China's "Artificial Sun" will be ready in 2020
Chinese scientists developed “artificial sun,” a nuclear fusion research device that is supposed to pave the way for clean energy -- similar to the real Sun. The completion of the reactor was announced on Tuesday, and it’s expected to start operation in 2020, Xinhua News reported.
The actual name of China’s artificial sun is HL-2M, and it was built by the China National Nuclear Corporation and the Southwestern Institute of Physics. The reactor is located in Leshan, Sichuan province, where it was built to research fusion technology.
Although it's being referred to as a sun, the device can actually reach temperatures 13 times hotter than our star. The HL-2M will be able to reach 200 million degrees Celsius. By comparison, the Sun “only” gets as hot as 15 million degrees Celsius in its core.
Researchers around the world have been trying to attain this goal for decades. The main issue has been finding an affordable way to contain piping hot plasma in one space and keeping it stable enough for fusion to occur, the local sources reported.