Race is On Between China and US for Nuclear Fusion

For decades, the notion of nuclear fusion seemed like something from a science fiction novel. Recent breakthroughs, however, have the world’s superpowers, the US and China among them, racing to be the first to harness it.

Nuclear fusion is a clean, climate-friendly power-generating method. It is four million times more powerful than burning coal or oil. It happens when two atoms combine. That releases energy. The energy can be harvested. The trick is keeping the reaction going. Thus far, scientists have only managed to do so for minutes at a time. But to power a city (or something else) would demand keeping fusion going constantly. 

To reach that sustainable level, countries are throwing billions of dollars at research startups. The worldwide leader in fusion investment is China. It devotes between $1 billion and $1.5 billion yearly to fusion research. The US spends only $800 million. The US Energy Department sees that as a sign the country is lagging behind.

“To me, what’s more important than the number, it’s actually how fast they’re doing this,” Jean Paul Allain told CNN. He is the head of the Energy Department’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences.

Since 2015, China has approved more fusion patents than any other country. It now leads the world in that sector. It’s also made one of the world’s most powerful tokamaks. A tokamak is a massive, doughnut-shaped machine. It can heat hydrogen to such temperatures that it meets or exceeds those found in the center of the sun. It is within the super-hot hydrogen plasma that fusion in the sun occurs. That’s the same type of power the US, China, and every other country wants to be the first to claim.

Reflect: How do you think finding new ways to create energy could help our world?

Illustration of a tokamak from Wikimedia Commons courtesy of US Department of Energy.