China is moving to initiate the world’s first fusion-fission reactor by 2031, the latest indication that Beijing is seizing the global lead in cutting-edge nuclear power generation.
This facility, officially known as the Xinghuo high-temperature superconducting reactor, is scheduled to cost 20 billion yuan (US$2.76 billion), reportedly on par with China’s cost of building a traditional nuclear plant. Xinghuo means “spark” in Chinese.
The hybrid facility, to be built in southeastern Jiangxi province, aims to generate 100 megawatts of continuous electricity, equivalent to 10% of a nuclear plant’s output.
Wu Rui, president of Jiangxi Electronics Group, a state-owned enterprise (SOE), told local media in February that the company was now raising funds for the project and would see “results” at the end of the second quarter.
He said the company will finish the facility’s system design this year, produce and check the relevant equipment from 2026 to 2027, assemble and test the machine from 2028 to 2029, and complete the reactor’s first phase in 2031.
He did not say, however, whether the “artificial sun” reactor would be ready for actual power generation by that time.
The project’s wheels, however, are clearly in forward motion. On March 15, Shi Fayong, deputy general manager of China Nuclear Industry 23 Construction Co Ltd (CNi23), visited Jiangxi to meet with Wu. CNi23 is a unit of the state-owned China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC).
A public tender document posted on zbytb.com, a Chinese procurement and bidding platform, shows that Jiangxi Electronics is seeking a company to conduct an environmental impact assessment for the fusion-fission facility, which will be located on Jiangxi’s Yaohu Science Island in the hi-tech zone of Nanchang.
On March 25, a group of nuclear power generation experts, architects and construction firm executives held a summit in Jiangxi to discuss the facility’s construction.
All this activity builds on a November 2023 cooperation framework agreement between Jiangxi Electronics’ unit, Lianovation Superconductor, and CNNC Fusion (Chengdu) Design and Research Institute to build a fusion-fission reactor in Jiangxi.
In magnetic confinement fusion, plasma particles (deuterium and tritium – isotopes of hydrogen) flow and fuse in the magnetic field of a tokamak, a donut-shaped nuclear fusion machine first developed by Soviet scientists in 1958.
What Jiangxi Electronics will build is similar but the fast neutron will instead hit and split up uranium-238 or thorium-232. This reaction, like a hydrogen bomb explosion, is reportedly much easier to realize than a “pure” fusion one.
In a hybrid system, fission reactions slow down once fusion ones stop creating fast neutrons to prevent a nuclear meltdown scenario. Jiangxi Electronics’ reactor still needs to gain State Council-level approval, which may or may not be readily secured.
In 2008, the country approved plans to build nuclear plants in several island provinces, including one in Jiangxi’s Pengze and others in Hubei and Hunan. However, after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, China suspended all inland nuclear projects due to safety concerns.
In 2021, a site previously designated for a nuclear plant in Pengze was transformed into a solar power plant.
Last August, the State Council approved five nuclear projects involving 11 reactors, all in coastal provinces, including Guangdong, Shandong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu. The total investment of the plants is projected at about $31 billion, or $2.82 billion per reactor.
Duan Xuru, CNNC’s chief nuclear fusion scientist, said on March 4 that China will be ready to showcase its pure fusion energy applications around 2045 and hopefully commercialize them by 2050.
“Scientific research institutions, central state-owned enterprises and universities have engaged in this field for a long time. In recent years, some domestic private firms and social capital have also actively participated in the research and development (R&D) of nuclear fusion technology,” Duan said.
Still, he said China lacks the talent and R&D resources to solve all related technical challenges. Duan said China still needs to build some key R&D infrastructure, which requires sophisticated engineering and high levels of investment.
“Some companies may think that the world’s first fusion power plant will be completed in the early 2030s,” said Xu Chunyang, a researcher at China Institute of Nuclear Industry Strategy (CINIS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNNC. “But we should view the global development of nuclear fusion technology calmly.”
He said people should not underestimate the high cost of fusion energy R&D, the time needed to solve problems or the complexity of scientific and engineering projects.
Read: China’s Jiangxi to build a fusion-fission reactor
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