Going to the moon is not comparable to obtaining fusion. The entire reason to go to the moon is political dominance. The goal of fusion is not political dominance it's nigh limitless clean energy. China would be stupid to share such a huge advantage with the rest of the world. It simply doesn't way up to the political gain.
Sure, but why not take advantage of a 3-5 years head start?
If China were close to a surplus-energy generating Tokamak, the smart thing to do would be vague about it while pumping out a lot of disinformation to confuse Western intelligence agencies about the most productive path forward for research.
Because the more fusion plants you build the easier it becomes to steal the tech. So your options are
1) Get geopolitical dominance by showing you have it first (while still trying to prevent theft of IP)
2) Use it in quiet and in low usage to decrease vulnerability to state actors from stealing the tech.
One more important thing. Hiding it only hides it from other governments' populations, not the foreign governments. Because of this, most countries go for option #1.
Option 3: Offer to license it to anyone who wants it, have orders in other countries finance your own buildout, while positioning yourself as the primary source of expertise on the technology. Establish lots of joint ventures and send lots of staff to work on the plants in other countries, further establishing interdependencies. Use this to apply soft power to the rest of the world while giving your population very cheap (subsidized by other countries) energy, and watch your economy grow. This is a strategy that is much more sensible for China than trying to keep it exclusive or hidden, assuming they have a working technology.
EDIT: If it needs further clarification, this is the French model of fission plant buildout.
> It'd be like if we went to the moon, but kept it under wraps. Like, why bother?
Much of the point of space programs is to prove we can drop bombs back on earth with precision. I don't know how fusion reactors are a threat in that fashion.
I think you have it backwards - the space program was born from the missile programs. It was more of a case of "ok, we have pushed the limits of the missile program, what can we do next?"
During the space race and Cold War, Russia and the US used surveillance to determine each other's weapons capability & capacity (and still do). There's no need for the space program to remind the enemy of what they already know.
The space program was a pissing contest, effectively, and while there was surely some military undertones, the point of our space programs was not as a deterrent - it was a show of might.
Some people claim the real goals of fusion power research have always been in support of fusion weapons development - specifically, by providing an experimental system for studying controlled fusion reactions (since uncontrolled fusion reactions are banned by treaty), and by providing a jobs program for fusion experts. I do not know enough about the practical obstacles to fusion power to judge the accuracy of this claim for myself, but there's no doubt that it's a dual-use technology, and some projects seem suspiciously like dead ends if commercial electricity generation is the real goal.
> but there's no doubt that it's a dual-use technology
I do in fact doubt this. We've been building fusion weapons for 50 years very successfully, progress in fusion power plants is negligible in comparison. If fusion power plants are a dual use technology for weapons, they must be a very inefficient way to get there.
But we haven't actually tested those weapons in decades. Ensuring that the stockpile doesn't go bad is a huge money suck for the DOE, and it's been a key factor driving supercomputer improvements. You're right that it's very inefficient, but that has to be balanced against the political cost of setting off thermonuclear explosions regularly.
If China can gain a massive energy advantage over their competitors they don't even need special weapons. If they can get a 10% per-capita energy advantage over the Americans then they win direct wars automatically by virtue of having a 3-4x manpower advantage. Economic engines win wars quite consistently.
There are a huge number of assumptions buried in that initial "If". China could just as easily blow several dozen billion dollars with no more to show for it than anyone else.
China is extremely dependent on energy imports, averaging roughly 10 million bpd. Most of that oil comes far away from the Middle East traversing long shipping lanes which are close to many regional rivals which could easily disrupt said lanes. And that's not even bringing up the USN. Having a credible domestic answer to their energy needs would be covering what is currently a clear and present Achilles heel.
A confident nation, like a confident individual, has nothing to prove to anyone else.
Just imagine a scenario where Chinese GDP doubles over 5 years, while greenhouse gas emissions drop to zero over that same period. Imagine China's glee and their cackling laughter as Westerners scratch their heads wondering why.
For the record, I am an American who reads about plasma physics in my free time, under the distant hope that I can help America win this race.
On the other hand, the world is hitting China with a lot of moralistic judgement and economic tariffs. This would give them the ability to say: “We gave you clean fusion. STFU.”
Not to mention the geopolitical advantage they would get deploying fusion plants to Africa, etc.
That's really only the case if you don't ever want anything from other people/nations. If you're going to be negotiating anything ever again, it might be useful to have chips like this to play.
Fusion would be a national security level tech - like FTL travel or general AI. Heck, it would be beyond national security level. Nobody would share that without some geopolitical considerations.
To put it in perspective, the US is fighting china over relatively mundane nonsense like 5G, semiconductors, etc. Fusion would be many orders of magnitude more important than any tech we have today.
The US exploited the control of oil to conquer and rule over the entire world. Every nation on earth is a vassal on some level ( even china and russia ) to the US because we discovered and exploited oil first and pretty much ended up controlling most of it around the world. The international world order is an american world order because of oil. If madagascar or north korea discovered fusion, they would control the commanding heights and they wouldn't share such a secret without getting something in return. If that is the case for madagascar/north korea, major nations like china, japan, france, germany, russia, india, turkey, nigeria, brazil, venezuela, etc who don't want to be under american domination would be even more incentivized to keep it for themselves.
What is the value of limitless free and environmentally friendly energy? Priceless. It's the type of tech which alters human trajectory and the world order. Not only is fusion priceless in and of itself, it's priceless in terms of it's derivative effects. Discovery of fusion can lead to general AI and vice versa.
In other words, ain't nobody sharing fusion tech - at least not without significant strings attached.
I'm a pessimist/realist when it comes to it as well. We as a global population are still figuratively learning to clean up our own feces, faffing about with useless programs and dragging dead-weight because we refuse to properly fix problems.
The pessimistic in you should see it as a massive boondoggle. For fundamental reasons, there's very little chance this, and likely other, fusion efforts will lead to a competitive source of energy.
Thank you. Every time I see a fusion article - and it’s always a breathless “just around the corner” puff piece - I scan it to see if they’ve solved neutron embrittlement, or even come close. So far, no one has.
Or volumetric power density, or simply the cost of the non-nuclear part of the power plant.
But of course no one has solved the neutron damage issue. How could they? To develop a material, if that's even possible, that could withstand 14 MeV neutrons well enough, one would need a fusion reactor to make those neutrons to test the materials (and tritium breeding to keep it running). This circular dependency would be very difficult to traverse.
Not hogwash. Just the truth. Go read the history of oil. The US was decades ahead of europe and europe never had the oil that the US did hence why major european powers like britain, france and germany relied heavily on coal. No european country had the oil fields of pennsylvania, ohio, texas, california, etc. That's why europe had to take oil from asia, africa etc. Standard Oil became the most valuable company and rockefeller the wealthiest man primarily by exploiting oil within our borders. Britain, france, etc had to steal oil from the middle east, etc. The dutch stole it from indonesia. So on and so forth. But as I said, they were decades behind the US in oil production and oil use.
If you are still unconvinced, go look up oil production before and during ww2. Before and during ww2, the US produced more oil than the rest of the world combined. And after ww2, with control over saudi/OPEC oil, venezuelan oil, canadian oil, etc, we controlled the world's oil supply.
The bountiful oil reserves within our borders and the early exploitation of it is why the US became the world's dominant power. Oil is why ww1 and ww2 was fought. Oil is why we won ww2. Oil is why we won the cold war. Oil is why the american international world order exists.
Oil limited the aggressors in ww2 and helped the US win. It was not why the war started. German logicians predicted the outcome of the western front before the fight started because of their limited resources. It was never possible to take russia. The war was commenced anyway.
I don’t know this matters. If China did make a breakthrough here it undoubtedly would be classified as a military technology. They may advertise to the world that they did it, for ego points, but I have a very hard time dreaming up a scenario where they’d actively share it.
First off, you are overestimating the extent to which the Chinese government 'screens' the publications and communications of its scientists greatly. A lot of papers have been published during development of this particular reactor for instance.
Research tends to be so international these days that the chances of any country keeping significant breakthroughs to themselves are pretty slim. Scientists from countless nations are working on ITER and pooling their knowledge.
The only way to keep these things under wraps is if you were running it as some kind of top secret project from the start and poured billions into it. And then you'd still be operating at a disadvantage because you can't bring in outside expertise. Considering the scale needed for serious Tokamaks (and not just small research models) and also the history of the field, I have a hard time imagining a scenario where such a thing would be kept under wraps.
Fusion research is really an international community. There's not much "they" to point your finger at.
I’m not overestimating anything. I agree with other comments in this thread about the geopolitical choices China would have to make if they actually did make fusion work. I think you’re underestimating what kind of groundbreaking technology this is and how quickly CCP would figure out a way to leverage it - international research involvement be damned.
Free(ish) energy is the kind of thing that fundamentally rebalances the global order. US control of shipping lanes, or consistent access to oil is what has made the US the super power it is. China inventing Fusion would make all of that obsolete.
China would no doubt take legal action to insist that other organizations and countries respect their intellectual property, license it, and pay royalties.
By the time all the agreements with China to respect IP are in place, China will be producing more patents annually than any other country.
theoretically yes, China has bluntly stolen western tech and appropriated it. But still the western "order" is based on such agreements, and if its upholders (the west) decides to forgo it, all hell breaks loose.
The US was a brazen pirate right up until the point when it became profitable to abide by international patent and copyright treaties. We don't like it when other countries do what we did, but I personally can't fault them.
It wouldn't make any difference. The US can ultimately get at any technology in China just the same as China can get to any technology in the US. It wouldn't remain secret for very long no matter what they did. In fact long before they officially figured out fusion first, the US would realize what they were on to and react; just as China would the other direction.
There's no way China would give it the technology to us. We'd have to steal it through subterfuge just like the Russians stole nuclear plans in the 50s
It makes no sense for them to hide it; they're going to be singing from the rooftops that they were first if they achieve that.
It'd be like if we went to the moon, but kept it under wraps. Like, why bother?