A key component for the ongoing nuclear fusion reactor project, known
as the "artificial sun", a superconducting coil built by Chinese
scientists and engineers, arrived in southern France on Friday,
according to its builder, the Institute of Plasma Physics under the
Chinese Academy of Sciences. The coil, poloidal field coil #6, will be the first and heaviest
among six to be installed during the International Thermonuclear
Experimental Reactor machine assembly phase, according to the project's
official website. With a weight of 400 tons, it will work to provide a stable and super
strong magnetic field in a vessel to hold the extremely hot plasma
created by nuclear fusion, according to the Institute of Plasma Physics
based in Hefei, capital of East China's Anhui province. Temperature is considered one of the most important conditions for
nuclear fusion reactions. In 2018, the Hefei institute had for the first
time achieved a plasma central electron temperature of 100 million
degrees Celsius. In Cadarache, Provence, in southern France, 35 nations are
collaborating to build the world's largest magnetic fusion device that
has been designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale
and carbon-free source of energy based on the same principle that powers
the sun and stars, according to the project.
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