Chapter 507 - Comparing Technologies
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
What happened at the seminar was only a minor disturbance for Lu Zhou.
He hadn’t done any research on the tokamak. Therefore, he obviously didn’t read the thesis from the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy.
The main reason he attended this academic conference was for the “technical exhibition” segment. He woke up a bit too early on the first day of the conference, so he found his way into a random seminar, causing the previous incident.
After correcting Professor Botham’s mistake, Lu Zhou left the lecture hall. He already killed quite a lot of time, so he slowly wandered to the technology exhibition hall.
Compared to the academic conference happening nearby, there was another level of liveliness in the technology exhibition hall.
What was shown at the exhibition wasn’t theoretical research results. Instead, it was actual technology.
Because of this, it wasn’t just scholars and researchers that paid attention to advancements in this area, but many entrepreneurs and investors interested in controllable nuclear fusion were also standing here with great interest.
Even though human civilization was still a long way from fusion energy, this didn’t prevent the imaginative people from turning their heads into this untapped land.
What was interesting was that most people thought the emergence of controllable nuclear fusion would inevitably affect the profits of the energy giants. They also thought that most energy giants hated controllable nuclear fusion to the bone and wanted to get rid of nuclear fusion...
However, the truth was the complete opposite of what they thought. Many investors of nuclear fusion companies were precisely the energy giants that were seemingly on the edge of losing their profits.
For example, the famous General Fusion Company was led by the Canadian oil company Cenovus. As for the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics stellarator project, not only were they funded by ITER and the German Energy Agency, but part of their research project was also funded by French oil giant Total S.A.
historical
Of course, other than those oil companies, there were also a bunch of wealthy tech companies that were equally as interested in the cool-sounding controllable nuclear fusion.
Like Google’s investment in Tri Alpha.
Lu Zhou personally thought Tri Alpha might be defrauding investors. However, looking at it objectively, this private company was able to build a fusion reactor from scratch within a year. Even the famous Nobel Prize laureate Burton Richter was shocked, which meant the team at Tri Alpha had a certain amount of skills.
Professor Guo Houyang, who was the chief scientist and experiment operation director of Tri Alpha, was also a nutty Chinese scholar in the field of plasma physics. Even though his name didn’t sound familiar, but this big name was in the 1996 edition of Marquis Who’s Who. This was a manifestation of the academic community’s recognition of him.
Because there were so many talented people entering the field, and because of the capital being invested into the field, this field was able to go from being unwanted into one of the most popular fields in academia.
Coincidentally, not long after he walked in, he saw Benderbauer, who he chatted with at the cafe the day before yesterday.
This chairman and chief technology officer of Tri Alpha was standing in front of a gray curtain. He was presenting a PowerPoint presentation, which was about their C2-U fusion machine as well as their world-leading field-reversed configuration, to some scholars and investors who were interested in the controllable nuclear fusion field.
Even though Benderbauer’s speech on stage was enthusiastic, Lu Zhou thought about what Bendebauer said to him the day before yesterday, and he felt that this enthusiasm was somewhat fake.
“Life is just like a movie, you really do need acting skills.”
Lu Zhou shook his head and didn’t say anything. He listened to a brief explanation of the FRC machine technology and walked toward the booth next to it.
Other than Tri Alpha, Baosheng Group also had a booth in the technology exhibition hall.
After all, state-owned companies were not the same anymore. Even though this high tech company had special subsidies from the state, they still had to worry about sales.
Otherwise, by the time they finally increased their production capacity, they might have to actually decrease their excessive production capacity.
At Baosheng Group’s booth, they demonstrated their SG-1 wire technology, which they developed in cooperation with the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study, to scholars from all over the world.
Even though the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres had also mastered this technology, this technology was still dominated by Baosheng Group due to their production cost and production scale advantages. Even though the Germans had received this technology, they still had to pass on a large number of orders to Baosheng Group due to their insufficient production capacity.
In short, when the representatives from major research institutes saw this wire, which was only a few thousand nanometers in diameter, they couldn’t believe it was real.
That was until Chief Engineer Cao calmly operated the experiment equipment in front of everyone. He showed them the thermal conductivity of the SG-1 wire and the most important one—superconducting properties. The people around the booth had their eyes wide open in disbelief.
At the end of the first day of the conference, Lu Zhou originally planned on going back to his room and rest.
But General Manager Sun insisted on treating his guest. Therefore, the group found a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown and sat down around a table.
At the dinner table, General Manager Sun Chengwu raised his glass and looked at Lu Zhou.
“Professor Lu, thank you so much!
“We’ve secured more than US$200 million worth in orders just this morning alone!
“This toast goes to you!”
Even though a few hours had since passed, General Manager Sun still couldn’t forget how the foreigners responded when Engineer Cao was showing them their SG-1 wire technology, and how shocked and astonished the foreigner experts were.
As the general manager of Baosheng Group, there was nothing more exciting than watching his own company be at the forefront of the industry...
Lu Zhou toasted with General Manager Sun and smiled as he said politely, “There’s no need to thank me, you deserve this.”
US$200 million in orders was a lot, that was almost 1.4 billion in yuan.
According to the current cost of the SG-1 wire, Lu Zhou roughly estimated that the US$200 million worth of wires was enough to build the outer-field coils of three medium-sized stellarators.
If it was the tokamak, it wouldn’t need as many wires.
However, Lu Zhou didn’t know much about the Tokamak. Therefore, he couldn’t give an accurate estimate.
“What do you mean? Without your technology, we couldn’t have come this far by ourselves.” General Manager Sun downed his shot glass and cheerfully said, “If Professor Lu has any more good suggestions in the future, I hope you’re generous enough to share them with me!”