Chapter 440: Thirty Minutes

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

While Lu Zhou was making a difficult choice, a plane landed on the other side of the planet in Lu Yang, China.

Sheng Xianfu returned from his academic exchange at the Germany Wendelstein 7-X laboratory. He immediately got on a car and went to the Institutes of Physical Science on Science Island.

When Ren Yong saw Professor Sheng walking briskly in the research institute, he looked at him and asked, “Why are you in such a hurry?”

Professor Sheng only said two words.

“Thirty minutes.”

Ren Yong paused for a second. He didn’t know what Sheng Xianfu was talking about. However, he quickly realized what was going on.

He said in disbelief, “Thirty minutes? They… really did it?”

Professor Sheng nodded and spoke in a serious manner.

“Actually, in the beginning, they nearly failed. The water-cooled divertor didn’t meet expectations. However, the recent thesis published on PRX helped them changed the control scheme and reduced the heat load on the first wall. It’s only a few seconds off from thirty minutes.”

The stellarator was a very novel research idea; there was still controversy among the academic community on whether or not it could achieve the theoretical expectations.

Although the stellarator could restrain plasma much more easily compared to the tokamak, the excessive heat caused by long term pulsing discharge was still a major problem in the nuclear fusion field.

However, if the Wendelstein 7-X could achieve a discharge time of thirty minutes, it would impact the international nuclear fusion field.

After all, the more research that was put into the tokamak, the closer the researchers could get to the theoretical limit. More and more people began to have doubts about this research project.

“Just because of one thesis?”

Professor Ren looked at Professor Sheng in disbelief.

Professor Ren wasn’t disrespecting theoretical work.

He was just surprised at how fast the theory was applied!

After a while, he spoke in a more serious manner, “Which thesis? Let me look at it.”

“Newest PRX issue, Lu Zhou’s thesis. As for the Max Planck Institute’s thesis, it should already be on the IAEA-Demo website. Just look for it.”

Professor Sheng didn’t wait any longer; he continued to walk up the stairs.

He had things to do right now.

One was to report his academic exchange results to the higher-ups.

The second was to tell the higher-ups the importance of this person.

He was willing to pay anything for Lu Zhou to come work here.

Perhaps other people might not know the importance of that thesis, but he knew.

Ren Yong looked at Professor Sheng leaving. He then walked down the stairs and went into his office.

He switched on his laptop and found the theses that Professor Sheng was talking about. He downloaded all of them and began to read from the beginning.

Although he didn’t understand everything, he understood the gist of it.

Simply put, Professor Lu established a theoretical model for the plasma turbulence phenomenon in a stellarator. Then the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics rewrote their control algorithm and control scheme by using Lu Zhou’s theoretical model. This reduced the number of plasma particles colliding with the first wall, which also reduced the temperature of the first wall…

Ren Yong briefly read the theses on his computer. He then laid back in his office chair as he stared at the screen.

He then said in a thoughtful manner, “… Is he more optimistic about the stellarator?”

Actually, China conducted some research on stellarators.

They were influenced by the Americans in the early ’70s. The Southwestern Institute of Physics tried to design a stellarator called “Ling Yun”. However, due to time constraints, the project was canceled.

After all, even Americans couldn’t handle the research. They changed the Stellarator C to the Tokamak ST and began working on the T3 device by learning from the Russians.

After that, the tokamak became the mainstream choice for various international research institutes. In order to concentrate resources, and due to Obama’s influence, various Chinese research institutes also chose the tokamak device as their research project.

However, research was always changing. It was one way fifty years ago, another way fifty years later. Although the tokamak device achieved good results, the critical pulse discharged time had fallen into a bottleneck.

China had gradually realized the importance of this problem. Recently, they had been restarting stellarator projects such as the H1-Heliac Stellarator, which was sent from The Australian National University to Yuhua University. The Xinan University also collaborated with the Japanese National Institute for fusion science and built the first Chinese quasi-symmetric stellarator…

However, even though China had restarted research on the stellarator, the mainstream nuclear fusion research center which was the Chinese Academy of Sciences was still focusing on the tokamak.

After all, there was no such thing as a perfect scientific research project. A healthy research environment consisted of conducting various different research projects.

For a scholar, there was nothing more important than persistently researching one’s idea.

As for who was right or who was wrong?

History would be the judge of that.

Liu Zhangle was sitting at a desk next to him, drinking tea. He looked at the screen and said, “What thesis is this? I’ve never seen this many equations before.”

“Professor Lu wrote it.” Ren Yong smiled and said, “It’s normal if you don’t understand it… Even I can only understand the abstract.”

“Professor Lu?” Liu Zhangle paused for a second. He frowned and began to think, but he couldn’t think of a person named Lu in the Chinese plasma physics field.

Ren Yong said, “Lu Zhou at Princeton, who else could it be?”

Liu Zhangle was stunned when he heard this name.

He knew Lu Zhou… obviously.

But…

“Isn’t he in mathematics? He knows nuclear fusion as well?”

Ren Yong was amused when he heard this.

“He’s a technical consultant for the PPPL He3 team, and there are even rumors that he’s the actual person in charge of the project. He’s built a mathematical model for the plasma turbulence problem. There’s not a single person in this field that has more influence than him… other than maybe the particles inside the plasma reactors.”

Liu Zhangle’s facial expression changed.

“The He3 atom probe technology?”

He didn’t understand Lu Zhou’s other work, but given that the He3 atom probe technology caused a huge commotion in the industry, he had definitely heard of it.

Recently, the Science Island had been designing a technology similar to the He3 atom launcher in hopes of observing the macro and microscopic parameter of the high-temperature plasma inside the reactor.

Not only could the He3 atom probe be used in nuclear fusion projects such as the tokamak and stellarator, but it could also be applied in many projects that dealt with plasma.

The relevant theses could be downloaded from the ITER database; it was all public information.

Contrary to popular belief, the only secret part of the nuclear fusion project was the laser ignition technology used in nuclear tests…

Ren Yong looked at his colleague and asked, “When was the last time you paid attention to the latest academic news?”

Liu Zhangle coughed and diverted the conversation.

“Imagine if the Chinese Academy of Sciences hired this genius, we’d probably be forced to work on the stellarator under him.”

Ren Yong said, “Forget about it! He’s a genius; he won’t want to work at a place like this. Even if he wants to come, he wouldn’t come to us.”

Liu Zhangle frowned and said, “Where else is he going to go?”

After all, nuclear fusion was a “futuristic” field. There were only a few institutes in China that were involved in nuclear fusion, and one of them was the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

There was also Xi Nanjiao University, but they were less attractive than the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Ren Yong smiled and said, “A research institute will be built for him, obviously.”

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