Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 162 Q Value

In controlled nuclear fusion facilities, there is an extremely important concept, that is, the Q value.

It is the ratio of the output energy of a nuclear fusion reactor to the input energy.

Assuming that 1MJ of energy is input to start fusion and maintain its operation, but the nuclear fusion reactor can only produce 0.8MJ of energy, then the Q value is 0.8, which is less than one, and the expenditure is not enough to cover the income. This set of reactor technology is obviously not practical.

As early as the human era, people have actually mastered the technology of controlled nuclear fusion and have even achieved a Q value of around 5.

But this technology still faces huge challenges.

The first is insufficient ignition time. Such a device usually only lasts for a few minutes before it goes out and cannot last for a long time.

Secondly, the Q value of 5 is still too low.

If a nuclear fission reactor is measured using the Q value concept, its Q value will usually remain above 100.

The Bluetuk people's mature nuclear fusion reactor technology usually maintains a Q value above 300.

That is, 1MJ of energy is input to maintain a nuclear fusion reactor, which can produce more than 300MJ of energy.

The difference between them is huge.

Before the Bluetuk arrived in the solar system, Li Qingsong had also conducted controlled nuclear fusion research for a period of time and achieved some results. However, with the subsequent large-scale war preparations, this research also stopped.

Now, under the guidance of about 200 experts in Blueprint controlled nuclear fusion, Li Qingsong has picked up this technology again.

Soon, a huge nuclear fusion reactor was built.

It looks like a huge stone as a whole, more than 20 meters high, and 40 to 50 meters long and wide, extremely huge.

However, most of these facilities are auxiliary, and only a small area is used for nuclear fusion.

This small area is ring-shaped, like a pipe.

Outside this pipeline, various densely packed facilities are functioning.

At this moment, a portion of deuterium gas and tritium gas used for startup were input into it.

The deuterium-tritium mixed gas is first ionized, and then enters the reaction area under the action of the magnetic field.

Afterwards, Li Qingsong used neutral beam injection, radio frequency heating, laser heating and other means to raise the temperature of this mixed gas to over 100 million degrees Celsius.

At such high temperatures, direct contact with any known object is impossible.

So how do we hold them together? After all, if they disperse, the pressure will decrease and nuclear fusion will not be able to be sustained.

At this time, Li Qingsong's previous research on secondary pressurization propulsion technology and a technology used in electromagnetic guns came in handy.

Magnetic confinement technology.

Use electric current to form a magnetic field, and use an invisible magnetic field to restrain this mass of high-temperature gas without any substantial contact with it, preventing it from running around or dispersing.

Under the powerful magnetic field, the deuterium-tritium mixture in the annular reaction chamber, despite possessing immense energy and pressure, was unable to disperse. Thus, the nuclear fusion reaction finally began.

Under extremely high temperature and pressure, the deuterium nuclei and tritium nuclei finally overcame the Coulomb barrier, began to approach each other, and eventually combined into an unstable intermediate nucleus, which then quickly split into helium nuclei and neutrons.

During this process, about 0.375% of the mass was converted into energy and radiated to the outside world through helium nuclei and high-energy neutrons.

Li Qingsong only added some tritium gas to the nuclear fusion reactor at the beginning, and did not add any more afterwards, but only continued to add deuterium gas.

But nuclear fusion reactions occur between deuterium and tritium. How can fusion be maintained without replenishing tritium gas?
Here, Li Qingsong used a special technique.

Tritium self-sustaining technology.

Simply put, the wall material of the annular reaction chamber contains lithium. The deuterium-tritium fusion process releases high-energy neutrons, which bombard the lithium, causing the lithium nuclei to react with the neutrons to produce tritium and helium.

Therefore, lithium is continuously converted into tritium gas, which is then replenished into the reaction chamber and continuously reacts with the deuterium gas input from the outside. After the reaction consumes the tritium gas, the lithium from the cavity wall is converted into tritium, and the cycle continues.

This is tritium self-sustaining technology.

Through this technology, nuclear fusion reactors avoid the problem of needing to replenish large amounts of tritium gas.

Because tritium has a very short half-life of only a dozen years, it is almost non-existent in nature and cannot be mined.

At this moment, nuclear fusion has begun, and the energy generated by nuclear fusion is collected through the heat dissipation device in the annular reaction chamber and used to boil water and generate electricity.

This heat mainly comes from high-energy neutrons, while the other part of the energy-carrying helium nuclei is used to heat the deuterium-tritium plasma to maintain the fusion environment.

In this way, a complete set of nuclear fusion devices completes the entire operation process.

At this moment, this massive nuclear fusion reactor was in continuous operation. In the distant control room, hundreds of Blueprint scientists and numerous clones closely monitored its status.

Blueprint scientists are certainly clear about the principles and composition of the entire nuclear fusion device, but this is a complete scientific device after all, involving numerous technical details. Without millions of people, it would be impossible to memorize even the relevant knowledge.

At this moment, these hundreds of blueprint scientists only know the technical framework, and Li Qingsong still has to study a lot of technical details himself.

But even so, it has saved Li Qingsong countless years and energy.

This nuclear fusion reactor ran for a full hour before it was brought to a controlled stop.

Li Qingsong was filled with joy to see that during the entire operation cycle of this nuclear fusion reactor, if the total energy input from the outside was recorded as 1, the energy it produced reached 12, that is, the Q value reached 12!

Directly surpassing the most advanced technology of the human era!
If we have to say it, this nuclear fusion device is practical, but its power is relatively low.

Li Qingsong was not in a hurry to apply it on a large scale, but continued to conduct research and experiments under the guidance of Blueprint scientists and a lot of information collected from the Blueprint civilization.

Through generations of iterations and optimizations, while carrying out many other crucial scientific researches at the same time, there are always about ten million clones who are fully focused on the research of controlled nuclear fusion.

With the combination of various conditions, Li Qingsong's controlled nuclear fusion technology developed rapidly at a speed that left Blueprint scientists dumbfounded.

In just less than 50 years, Li Qingsong's latest generation of controlled nuclear fusion reactor has achieved a Q value of 260, which is about to catch up with Blueprint's most advanced technology!
(End of this chapter)