Scientists believe that deuterium can be extracted from the sea and an enormous amount of energy can be obtained from a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction under extreme high temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius. After nuclear fusion, the deuterium extracted from one liter of sea water will produce energy equivalent to 300 liters of gasoline.

If a device is developed that can withstand temperatures as high as 100 million Celsius degrees and control a deuterium-tritium reaction, it will be as though an "artificial sun" had been created able to supply infinite, clean energy for human beings.

On March 28, 2006, China finished its "artificial sun" EAST's first engineering adjustment, and on 2007-03-01 China's Xinhua news agency reported:

China's experimental thermonuclear fusion reactor completed

BEIJING, March. 1 (Xinhua) -- China has completed construction of a thermonuclear fusion reactor, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced here on Thursday.

"The Experimental Advanced Super conducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor has obtained state ratification for test results, use of funds, operational management and data authenticity," said a 34-person joint ratification committee at the CAS news conference.

The 34-person committee mainly consists of officials and experts with CAS, the State Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

The EAST fusion reactor was tested earlier this month by CAS Institute of Plasma Physics in central China's Anhui Province, and succeeded in generating an electrical current of 250 kilo amperes in 5 seconds.

EAST fusion reactor, which replicates the energy generating process of the sun, has also been dubbed "the artificial sun".

The EAST is an upgrade of China's first-generation Tokamak device and the first of its kind in operation in the world, said Chinese scientists.

The Institute of Plasma Physics spent eight years and 200 million yuan (25 million U.S. dollars) building the experimental reactor. (Which is about one fifteenth of similar devices being developed in the other parts of the world.)

Compared with similar devices in other countries, EAST was the cheapest and fastest to build and the first to go into operation.

In 2003, China joined the 4.6-billion-euro ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), the largest international program dedicated to experiments in thermonuclear fusion.

China is one of seven participants in the international cooperation program, which also includes the United States, the European Union, the Republic of Korea, Russia, Japan and India.

About 2,000 Chinese researchers are engaged in studying thermonuclear fusion.

News Terms: "artificial sun" and Tokamak

Principle: exporting the energy generated during the process by artificially slowing the hydrogen bomb explosion, and converting the energy into electricity.

Keeping the fusion reaction stable and sustainable is an ongoing issue. A tokamak is needed. In Russian, "tokamak" refers to keeping a magnetic controlled fusion process stable.

Experts say that although people usually call the nuclear fusion experimental device an "artificial sun", this is actually a misconception. A real "artificial sun" involves simulating the solar energy model by using a nuclear fusion reactor.

Source and More reference about: China's "artificial sun"