Chapter 163 - 162: Jupiter Plane

Not only was the Q-value vastly improved, but the reactor’s volume was also drastically reduced.

The reactors from the early research days—towering dozens of meters high and wide like small mountains—were now a thing of the past.

The latest model of the Nuclear Fusion Reactor was only a few meters tall, with a length and width of just ten meters.

From the outside, it resembled a cargo container.

Yet, if this "cargo container" were to run at full power, its installed capacity would be a staggering 5,000 megawatts, generating 5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity every hour!

To generate this much electricity, it consumed less than a mere 100 grams of deuterium gas.

Generating the same amount of power with uranium-235 would require nearly 500 grams.

The current Nuclear Fusion Reactor was still a bit large, and its installed capacity was too high. For now, it could only be equipped on Earth-class Warships or large freighters; it was too big for Venus-class and Mercury-class Warships.

However, Venus-class and Mercury-class Warships didn’t require that much power anyway, so their reactors’ installed capacity, volume, and mass could be scaled down accordingly.

So, as Li Qingsong continued his research into improving the Q-value of Nuclear Fusion Reactors, he also initiated a project focused on miniaturization.

Although controllable nuclear fusion technology had not yet been perfected, there was one task that could begin immediately.

That task was to completely overhaul the existing energy supply system!

Until now, nearly all of Li Qingsong’s power came from nuclear fission.

To mine uranium ore and then enrich it, Li Qingsong had been forced to dispatch a vast number of Clones and industrial assets. They scoured the entire Solar System for uranium deposits and built processing plants on-site.

Now, all of that could be decommissioned!

Even in their unperfected state, the new Nuclear Fusion Reactors were already far, far more efficient than the old fission reactors.

Li Qingsong swiftly began construction on the first nuclear fusion power plant.

Building a ground-based power plant eliminated the need for miniaturization. This allowed Li Qingsong to build it on a massive and sophisticated scale, which in turn further boosted its efficiency and total installed capacity.

The plant’s total installed capacity reached an unprecedented 100,000 megawatts!

At full power, it could generate 100 million kilowatt-hours of electricity in a single hour, totaling 876 billion kilowatt-hours per year!

Back when Human Civilization was still divided into nations, its total annual electricity consumption was approximately 30 trillion kilowatt-hours. By that measure, just 35 of the power plants Li Qingsong was building could supply all of humanity’s power needs!

Countless electric vehicles racing by, countless heavy machines roaring to life, countless lights blazing—all of these power demands and more could be met by a mere 35 plants.

And for these 35 plants to run at full power for an entire year, they would consume less than five hundred tons of deuterium-tritium gas.

To generate the same amount of electricity with coal would require at least 10 billion tons.

The difference was a staggering twenty million-fold!

Of course, 35 nuclear fusion plants would only have been sufficient for the Human Civilization of the past. For Li Qingsong, this was nowhere near enough.

At this stage, Li Qingsong had already fully developed two rocky planets and over 30 dwarf planets and large moons, bringing the total number of worlds under his control to 40.

The output of 35 nuclear fusion plants, far from supporting his entire industrial system, wouldn’t even be enough for a single one of his worlds!

For instance, on Ganymede, which Li Qingsong considered his main base of operations, he had built over 5,000 of these 100,000-megawatt Nuclear Fusion Reactors. On the two major planets, Mercury and Mars, the number was even greater, reaching a total of over twenty thousand.

Li Qingsong even built several such plants on Earth itself to power the planetary ecological restoration project.

After all, nuclear fusion energy was clean and pollution-free, so there was no concern about environmental impact.

In total, Li Qingsong built over 100,000 nuclear fusion plants of this size or larger throughout the Solar System. All of them were kept at a high operational output, just to cover the power demands of his entire industrial and research complex.

These 100,000-plus nuclear fusion plants generated 87.6 quadrillion kilowatt-hours annually, an energy output equivalent to that of more than 2,900 of the old, nation-based Human Civilizations combined.

It was unavoidable; the more advanced the technology, the more energy it consumed.

More nuclear fusion plants meant greater fuel consumption. The hundred-thousand-plus plants required approximately 17 million tons of deuterium gas each year.

In a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction, one gram of deuterium requires one and a half grams of tritium, meaning the demand for tritium was even greater.

However, tritium is generated by bombarding lithium-6 with neutrons. In practice, this means the reaction consumes lithium-6, not a pre-existing supply of tritium gas.

Since lithium-6 reserves in the Solar System were vast and relatively easy to mine, this part of the equation could be disregarded. The primary concern was the consumption of deuterium gas.

To harvest this annual requirement of 17 million tons of deuterium, Li Qingsong specially developed a new type of aircraft.

This vehicle resembled the airplanes of Human Civilization, with a large frame and an excellent aerodynamic profile.

But it wasn’t designed to fly on Earth; it was meant to fly within Jupiter.

Jupiter is a gas giant. Apart from its core, the planet is composed entirely of gas, with an atmosphere thousands of times more massive than Earth’s.

Within an atmosphere of this scale, all manner of weather phenomena occurred constantly.

Thunderstorms, hurricanes, turbulence, downpours, hailstorms—the list was endless.

Now, the first batch of Jupiter Planes built by Li Qingsong had been transported by freighter and released into the cloud tops of Jupiter.

Li Qingsong had specifically chosen a release point with relatively calm weather.

The wind speed here was only about 200 meters per second—considered a rare spell of good weather on Jupiter.

On Earth, the strongest hurricanes have wind speeds of less than 100 meters per second.

But on Jupiter, hurricanes exceeding the speed of sound are incredibly common. A wind speed of just 200 meters per second—only twice that of Earth’s most powerful hurricanes—was truly a rare calm.

Swept up by the 200-meter-per-second gales, the Jupiter Plane plunged into the planet’s clouds. The next moment, its massive engines roared to life, and it began to ride the winds, soaring through Jupiter’s atmosphere.

In Jupiter’s atmosphere, deuterium exists in the form of hydrogen deuteride at a concentration of about 0.002%. This meant that one ton of Jovian gas could yield approximately 20 grams of hydrogen deuteride.

In turn, 20 grams of hydrogen deuteride could be processed to extract about 13 grams of deuterium.

A single Jupiter Plane could process about 30 tons of Jupiter’s atmosphere per minute. This would allow it to collect 390 grams of deuterium per minute, which translated to about 540 kilograms per day, or roughly 200 tons per year.

Based on his current annual consumption of 17 million tons of deuterium, Li Qingsong would need 85,000 Jupiter Planes operating nonstop just to ensure an adequate supply.

Factoring in spares and accidental losses, Li Qingsong would need to maintain a massive fleet of at least 100,000 Jupiter Planes to meet his needs.