China building huge fusion research facility

The experts from two analytical organisations have said that China appears to be constructing a large-scale laser-ignited fusion research facility in Mianyang, southwestern China.

This project could contribute to advancements in nuclear weapons design as well as power generation research, Caliber.Az reports via foreign media.

Satellite images reveal four external "arms" that will house laser bays, with a central experimental chamber designed to hold a target chamber containing hydrogen isotopes. These isotopes will be fused by the lasers to produce energy, as explained by Decker Eveleth, a researcher at the US-based independent research organization CNA Corp.

The design closely resembles that of the $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Northern California, which achieved "scientific breakeven" in 2022 by generating more energy from a fusion reaction than the lasers pumped into the target.

Eveleth, in collaboration with analysts from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), estimates that the experimental chamber at the Chinese facility is around 50 per cent larger than the one at NIF, which is currently the largest such facility in the world. This development has not been reported before. 

"Any country with an NIF-type facility can and probably will be increasing their confidence and improving existing weapons designs, and facilitating the design of future bomb designs without testing" the weapons themselves, said William Alberque, a nuclear policy analyst at the Henry L. Stimson Centre.

In November 2020, US arms control envoy Marshall Billingslea released satellite images that purportedly showed China’s expansion of nuclear weapons support facilities, including images of Mianyang, which depicted a cleared plot of land labeled as "new research or production areas since 2010."

This plot, according to construction documents shared by Eveleth, is the location of the new fusion research center, named the Laser Fusion Major Device Laboratory.

By Naila Huseynova