Lt. Gen Prakash Katoch
Chinese state media had reported on December 4, 2020, that China had successfully powered up its largest and most advanced nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, hailing it as a great advance in the country's nuclear power research capabilities. Located in southwestern Sichuan Province and completed in 2019, the reactor is also called an “artificial sun” on account of the enormous heat and power it produces.
China's HL-2M Tokamak reactor is a nuclear fusion experimental research device that scientists hope will potentially unlock a powerful clean energy source. Tokamak implies a toroidal device for producing controlled nuclear fusion that involves the confining and heating of a gaseous plasma by means of an electric current and magnetic field. HL-2M Tokamak reactor uses a powerful magnetic field to fuse hot plasma and can reach temperatures of over 150 million degrees Celsius which is approximately 10 times hotter than the core of the sun.
Fusion is considered the ‘holy grail' of energy and is what powers the sun. It merges atomic nuclei to create massive amounts of energy, opposite of the fission process used in atomic weapons and nuclear power plants, which splits them into fragments. Unlike fission, fusion does not create radioactive waste, and carries less risk of accidents or the theft of atomic material. According to Chinese media, “The development of nuclear fusion energy is not only a way to solve China's strategic energy needs, but also has great significance for the future sustainable development of China's energy and national economy.”
China plans to use the HL-2M Tokamak nuclear fission reactor in collaboration with scientists working on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), world's largest nuclear fusion research project based in France, which is expected to be completed in 2025. Chinese scientists have been working on developing smaller versions of the nuclear fusion reactor since 2006.
The ITER Project underway in the south of France at Cadarache is a globe-spanning collaboration of 35 nations with an aim to demonstrate nuclear fusion as a clean green source of unlimited energy. India became a full seventh partner of ITER in December 2005. The seven ITER partners China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the US have combined resources to conquer one of the greatest frontiers in science; reproducing on earth the boundless energy that fuels the sun and the stars. According to an ITER official, “Put together, the project represents half the world's population and accounts for two-thirds of the global economic might.”
For ITER-India, Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), located in Gandhinagar in Gujarat is indigenous agency to design, build and deliver the Indian in-kind contribution to ITER. Some 122 Indian scientists and engineers are hard at work in Gandhinagar to build crucial components going into ITER. India's contribution to ITER includes delivery of nine in-kind packages, which is about one-tenth of the technology required for the ITER. Each of the package to be delivered involves first of its kind development of materials, machining, technologies meeting stringent nuclear safety norms of the French regulatory board and ensuring that the components work for lifetime of the ITER.
On February 28, 2021, ITER was reportedly over 70 percent complete toward the first plasma. Upon completion of construction around 2025, with first plasma soon after and deuterium-tritium operations planned for 2035, the ITER will be the world's largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment and the largest experimental Tokamak nuclear fusion reactor. Achieving nuclear fusion is considered both extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive. The total cost of the ITER is estimated at US$22.5 billion.
It is significant that while construction of the ITER is planned to be completed around 2025 with first plasma soon after and deuterium-tritium operations planned for 2035, China's HL-2M Tokamak fusion reactor was already commissioned on December 4, 2020 which also achieved its first plasma discharge. Compared to the energy confinement time of less than one second in the ITER, the duration of the HL-2M trigger discharge is around 10 seconds, with an energy confinement time of a few hundred milliseconds.
China commenced nuclear fusion research in the 1960s that led to construction of the HL-1 (upgrade HL-1M) in SWIP and other small Tokamak reactors like the KT-5, CT-6B, and HT-7. Britain and South Korea also announced milestones in nuclear fusion during 2020. In October 2020, Britain's MAST-Upgrade achieved first plasma after a seven-year build program. In November 2020, South Korea announced a plasma record after its K-STAR Tokamak reactor managed to operate the plasma at 100 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds. Whether India is also building a Tokamak nuclear fusion reactor in addition to contributing nine in-kind packages to the ITER is not known.
Fusion, unlike fission, is relatively clean since it releases energy but no harmful radioactive products or large amounts of nuclear fallout. At the same time, a thermonuclear bomb, also called hydrogen bomb or H-bomb, is a weapon whose enormous explosive power results from an uncontrolled self-sustaining chain reaction in which isotopes of hydrogen combine under extremely high temperatures to form helium in a process known as nuclear fusion. So the question arises whether nuclear fusion reactors can be used to produce weapons? The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says it cannot. The reasoning given by the IAEA is that although hydrogen bombs do use fusion reactions, they require an additional fission bomb to detonate. Working conditions of a magnetically confines fusion reactor require a limited amount fuel in the reactor. This fuel is continuously injected and consumed; therefore there is never a sufficient amount of fuel to produce the instantaneous power required for a weapon.
Contrary to the above is an article ‘Nuclear Fusion Power for Weapon Purposes – An Exercise in Nuclear Proliferation Forecasting' by Gorgio Franceschini, Mathias Englert and Wolfgang Liebert published online on December 2, 2013, which says the fusion reactors do have the potential to be used for military purposes. Giving quantitative estimates about weapon-relevant materials produced in future commercial fusion reactors and their suitability for use in nuclear weapons they argue that such use by states depend on specific regulatory, political, economic, and technical boundary conditions. According to them weaponizing nuclear fusion reactors will depend on: first, the technological trajectory of global energy policies; second, the management of a peaceful power transition between rising and declining powers, and; third, the overall acceptance of the nuclear normative order.
In the above context, it can be safely assumed that China cares two hoots for any of the above mentioned three parameters for weaponizing nuclear fusion energy. It defies any regulatory or hoodwinks even if it is a signatory. It will cross every limit to attain world domination and it will not respect any nuclear normative order. Hence, it can be assumed that if there are any countries that weoponize a nuclear fusion reactor in its current or hybrid-cum-modified form, it will be first China. China is a rogue nation that can go to any length, given its 5-year research to weaponize the SARS virus followed by experimenting PLA-engineered mice with humanized lungs before biologically bombing the world with that Wuhan Virus aka Covid-19 in end December 2019.
It may be recalled that in May 2020, Chinese media quoted military experts giving a call for China to increase its number of nuclear warheads and complete a technologically advanced nuclear triad “to deter potential impulsive military action by US warmongers. Recently, the increased China-Russia bonhomie has witnessed Russia's NPP ‘Doza' supplying the first batch of radiation monitoring equipment for Chinese nuclear power plants, fully adapted to requirements of the Chinese market and having engraving on the bodies of devices and installation instructions in Chinese language. Commissioning of the nuclear power plant in Xiapu in Fujian Province is scheduled for 2024.
