China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor
[1] As of 2015, tokamak devices are leading candidates for the construction of a viable and practical thermonuclear fusion reactor.
[1] These reactors may be used to generate sustainable energy while ensuring a lower environmental impact and a smaller carbon footprint than fossil fuel-based power plants.
These include EAST in ASIPP at Hefei, HL-2A(M) at the Southwestern Institute of Physics (SWIP) at Chengdu and J-TEXT located at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan.
[5] Additionally, as of 2021, in an effort to more accurately simulate a potentially functionally operational CFETR, the HL-2A at SWIP was upgraded to the HL-2M.
Moreover, this stage provided a proof of concept for the construction of a cost-effective fusion reactor capable of generating power.
[16] as of 2019, safety protocols followed in China are based on fission reactor technology; these are outlined in Law of the People's Republic of China on Prevention and Control of Radioactive pollution (2003), Nuclear Safety Act (2017) and Regulations on Safe Operation of Research Reactors (HAF202).
[17] Whilst these are beneficial in outlining general nuclear safety considerations, these are not fusion reactor specific.
[16] Moreover, whilst it is widely accepted that fusion power will be safer than fission due to the plasma cooling mechanism of the tokamak style device which cools the reactor and halts reactions upon disturbances to the system, the reliance on this ideal and mechanism alone is not sufficient.
As such, the radioactive nature of tritium may prove hazardous in instances of hypothetical accidental release upon dual confinement system failure.
[16] Thus, under such circumstances, areas surrounding the CFETR will have to be evacuated and it will be 32–54 years before families may be able to return to their original homes.
[19] While the nature of the deuterium–tritium fusion reaction is such that it will likely produce greater volumes of radioactive structural and non-structural waste,[19] this issue may be circumvented with the engineering of low-activation structure alloys in order to ensure that these discarded materials qualify as low-level radioactive waste.
[21] This has the two-fold effect of extracting tritium to be recycled back into the machine and reducing the radioactivity of the waste produced by the fusion reactor.
[4] On December 4, 2020, the HL-2M was heated to approximately 150 million degrees Celsius, ten times hotter than the Sun's core.
[19] With China actively shifting towards developing its renewable and sustainable energy sector, the construction of the CFETR is not question of whether it will happen but rather when.
[19] According to the present fusion timeline, the CFETR is likely to begin its construction phase in the early 2020s and an industrial prototype is likely to be completed by 2035, with wide-scale commercial application by 2050.
To achieve this goal, the construction of nuclear facilities is heavily emphasized in China's 14th 5-year plan (2021-2025) as the country moves towards carbon neutrality.
