Chapter 162 - 161: Q-value

Within the realm of controlled nuclear fusion, there is an extremely important concept known as the Q-value.

It is the ratio of a Nuclear Fusion Reactor’s energy output to its energy input.

For example, suppose 1 MJ of energy is input to start the fusion and maintain its operation. If the Nuclear Fusion Reactor can only produce 0.8 MJ of energy in return, then the Q-value is 0.8. A value less than one means it’s running at a deficit, and this reactor technology is clearly not practical.

As far back as the Human Era, humanity had already mastered controlled nuclear fusion technology, even achieving a Q-value of around 5.

But this technology still faced enormous challenges.

First, the ignition time was insufficient. Such a device could typically only be sustained for a few minutes before shutting down, unable to operate for long periods.

Second, a Q-value of 5 was still far too low.

If you were to measure a nuclear fission reactor using the Q-value concept, its Q-value would typically be over 100.

The Blutuk People’s mature Nuclear Fusion Reactor technology typically maintains a Q-value of over 300.

In other words, for every 1 MJ of energy input to sustain the Nuclear Fusion Reactor, it could produce over 300 MJ of energy.

The difference was worlds apart.

Before the Blutuk People arrived in the Solar System, Li Qingsong had also conducted research on controlled nuclear fusion for a period of time and had achieved some results. But with the subsequent large-scale war preparations, research in this area was halted.

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

Soon, a massive Nuclear Fusion Reactor was constructed.

Overall, it looked like a gigantic boulder, over twenty meters tall and forty to fifty meters in length and width—truly enormous.

However, the vast majority of its facilities were auxiliary. The actual area for nuclear fusion was only a small part.

This small area was toroidal, shaped like a tube.

Outside this tube, a dense array of various facilities was at work.

At this moment, a quantity of deuterium gas and the tritium gas needed for ignition were fed inside.

The deuterium-tritium gas mixture was first ionized, then guided into the reaction zone by a magnetic field.

Afterward, Li Qingsong used methods such as neutral beam injection, radio-frequency heating, and Laser heating to raise the temperature of this gas mixture to over one hundred million degrees Celsius.

At such a high temperature, no known object could come into direct contact with it.

So, how could it be contained? After all, if the plasma dispersed, the pressure would drop, and the nuclear fusion would be unsustainable.

This was where a technology Li Qingsong had previously researched for secondary-pressurization propulsion and used in his Electromagnetic Cannon came in handy.

Magnetic confinement technology.

Using an electric current to generate a magnetic field, this invisible force contained the high-temperature gas without any physical contact, preventing it from running wild or dispersing.

Under the powerful magnetic field, the deuterium-tritium gas mixture inside the toroidal reaction chamber possessed immense energy and pressure, yet it was still unable to disperse.

And so, the nuclear fusion reaction finally began.

Under extreme temperature and pressure, deuterium and tritium nuclei finally overcame the Coulomb barrier, began to approach each other, and ultimately fused into an unstable intermediate nucleus, which then rapidly split into a helium nucleus and a neutron.

In this process, about 0.375% of the mass was converted into energy, which was radiated outward in the form of helium nuclei and high-energy neutrons.

Li Qingsong only supplied some tritium to this Nuclear Fusion Reactor at the very beginning. He didn’t add any more later, instead continuously supplying only deuterium.

But the fusion reaction occurs between deuterium and tritium. Without replenishing the tritium, how could the fusion be sustained?

Here, Li Qingsong used a special technique.

The tritium self-sustainment technique.

To put it simply, the material of the reaction chamber’s inner wall contained lithium. The deuterium-tritium fusion process releases high-energy neutrons. When these neutrons bombard the lithium, the lithium nuclei react with them, producing tritium and helium.

Thus, lithium was continuously converted into tritium gas. This tritium was fed back into the reaction chamber to react with the constantly supplied deuterium. After the tritium was consumed by the reaction, more was generated from the lithium in the chamber wall, thus creating a self-sustaining cycle.

This was the tritium self-sustainment technique.

Through this technique, the Nuclear Fusion Reactor avoided the problem of needing to be refueled with large amounts of tritium.

This is because tritium’s half-life is too short—only a dozen years or so. Naturally occurring tritium is almost non-existent, making it impossible to mine.

At this point, the nuclear fusion was underway. The energy generated by the fusion was collected by the toroidal reaction chamber’s heat dissipation system and used to boil water to generate electricity.

Most of this heat came from the high-energy neutrons. The other energy-carrying particles, the helium nuclei, were used to heat the deuterium-tritium plasma to maintain the fusion environment.

In this way, the entire operating cycle of the complete nuclear fusion device was achieved.

Right now, this massive Nuclear Fusion Reactor was in continuous operation. In a distant control room, several hundred Blutuk scientists, along with numerous Clones, were closely monitoring its operational status.

The Blutuk scientists, of course, understood the principles and composition of the entire nuclear fusion device. But it was, after all, a complete scientific apparatus involving a vast number of technical details. Without several million people, it would be impossible to even remember all the relevant knowledge.

At this moment, these few hundred Blutuk scientists only knew the technological framework; Li Qingsong still had to research the vast majority of the technical details himself.

Even so, this had already saved Li Qingsong an unknown number of years and an immeasurable amount of effort.

This Nuclear Fusion Reactor ran for a full hour before it was brought to a controlled stop.

Li Qingsong was filled with joy as he saw that over the entire operating cycle of the Nuclear Fusion Reactor, if the total energy input from the outside was recorded as 1, its energy output reached 12. In other words, the Q-value had reached 12!

This directly surpassed the most advanced technology of the Human Era!

Arguably, this nuclear fusion device could be considered practical, albeit on the low end.

Li Qingsong wasn’t in a hurry to implement it on a large scale. Instead, under the guidance of the Blutuk scientists and with the help of numerous materials collected from the Blutuk Civilization, he continued his research and experiments.

Generation after generation of iteration and optimization followed. While numerous other crucial scientific research projects were being conducted simultaneously, around ten million Clones remained fully dedicated to the study of controlled nuclear fusion.

With all these contributing factors, Li Qingsong’s controlled nuclear fusion technology advanced at a speed that left the Blutuk scientists utterly dumbfounded.

In just under 50 years, the Q-value of the new-generation Nuclear Fusion Reactor that Li Qingsong had just built had already reached 260, nearly catching up to the most advanced technology of the Blutuk People!