BEIJING - Scientists on Thursday carried out China's first successful test of an experimental

fusion reactor, powered by the process that fuels the sun, a research institute spokeswoman
said.

China, the United States and other governments are pursuing fusion research in hopes that it
could become a clean, potentially limitless energy source. Fusion produces little radioactive
waste, unlike fission, which powers conventional nuclear reactors.

Beijing is eager for advances, both for national prestige and to reduce its soaring consumption of
imported oil and dirty coal.

The test by the government's Institute of Plasma Physics was carried out on a Tokamak fusion
device in the eastern city of Hefei, said Cheng Yan, a spokeswoman at the institute.

Cheng said the test was considered a success because the reactor produced plasma, a hot cloud
of supercharged particles. She wouldn't give other details.

"This represents a step for humankind in the study of nuclear reaction," she said.

U.S. and other scientists have been experimenting with fusion for decades but it has yet to be
developed into a viable energy alternative.

"I think it is a considerable step ahead for China," said Karl Heinz Finken, a senior scientist at the
Institute for Plasma Physics in Juelich, Germany, who had no role in the Chinese research.
"China is speeding up with the development of nuclear fusion and I think at the moment they are
making considerable progress," he said.

The Chinese facility is similar to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER,
being built by a seven-nation consortium in Cadarache in southern France, according to state
media. That reactor is due to be completed in 2015.

China is a partner in the ITER reactor, along with the European Union, the United States, Japan,
Russia, India and South Korea.

A Tokamak reactor uses a doughnut-shaped magnetic field to contain the hot gas.

Several countries have produced plasma using a Tokamak or similar device, said Gabriel
Marbach, deputy head of fusion research at the ITER facility. He said producing plasma was only
one step toward the fusion that ITER aims to perform, and that the project could be helped by
the Chinese experiments.

"It was important for China to show that it is part of the club, and that adds value to its
participation in ITER," Marbach said.

"That is not to say that it is at the level of the Europeans or Americans," he said. However, he
added, "We are rather admiring of the Chinese for conducting this test. It was conducted well,
and they constructed (the machine) rather quickly."

China is the world's No. 2 oil consumer and its No. 3 importer, consuming at least 3.5 million
barrels of foreign oil per day last year.

China plans to build dozens of nuclear power plants and is trying to promote use of cleaner
alternative energy sources such as natural gas, wind power and methanol made from corn.

China sucessfully tests new thermonuclear fusion reactor

Chinese scientists on Thursday successfully conducted their first test of

an experimental thermonuclear fusion reactor, which replicates the
energy generating process of the sun.
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion
reactor, nicknamed "artificial sun", was tested at the Institute of Plasma
Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Hefei,
capital city of east China's Anhui Province.
During the experiment, deuterium and tritium atoms were forced
together at a temperature of 100 million Celsius.
"At that temperature, the super heated plasma, which is neither a gas,
a liquid nor a solid, should begin to give off its own energy," scientists
explained.
The first tests lasted nearly three seconds, and generated an electrical
current of 200 kiloamperes, Wan Yuanxi, general manager of EAST, told
Xinhua.
The experiments were continuing, he said.
The device is planned to eventually create a plasma lasting 1,000
consecutive seconds, the longest a fusion reactor has ever run.
Wan said the deuterium extracted from one liter of seawater could
produce energy equivalent to that generated by burning 300 liters of
gasoline thanks to the fusion technology.
If the thermonuclear fusion technology is commercialized, it may
provide energy to mankind for more than 100 million years, Wan said.
Li Jiangang, director of the Institute of Plasma Physics, said the results
of the test met the expectations of scientists and signified a great
breakthrough in the research of thermonuclear fusion.
"That means we lead all our competitors by at least a decade," said Li.
"The breakthrough will make it possible for mankind to harness a safe,
clean and endless source of energy."
EAST is an upgrade of China's first-generation Tokamak device and the
first of its kind in operation in the world, said Chinese scientists.
The Institute of Plasma Physics spent eight years and 200 million yuan
(25 million U.S. dollars) on building the experimental reactor.
The columniform device, made with special stainless steel, is about 12
meters high and weighs 400 tons.
Compared with similar devices in other countries, EAST cost the least
money and time to be built and is the first in operation, said Li.
EAST would be the most advanced thermonuclear fusion reactor in the
world for the next ten years, said Dr. Gary Jackson from General
Atomics of the United States, who participated in the research.
Unlike traditional nuclear fission reactors, which split atoms to create
energy and produce dangerous radioactive waste, EAST uses nuclear
fusion to compress atoms at extremely high temperatures to generate
energy that would produce very little pollution.
Scientists theorize that a fully functional fusion reactor would provide
cheaper, safer, cleaner and endless energy and reduce the world's
dependence on fossil fuels.
EAST is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
(ITER), which is the largest international program dedicated to
experiments in thermonuclear fusion.
In 2003, China joined the 4.6-billion-euro ITER which was originally
initiated by the United States and Russia. The first operation of ITER
might be in 2016.
Source: Xinhua