The neatly arranged Rubik's Cube in red, yellow and white colors fell quietly on the desk. Looking at the little thing that had just recovered, a vague inspiration flashed through Xu Chuan's mind, and a hint of bright color appeared in his pupils.
Holding the thermos cup in his hand, he hurried back to his small room.
For the stellarator fusion device, adjusting its overall structure is as difficult as adjusting the engineering strength of a reservoir dam.
If the adjustments are made in the direction of high intensity and perfection, there is still hope.
But if you want to weaken the dam in exchange for easier construction, the consequences are bound to be tragic.
Just like the hydropower station dam built by a certain third brother, if the strength is not enough, the dam will be destroyed even after a week of impoundment, causing people to die, causing a large area downstream to be flooded.
The structure of the stellarator is also designed in advance.
It guides the high-temperature plasma inside through a twisted three-dimensional structure and a three-dimensional external field coil, allowing it to run smoothly in the chamber.
The purpose is to increase the engineering difficulty in exchange for the operational stability of the plasma.
And if the structure and external field coil are adjusted, it will affect the strength of the confinement magnetic field and the operation of the plasma. If one is not done well, the hundreds of millions of degrees high-temperature plasma running in the reactor chamber will go out of control.
As for the consequences, refer to the JT-60SA controllable nuclear fusion experimental reactor of the Fusion Research Institute of the small island country QST.
Therefore, it is quite difficult to adjust the structure of the stellarator.
But this is not impossible!
.......
In the office, Xu Chuan quickly took out the manuscript paper from the drawer. The signature pen in his hand quickly fell on the manuscript paper, and his eyes flashed with excitement.
Rubik's cube, puzzle, reconstruction!
Without changing the strength and direction of the magnetic field, mathematical calculations are used to decompose the design process of the magnet winding and 1 permanent magnet block into designing each permanent magnet one by one, and then perform multiple iterations to obtain the optimal design. The iterative process includes local optimization
and global optimization to optimize engineering difficulty...
This method is completely feasible in theory.
He just needs to recalculate the external field constraint coil of the stellarator. It is even possible to optimize the shape of the original three-dimensional superconducting coil!
damn it!
Why didn't he think of this method before?!
.......
Time passes quickly,
Behind the desk, Xu Chuan's pupils were bloodshot, but his face was full of excitement.
The tip of the pen touched the paper gently, holding the ballpoint pen in his hand, and quickly wrote out mathematical formulas and basic calculation theories one by one on the white A4 paper.
The stellarator is a magnetic confinement nuclear fusion approach whose fusion triple product parameter is second only to the tokamak. Compared with the tokamak, the stellarator has the advantage of steady-state operation and avoids the main shortcomings of the tokamak.
The problem is that the plasma will break up during the process.
However, there are two main reasons why stellarators have not been the first choice for fusion reactor technology for a long time:
First, the ripple of the magnetic field of traditional stellarators is larger than that of tokamak, which results in its neoclassical transport level and high-energy particle loss level being higher than that of tokamak.
Second, the stellarator requires a three-dimensional structure of the coil, which is complex in structure, difficult to manufacture, and costly.
The former can be solved through numerical control models of plasma turbulence and forced constraints of superconducting materials with high critical magnetic fields, and for the latter, he has now found a way!
At least, in theory, it is completely feasible!
.......
I don’t know how much time passed, but a gurgling sound sounded in the quiet office.
Xu Chuan came back to his senses, touched his stomach that was complaining about being hungry and hurting, and couldn't help swallowing.
When I raised my head, I saw that the sun outside the window had set and the night was getting darker.
He looked at the time on his phone and saw that it was almost seven o'clock. Unknowingly, he had been sitting in the office for almost four or five hours.
Phew~
With a long sigh of relief, Xu Chuan stood up from the chair and stretched his muscles.
eat first!
People are like iron rice and steel. If you don't eat a meal, you won't be hungry.
Especially mental activities like his consume no less energy than physical activities.
As soon as he walked out of the office, Xu Chuan bumped into Zheng Hai, holding two bags in his hands.
"Hey, Professor, the sun has set, are you willing to come out?" Looking at Xu Chuan who walked out of the door, Zheng Hai had a flash of surprise in his eyes, and joked with a smile.
This person is a ruthless person who doesn't care about time and body when he does research.
Xu Chuan glanced at him, his eyes fell on the two bags he was carrying and asked curiously: "What are you carrying?"
"Your dinner."
Zheng Haiyan said briefly and concisely, and then added: "Tang Sijia reminded me that you haven't come out and you haven't had dinner. It's almost seven o'clock, so it's not a problem to do research while hungry."
Xu Chuan said "Oh" and turned around and entered the office again.
Since Zheng Hai brought him dinner, there was no need to go to the cafeteria.
He untied the plastic bag and took out the lunch box. Xu Chuan took a look at the dinner. There were three dishes and one soup in the two-layer lunch box, fried shrimps, stir-fried beef with green onions, stir-fried cabbage, and a pigeon soup. He lay down quietly.
over there.
This dish was much richer than when he went to the cafeteria to eat by himself.
But he doesn't care that much about food, as long as it can fill his stomach.
"Speaking of which, have you found a way to solve the problem?"
In the office, Zheng Hai also opened his own dinner, opened his disposable chopsticks, and asked casually.
Xu Chuan looked up at him and asked with a smile: "How do you know?"
Zheng Hai shrugged and said, "If you don't find an idea, you rarely sit in the office for several hours."
"Huh?" Xu Chuan looked over curiously.
Zheng Hai said with a smile: "I have been following you for several years. Under normal circumstances, you are a restless person. Unless you have research ideas on a certain problem, you will stay in the office or at home. At other times
, you prefer to go out for a run."
Hearing this, Xu Chuan thought about it carefully and found that what Zheng Hai said seemed to be right.
He can't sit still, and when he has nothing to do, he rarely stays in his room for several days at a time.
Smiling, he asked: "You are very careful in your observations. Speaking of which, I seem to have never asked you which family you are from. The army? The armed police? Or somewhere?"
Zheng Hai took a mouthful of food, swallowed it and replied: "No, I'm from Guo'an."
Xu Chuan nodded, thought of something again, and asked curiously: "How many can you fight by yourself?"
Hearing this question, Zheng Hai asked, somewhat dumbfounded: "Why are you suddenly interested in this?"
"I'm a little curious. After all, I've never seen you come over." Xu Chuan thought for a moment and said.
Maybe it's because the domestic environment is really safe. Anyway, Zheng Hai has been following him for four years and has never made a move.
Zheng Hai thought for a moment and then said: "For ordinary people, like you, professor, there should be no problem with a dozen or so."
Hearing these words, Xu Chuan's mouth twitched, okay, has he become a unit of measurement?
It's just that this person beat ten, which is really exaggerated.
But what he didn't know was that Zheng Hai was still being humble.
After all, the place where he came from was specially trained to protect important people at the leadership level. A dozen ordinary people without any training, as long as they were not completely surrounded in a very small space, would probably be just hot enough.
warm up?
........
In the office, the two of them were chatting.
At this moment, the mobile phone in Xu Chuan's pocket suddenly rang.
He took out his cell phone and took a look. It was Liang Qu from Xinghai Research Institute. He swiped his finger on the screen and Xu Chuan answered the call.
"Hey, Liang Qu, what's wrong?"
"Academician Xu, the testing and debugging of the Huaxing fusion device have been completed. When will the first operation start?" Liang Qu asked respectfully on the phone.
Xu Chuan: "Have all the relevant preparations been completed?"
Liang Qu nodded and quickly replied: "It's completed, and the first operation of Huaxing can be started at any time."
Hearing this, Xu Chuan thought for a moment and said, "In that case, it's better to do it sooner rather than later. Let's do it tomorrow morning. I'll get there."
Although the theoretical work in hand has not yet been completed, and the external field coils at Western Superconducting have not been fully produced, this does not affect the trial operation of the stellarator.
Helix-7X once set a record of two and a half hours of running time. After the debugged equipment was replaced with the first wall material, there was no problem at all in the simulated ignition experiment.
And they also need experimental operating data from the stellarator to adjust the numerical control model of plasma turbulence.
After all, the latter was originally established by him based on the data from the tokamak device. Although the stellarator and the tokamak device are both magnetically constrained routes, there are still differences after all.
There is currently no mathematical model for actual operation data modification. Even if the simulation run on a supercomputer is perfect, it is only simulated data. No one knows how far it deviates from the real situation.
Therefore, the first trial run should be done sooner rather than later.
Liang Qu nodded and said: "No problem. In that case, how about scheduling it at ten o'clock tomorrow morning? Two hours in the morning should be enough to conduct a comprehensive test run of Huaxing."
Xu Chuan smiled and said, "You can just arrange these things. They are all trivial matters."
On the other side of the phone, Liang Qu's lips moved but stopped talking.
The first operation of China's first stellarator is related to the core of miniaturized controllable nuclear fusion technology. Is this a small matter?
Xu Chuan didn't care about this. In his opinion, this was indeed a trivial matter.
After hanging up the phone, he quickly finished his dinner, went out for a couple of walks to eat, and then returned to the office to continue improving the theory at hand.
If this theory is true and feasible, it will subsequently save a lot of time and engineering effort for the optimization of stellarators, or the manufacturing of miniaturized controllable nuclear fusion reactors.
...
The next day, Xu Chuan rushed to Xinghai Research Institute early in the morning.
The Huaxing fusion device transformed from Helix-7X has completed all preparations and is standing quietly in the core laboratory, waiting for the moment to be restarted.
Standing in the main control room, Xu Chuan looked down at the Huaxing Fusion Device lying quietly on the wide ground through the huge monitoring screen, without much emotion in his heart.
Even if there were problems with the stellarator road, they would not appear today.
At least before starting the final ignition and power generation operation, there would be no problems with the stellarator, he was confident.
"Academician Xu, a comprehensive inspection of Huaxing Fusion Device has been completed. All equipment is normal and has no problems, and the acceptance experiment can be carried out."
In front of the main console, Liang Qu quickly walked up to report.
Xu Chuan smiled and said: "As promised, you can direct today's experiment. There is no need to ask me for instructions."
For him, there is no need to control such things in his own hands.
Taking this opportunity, cultivating more talents is far more important than personally directing an experiment that is bound to succeed.
Liang Qu nodded and looked at the round clock hanging on the wall seriously, the time on it was ticking.
Although this is just a small thing for the person in front of me, for him, and for many researchers and engineers at the Energy Research Institute, this is undoubtedly an important moment when the stellarator is lit up for the first time on Chinese soil, and it is also an important moment.
Important moments in their lives.
At ten o'clock, Liang Qu took a deep breath and gave the order calmly: "Please pay attention to all units and groups, start powering on and run!"
As the order to start the experiment was issued, the staff in each group of control rooms quickly became busy.
External current is stably supplied to the Huaxing fusion device, the pipeline valves connecting the storage of liquid nitrogen and liquid helium are opened, and ultra-low temperature liquid helium and liquid nitrogen flow to different areas through different pipelines.
One piece of work is being carried out steadily and orderly. For everyone at Xinghai Research Institute, they have experienced this process countless times.
The only difference is that this time, the target of the experiment was changed from a tokamak device to a stellarator.
[Steady-state magnetic field strength reaches 41.73 Tesla, goal achieved!]
[The fine-tuning magnetic field has been corrected according to the instructions, and the magnetic field in the reaction chamber has reached the target plan! The external field coil has been adjusted!]
【......】
【Helium III raw material has been injected!】
[The ICRF heating antenna has been started up. The current temperature has reached 37 million degrees Celsius and is expected to reach 60 million degrees Celsius in three minutes!]
[Hydrogen gas introduction is completed, simulation experiment data is being collected!]
【......】
In the control room, clear and steady reports continued to sound.
Xu Chuan looked at the data displayed on the main console screen and nodded with satisfaction. On the basis of having achieved controllable nuclear fusion technology, everything was going smoothly.
The problems that were encountered in the Dawn Device have been solved in advance thanks to the efforts of many scientific researchers at Xinghai Research Institute.
If it is unexpected, the next step should be the most important one.
High-density compression of plasma turbulence in the reactor chamber to test the minimum size limit of high-density plasma iris.
This is related to how small the reactor can be under different outer ring constrained magnetic field strengths!
