Sunday, January 22, 2006

China to build world`s first "artificial sun" experimental device

HEFEI, 01/21 - A full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, which aims to generate infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy, will be built in March or April in Hefei, capital city of east China`s Anhui Province.

Experiments with the advanced new device will start in July or August. If the experiments prove successful, China will become the first country in the world to build a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, nicknamed "artificial sun", experts here said.

The project, dubbed EAST (experimental advanced superconducting Tokamak), is being undertaken by the Hefei-based Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It will require a total investment of nearly 300 million yuan (37 million U.S. dollars), only one fifteenth to one twentieth the cost of similar devices being developed in the other parts of the world.

The new device will be an upgrade of China`s first superconducting Tokamak device, dubbed HT-7, which was also built by the plasma physics institute, in partnership with Russia, in the early 1990s. HT-7 made China the fourth country in the world, after Russia, France and Japan, to have such a device.

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