Singapore: China seems to be building a large fusion research center on laser in the southwest city of Mianyang, experts say of two analytical organizations, a development that could help the design of nuclear weapons and work exploring energy generation.
Satellite photos show four peripheral “arms” that will house laser bays, and a central experiment bay that will maintain an target camera containing hydrogen isotopes, powerful lasers will merge, producing energy, said Decker Eveleth, an independent research researcher with Headquarters in the United States. CNA CORP.
It is a design similar to the National National Ignition Installation of the United States (NIF) of $ 3.5 billion in northern California, which in 2022 generated more energy from a fusion reaction than the lasers pumped in the objective: “Scientific balance”.
Eveleth, who works with analysts at the James Martin center for non -proliferation studies (CNS), estimates that the Bay of the experiment in Chinese facilities is approximately 50% larger than that of NIF, currently the largest in the world.
Development has not been previously informed.
“Any country with a NIF type installation can and will probably increase its confidence and improve existing weapons designs, and facilitated the design of future bomb designs without trying” weapons itself, said William Alberque, nuclear policy analyst at Henry L of Henry l.
The China Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent Reuters' questions to the “competent authority.” The China Ministry of Science and Technology did not respond to a request for comments.
The US office of the National Intelligence director declined to comment.
In November 2020, the US weapons control envoy. UU. Marshall Billingslea launched satellite images that, according to him, showed the accumulation of China Nuclear Weapons Support facilities. It included Mianyang images that showed a clear plot of labeled land such as “new research or production areas since 2010”.
That plot is the site of the Fusion Research Center, called Lase Fusion Major Device Laboratory, according to construction documents that Eveleth shared with Reuters.
Nuclear test
The fusion fuel survey allows researchers to study how such reactions work and how one day they could create a clean energy source using the most abundant resource of the universe, hydrogen. It also allows them to examine detonation nuances that would otherwise require an explosive test.
The Comprehensive Treaty of Prohibition of Nuclear Test, which China and the United States are signatory, prohibits nuclear explosions in all environments.
Countries are allowed “subcritical” explosive tests, which do not create nuclear reactions. Laser fusion investigation is also allowed, known as inertial confinement fusion.
Siegfried Hecker, principal member of the Freeman Spli Institute for International Studies and former director of the National Laboratory of Los Alamos, another Key Nuclear Weapons Research Center in the United States, said that with prohibited tests, subcritical and laser fusion experiments They were crucial to maintain security and safety. Reliability of the nuclear arsenal of the United States.
But for countries that have not made many test detonations, he said: China has tried 45 nuclear weapons, compared to 1,054 for the United States, such experiments would be less valuable because they do not have a large set of data as a base.
“I don't think it makes a huge difference,” said Hecker. “And then … I am not worried that China will move forward in terms of its nuclear facilities.”
Other nuclear powers, such as France, the United Kingdom and Russia, also operate inertial confinement fusion facilities.
The size of these facilities reflects the amount of estimation of the energy designers needed to apply to the objective to achieve the ignition, said Omar Hurricane, head scientist of the inertial contribution merger program in the National Laboratory of Lawrence Livermore, which operates NIF.
“These days, I think I can probably build an installation of equal energy or even more energetic (than NIF) and a smaller footprint,” said Hurricane. But, he added, on a scale too small, the experimental fusion does not seem possible.
That other countries operate the laser -driven fusion research centers is not a cause of alarm in itself, said the hurricane.
“It's hard to stop scientific progress and retain information,” he said. “People can use science for different media and different purposes, and that is a complicated question.”
