Not only is the Q value greatly improved, but the size is also extremely reduced.
Just like when the research was first started, the reactor was dozens of meters high, dozens of meters long and wide, like a small mountain, but it is no longer seen now.
The latest nuclear fusion reactor is only a few meters high and only ten meters wide and long.
From the outside, it looks like a cargo box.
But if such a cargo box is running at full power, the installed capacity can reach 5,000 megawatts, which means it can generate 5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per hour!
To generate so much electricity, it consumes only less than 100 grams of deuterium gas.
To generate the same amount of electricity using uranium 235, you would need about 500 grams.
At this moment, the nuclear fusion reactor is still a little too large, and the installed capacity is too high. It can only be equipped on Earth-class battleships or large cargo ships, and cannot be installed on Venus and Mercury-class battleships.
However, Venus and Mercury-class battleships do not require such powerful energy. Correspondingly, the installed capacity, volume and mass can be reduced accordingly.
While continuing to research on improving the Q value of nuclear fusion reactors, Li Qingsong also started research on miniaturization.
Although controlled nuclear fusion technology has not yet been finalized, there is one thing that can be started now.
That is to comprehensively update the current energy supply system!
At this stage, Li Qingsong’s energy source is almost entirely nuclear fission.
In order to mine uranium and enrich it, Li Qingsong had to dispatch a large number of clones and industrial forces to search for uranium throughout the solar system and build factories on site.
Now, all of this can be undone!
Because even though the nuclear fusion reactor has not yet been finalized, its overall efficiency has already far exceeded that of the nuclear fission reactor.
Li Qingsong quickly started the construction of the first nuclear fusion power station.
If building a ground-based nuclear fusion power station, there will be no requirement for miniaturization. Li Qingsong can build it very large and very complete, so the efficiency and total installed capacity will be further improved.
The total installed capacity of this nuclear power plant has reached an unprecedented 100,000 megawatts!
At full power, it can generate 100 million kilowatt-hours of electricity in one hour, which is as high as 876 billion kilowatt-hours per year!
When we were still in the era of nations, the annual electricity consumption of human civilization was about 30 trillion kWh. According to this number, only 35 power stations like the one built by Li Qingsong would be needed to supply all the electricity consumption of the entire human race!
Countless trams are running, countless heavy machines are roaring, countless lights are shining, and so on and so forth. All electricity needs only require 35 power stations.
These 35 power stations would consume less than 500 tons of deuterium and tritium gas when operating at full power for a whole year.
If converted into coal, it would take at least 10 billion tons to generate that much electricity.
The gap is as much as 20 million times!
Of course, 35 nuclear fusion power stations are only for human civilization in the national era. For Li Qingsong at this moment, it is far from enough.
At this stage, Li Qingsong has fully developed two rocky planets, a total of more than 30 dwarf planets and large satellites, and the total number of planets under his command has reached 40.
The power generation capacity of 35 nuclear fusion power stations is not enough to support even a single planet, let alone the entire industrial system!
For example, on Ganymede, which Li Qingsong regards as his base camp, there are more than 5,000 nuclear fusion power stations with an installed capacity of 100,000 megawatts. On the two large planets Mercury and Mars, the number of nuclear fusion power stations is even greater, reaching more than 20,000.
In order to carry out the earth's ecological environment restoration project, Li Qingsong even built several such power stations on Earth.
Anyway, nuclear fusion energy is clean and pollution-free, and there is no need to worry about the impact on the environment.
Therefore, Li Qingsong built more than 100,000 nuclear fusion power stations of this level or larger throughout the solar system, and all of them were operating at a relatively high power level, so as to cover the electricity consumption of the entire industrial and scientific research systems.
There are more than 100,000 nuclear fusion power stations with an annual power generation of 876 quadrillion kilowatt-hours, which is equivalent to the human civilization of more than 2,900 countries.
There is no way. The more advanced the technology is, the more energy it consumes.
The more nuclear fusion power plants there are, the more fuel they consume. More than 100,000 fusion power plants would consume about 17 million tons of deuterium gas each year.
In the deuterium-tritium fusion reaction, one gram of deuterium requires grams of tritium, and the amount of tritium gas used is even greater.
But tritium is produced by bombarding lithium-6 with neutrons, and it is actually lithium-6 rather than tritium gas that is consumed during the reaction.
Lithium 6 has huge reserves in the solar system and is relatively easy to mine, so this part can be ignored and only the deuterium gas consumption needs to be calculated.
In order to mine the approximately 17 million tons of deuterium gas each year, Li Qingsong specially developed an aircraft.
This aircraft looks a bit like the aircraft of human civilization, with a relatively large size and excellent aerodynamic layout.
But it is not flying on the earth, but flying in Jupiter.
Jupiter is a gas planet. Except for its core, everything else is made up of gas. The volume of its atmosphere is thousands or even tens of thousands times that of the Earth.
In such a vast atmosphere, various meteorological changes occur one after another.
Thunderstorms, hurricanes, turbulence, torrential rain, hail, and the list goes on and on.
At this moment, the first batch of Jupiter aircraft built by Li Qingsong were transported by cargo ships and released into the clouds of Jupiter.
The release site of the Jupiter plane was a place with relatively good weather specially selected by Li Qingsong.
At the moment, the wind speed here is only about 200 meters per second, which is considered rare good weather on Jupiter.
The maximum wind speed of a hurricane on Earth is less than 100 meters per second.
But it is very common for hurricanes on Jupiter to exceed the speed of sound. At this moment, it is only 200 meters per second, which is twice the largest hurricane on Earth. It is indeed extremely rare.
Blown by a gusty wind of 200 meters per second, the Jupiter Plane entered the Jupiter cloud layer. The next moment, the huge engine began to run, riding the wind to travel in the Jupiter atmosphere.
Deuterium exists in the atmosphere of Jupiter in the form of deuterated hydrogen, with a content of about . In this way, about 20 grams of deuterated hydrogen can be separated from one ton of Jovian gas.
20 grams of deuterated hydrogen can be separated into about 13 grams of deuterium.
A Jupiter aircraft can process about 30 tons of Jupiter's atmosphere per minute, so it can collect 390 grams of deuterium per minute, about 540 kilograms per day, and about 200 tons per year.
Based on the calculation that Li Qingsong currently needs to consume about 17 million tons of deuterium every year, Li Qingsong would need 85,000 Jupiter aircraft to operate continuously to ensure an adequate supply of deuterium.
Taking into account spare and unexpected losses, Li Qingsong needs to maintain at least a large flying fleet of 100,000 Jupiter aircraft to be sufficient.
