20Advanced%20Superconducting%20Tokamak%20(EAST)%20was%20designed%20to%20potentially,the%20Xinhua%20News%20Agency%20reports.
ITER, also known as the world's biggest "artificial sun", is a collaboration of 35 countries including India, US, China, 27 European Union nations, UK, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
China has completed work on a key component of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), also known as the world's biggest "artificial sun".
ITER is an international nuclear fusion megaproject based in France. It is an unprecedented international collaboration of 35 countries including the United States, China, 27 European Union nations, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Russia. It is hoped that the reactor will be able to produce clean energy using the same process that fuels the Sun.
To do this, researchers are trying to harness nuclear fusion - the process that takes place in the centre of stars. The process involves the fusion of two lighter atomic nuclei to form heavier ones, which releases a huge amount of energy. According to Newsweek, the main goal of this project is to demonstrate that it can produce significantly more energy than the energy supplied to initiate the reaction process, resulting in a gain in power.
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/worlds-biggest-artificial-sun-marks-new-breakthrough-as-china-completes-work-on-key-component-3556950