Jiemian News Reporter | Tian Heqi
"The scale of this conference is much larger than the previous one. Last year, there were only about 30 to 40 people, but this year there are more than 120, and the situation is completely different."
Recently, the third Hydrogen-Boron Fusion Symposium hosted by New Orient Group (hereinafter referred to as "New Orient") concluded in Langfang, Hebei. The four-day meeting saw Liu Minsheng, Director of the New Orient Energy Research Institute, express the above feelings during an interview with Jiemian News and other media on the first day of the conference.
New Orient is a private clean energy giant and the only private enterprise in China that has been engaged in commercial fusion energy development since the earliest stage and has chosen the spherical tokamak hydrogen-boron fusion route to date. Over the past eight years, it has invested tens of billions of yuan in fusion research and development, making it one of the eight fusion companies worldwide with R&D investment exceeding 2 billion U.S. dollars (approximately 14.36 billion RMB).
With recent breakthroughs in the scientific community, fusion technology is currently in a critical transition phase from engineering feasibility verification to commercial application, becoming a frontier focus attracting global attention.
Among these, hydrogen-boron fusion is gaining rapid global attention.
New Orient rarely disclosed its fusion experimental progress to the public in the past eight years. On April 16th this year, New Orient announced that "Xuanlong-50U" achieved a high-temperature, high-density million-ampere (mega-ampere) plasma current, reaching 1 mega-ampere with a temperature of 40 million degrees.
In May this year, the "Xuanlong-50U" experimental facility achieved another key technological breakthrough — "Xuanlong-50U" became the world's first spherical tokamak device to achieve magnetic field conditions above 1.2 T for seconds. Previously, the central magnetic field of medium and large spherical tokamaks in operation internationally had not exceeded 1 T.
New Orient has created two world records within two months, demonstrating a remarkable pace of breakthroughs. This exploration of the "artificial sun" is getting closer to commercial application.
Experts at the meeting estimated that, according to current progress, the next 10-20 years will be a crucial period for the transition of fusion technology from the laboratory to commercialization.
Currently, the main technical routes of controlled nuclear fusion technology are divided into three categories based on the type of device: gravitational field confinement, inertial confinement, and magnetic confinement. Among them, magnetic confinement fusion research devices include tokamaks, stellarators, reversed field pinches, field-reversed configurations (FRC), and magnetic mirrors.
Different from other commercial nuclear fusion companies in China that use deuterium-tritium as fusion fuel, New Orient has chosen the spherical tokamak plus hydrogen-boron fusion technology route, building a spherical tokamak device. A spherical tokamak is a type of tokamak that is closer to a sphere compared to traditional tokamaks, which have a shape similar to tires, and is more compact.
Compared to other fuels, hydrogen-boron fusion is considered a more ideal "future energy." Its reaction products are helium nuclei, with no neutron radiation pollution, eliminating nuclear safety hazards at the root; the fuel is almost inexhaustible — hydrogen comes from water, and boron is abundant in the Earth's crust; and the charged alpha particles produced can directly generate electricity efficiently without the need for traditional steam cycles, resulting in higher theoretical efficiency. However, hydrogen-boron fusion is more difficult to achieve compared to deuterium-tritium fusion.
The fusion triple product (the product of plasma temperature, density, and energy confinement time) is a core indicator to determine whether magnetic confinement fusion can "ignite." Liu Minsheng told Jiemian News that in terms of density, it is difficult to achieve significant improvements under laboratory conditions, so the focus of hydrogen-boron fusion is mainly on temperature and energy confinement time.
Early on, the general belief was that the optimal reaction temperature for hydrogen-boron fusion was 5 billion degrees. After joint research with institutions such as Peking University and Xi'an Jiaotong University, this temperature has been reduced to 1 to 2 billion degrees.
"Combined with the characteristics of hydrogen-boron in nuclear physics, there is still room for further reduction of conditions and increase in fusion products, which effectively lowers the technical threshold," said Liu Minsheng.
However, the "Xuanlong-50U" experimental device of New Orient still has a large gap between the current 40 million degrees and the target of 1 billion degrees.
"There is still a long way to go," said Liu Minsheng. But he also pointed out that judging technical progress should not only look at absolute numbers but also pay attention to the potential and iteration logic of the device. "For example, our designed device originally aimed for a maximum of 20 million degrees, but we actually achieved 40 million degrees, which means the next generation device has a greater chance of achieving the target parameters."
He gave an example, saying that although the current "Xuanlong-50U" device is smaller than similar spherical tokamak devices in the UK and the US, its magnetic field strength is significantly superior, with a temperature more than twice that of the others. "This unexpected performance gives us more confidence in overcoming challenges."
Professor Dieter Hoffmann, Vice Dean of the School of Physics at Xi'an Jiaotong University and former chairman of the Plasma Physics Section of the German Physical Society, also believes: "Hydrogen-boron fusion has unique advantages. Scientists are breaking through the bottleneck of high-temperature technology through innovative methods such as non-equilibrium plasmas, which is very worth exploring."
Currently, New Orient is advancing the construction of the next-generation hydrogen-boron thermonuclear fusion experimental device "Heilong-2," which is expected to be completed in 2027, laying the foundation for the implementation of a power generation demonstration reactor by 2035.
According to Liu Minsheng, New Orient plans to first achieve hydrogen-boron fusion reactions on the "Xuanlong-50U" device before June to July next year. Subsequently, it will implement full-scale thermonuclear hydrogen-boron reactions on the "Heilong-2" device. "Heilong-2" can achieve several key goals, including identifying, studying, and solving the most significant scientific and technological challenges related to STPBF (spherical tokamak hydrogen-boron fusion), verifying the scientific feasibility of hydrogen-boron fusion, and providing technological support for the construction of larger-scale platforms in the future.
Regarding the temperature target of the "Heilong-2" device, Liu Minsheng mentioned that the initial plan was to aim for 300 million degrees, but with the iteration of the device, it may now reach 500 million degrees or even 1 billion degrees.
The improvement in energy confinement time is directly related to plasma current and magnetic field strength. "According to the quantitative formula, these two factors have the greatest impact on the confinement time of spherical tokamak devices. As long as they improve, the confinement time can be enhanced," said Liu Minsheng. He stated that the two parameters that New Orient has recently broken through have reached the highest levels in the world, and the team originally planned to pursue this goal in the next generation of devices. Now, the progress has far exceeded expectations.
Aside from technological breakthroughs, hydrogen-boron fusion still faces multiple challenges.
Zhao Yongtao, Deputy Dean of the School of Physics at Xi'an Jiaotong University, told Jiemian News that on one hand, the industry as a whole lacks talent reserves, especially in the hydrogen-boron field, where professional talents are particularly scarce. In addition, cross-disciplinary collaboration is insufficient. Fusion R&D requires deep collaboration among materials, energy conversion, plasma physics, diagnostic technology, and engineering technology. Currently, the integration of disciplinary forces remains weak.
At the same time, due to the long commercialization cycle of hydrogen-boron fusion, relevant strategic layout and resource investment require long-term efforts, which need to be supported by the national level.
However, Zhao Yongtao also revealed that some Chinese scientific research institutes have officially included "hydrogen-boron fusion" in their leading special programs. "Once the national level is laid out, it can quickly gather talents, trigger key technological breakthroughs, and promote the engineering process," he said.
It is worth noting that the public-private partnership model is becoming an important mechanism to drive nuclear fusion technology.
In May 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy allocated $46 million (approximately 330 million RMB) to eight private companies through the "Milestone Fusion Development Program" for the design and development of fusion power plants.
According to the annual report "Global Fusion Industry in 2024" released by the Fusion Industry Association (FIA) in July last year, at that time, there were at least 45 commercial fusion companies globally, with cumulative financing of 7.1 billion U.S. dollars (approximately 50.972 billion RMB), of which 426 million U.S. dollars (approximately 3.058 billion RMB) came from public funds such as the government.
"The global landscape of fusion research and development is undergoing significant changes, and the participation of the private sector means that the nature of research is changing," said Laban Coblentz, the external spokesperson for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program, in an interview with Jiemian News.
Laban pointed out that in this process, China is expected to play an important role — China has multiple layouts in both the public and private sectors, and these practices will jointly influence the future direction of the ITER project along with other member states.
ITER is one of the largest and most influential international large-scale scientific projects in the world. The experimental reactor being built is based on the tokamak approach, aiming to achieve sustained 500 MW and a energy gain factor Q≥10 deuterium-tritium burning plasma on Earth, verifying the scientific and engineering feasibility of fusion energy as a future large-scale, clean, and safe energy source.
The ITER project was officially launched in 1985, involving cooperation among 35 countries. China is responsible for manufacturing key components such as superconducting magnets and vacuum chambers.
"ITER is like a national laboratory for all member states. If we oppose ITER and the private sector, considering it a competition, it would be short-sighted," Laban said. Private enterprises can take on higher risks and build smaller, more flexible devices.
"We have spent 25 years building ITER, while companies like New Orient can build a new device every four years. Therefore, we are very willing to open our doors, share knowledge, and collaborate with the private sector," Laban said.
In his view, New Orient's combination of spherical tokamak and hydrogen-boron fusion technology does indeed avoid many problems of deuterium-tritium fusion, but it also needs to face the unique challenges of hydrogen-boron fusion. In this case, no single technical route can be absolutely determined as the best. The key to promoting the advancement of fusion technology lies in global researchers working together, openly exchanging ideas, and learning from each other, which is the best path to promote the overall progress of fusion technology.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7530114461827416619/
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