Chapter 356: New Chemistry?

Controllable nuclear fusion?!

This does sound interesting.

Lu Zhou was immediately interested once he heard Professor Klitzing mentioned this matter.

“Can I visit inside?”

Professor Klitzing smiled and said, “If you are interested, then sure.”

Lu Zhou followed Professor Klitzing into this building.

Lu Zhou thought that this place would be highly confidential, but Professor Klitzing easily went inside with his work card.

Professor Klitzing noticed Lu Zhou’s confusion and smiled as he said, “There’s no secret here. You can retrieve the papers from the Firestone Library. The access restrictions are mainly to prevent troublemakers from coming in. The security in Berlin has gotten worse recently.”

Lu Zhou joked, “I thought it was some highly confidential place.”

Professor Klitzing smiled and said, “Don’t worry, even I wouldn’t be able to access a place like that.”

Contrary to popular conspiracy theories about nuclear fusion technology, most countries had done research in controlled nuclear fusion but the research results were open to the public.

According to the ITER agreement signed in Paris in November 2006, the national research teams of each country would report their latest research progress at each International Fusion Energy Conference.

The reason for cooperation was simple.

It was because the difficulty of this project had far exceeded any research project. It was more difficult than the Manhattan Project, Human Genome Project, and the Apollo Project. Also, controllable nuclear fusion technology could not be achieved by one country alone.

Due to these circumstances, the benefits of closed-door research were far outweighed by the benefits of participating in the ITER program.

For example, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), played a pivotal role in the ITER project.

As for how the benefits of the project would be distributed, that would be an issue for later. Right now, they couldn’t even figure out what the problem was much less how to solve it.

Whether it was the tokamak or stellarator, there was no secret design theory. This was why Professor Klitzing could bring Lu Zhou for a visit.

The only secret part was the laser fusion that was used for “ignition”.

One of the main functions of laser fusion was to simulate a hydrogen bomb explosion. Therefore, ITER didn’t cooperate with countries that didn’t sign the nuclear peace treaty.

However, this secret part of the research couldn’t be seen. Confidential research was obviously done in a confidential place.

Lu Zhou followed Professor Klitzing all the way to the core area of the building. He looked at the strange object sitting in open space and said, “This looks like a fried dough twist.”

The “dough twist” was connected seamlessly from end to end, forming a circle.

From a geometry perspective, it was a Mobius ring transformed into three dimensions.

The plasma could operate stably in the circular orbit that was wounded by a coil.

In contrast, the tokamak device relied on the magnetic field generated by the external magnetic field and the plasma current. If the plasma became unstable or disturbed due to some unknown physical phenomenon, the entire system would be at risk of collapsing.

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It was also theoretically possible to control the ignition of the stellarator more easily than the tokamak.

However, although the stellarator had many advantages, it had one deadly disadvantage. That was, the technology requirements were extremely demanding, and the equipment engineering process was complicated.

The weird-looking object in front of Lu Zhou was already complicated enough, and it was only one of the parts required for nuclear fusion. Not to mention, there were only a handful of countries that possessed this part.

This was one of the reasons why China chose the tokamak route instead.

Professor Klitzing jokingly said, “Really? I think it’s more like a donut with cream.”

Lu Zhou looked at the old man. He clearly didn’t understand what a “fried dough twist” was.

“This is the plasma orbit that was replaced by the spiral stone 7-X,” Professor Klitzing said while looking at the device in front of him. He continued, “As for the complete spiral stone 7-X, it is in Greifswald. If you are interested, I can take you there after the report is over. They are doing an experiment there right now.”

Lu Zhou smiled and said, “Really? I’ll remember your words.”

This was a good opportunity.

Although controlled nuclear fusion was outside of Lu Zhou’s research area, he was interested in any sci-fi like technologies.

However, no matter how interesting the experiment was, it wasn’t as important as his report.

After Lu Zhou’s visit at the Max Planck Laboratory, he returned to the Pegnitz Hotel and began preparing for his upcoming report.

Days flew by and it was soon the report day.

The report would be held at Humboldt University.

Lu Zhou woke up early on Saturday and arrived at the venue an hour earlier.

The venue was almost full of people when he arrived.

The Max Planck Institute didn’t have restrictions on participants; they only pre-allocated seats for important participants. Therefore, many scholars, students, and professors from major universities and research institutes also joined in on the fun.

It was less than half an hour until the report began; some people even sat on the corridor.

The theoretical chemistry community had been waiting for this report for two months.

They were wondering if this could mean a new generation of chemistry…

Everyone looked at the big screen behind the podium while they waited to witness this historic moment.

President Stratmann stood next to the podium and saw the people sitting on the ground. He told the venue staff members to find some chairs and place them inside the venue.

He then looked at Lu Zhou who was copying data onto the projector.

“How’s the preparation going?”

Lu Zhou said in a relaxed manner, “Basically, pretty good.”

“You got this,” Stratmann said as he gave Lu Zhou a thumbs up. He then added, “I hope everyone will get to witness history today.”

Lu Zhou smiled and adjusted his tie.

“Definitely.”