“The ultimate goal of EAST, the experimental advanced superconducting tokamak, is to create nuclear fusion like the Sun. Come and visit the Chinese `artificial sun’ with a young scientist,” Xinhua writes under its three-minute video with the above title.
The young scientist, Zhang Bin, who is in charge of the tokamak’s plasma operations, gives a quick walk-through of the Institute of Plasma Physics’ EAST center a few hours before the start of the 110,810th plasma discharge, the latest of the twice-yearly experiments on the tokamak (each of which, he notes, take three months of preparation).
Zhang’s message is not a technical one, but the video conveys the happiness that comes from being part of the mission of developing the physics and engineering needed for “the future clean energy of humanity,” along with more than 800 people. What he said he is doing at the EAST project “is something like climbing on a mountain with a group of like-minded people in order to see the most beautiful sunrise,” he explains at the outset of the video. He concludes confidently: “I believe that fusion energy will be realized in my generation, and the electricity of fusion power can be accessible to millions.”
China’s confidence that it will succeed in its determination to develop fusion power, and its interest in sharing it with others, is high among the reasons the financier Malthusians behind NATO have declared China their “enemy number one.” [In Chinese with English subtitles: https://english.news.cn/20220603/bb6fa8f49a5041f29df2a24d3906a0a1/c.html]
