"The plane is descending and is about to arrive at Luyang Xinqiao International Airport, there may be turbulence in the airflow during the descent, please fasten your seat belts for all passengers."

Two hours later, the sky was getting dark, and the plane came to the sky over Luyang and began to land from the sky according to the guidance of the ground airport tower.

Bang boom!

The landing gear wheels touched the ground, the wings opened the spoiler, the jet engine below opened the deflector, and the engine began to thrust back with a strong roar of airflow, and the speed at which the plane landed on the runway was visibly reduced.

When the plane drove into the parking stand and came to a stand, Lu Yi, Zhang Qinglin, and Meng, who had rested for more than two hours, got off the plane and got out of the airport directly into the commercial car sent by the EAST project to pick them up.

"Chief Engineer Lu, Professor Zhang, Professor Lin."

As soon as Lu Yi and the others got into the car, a material expert in the car who was resident on the EAST project during this time said hello.

"Professor Cai, how is the situation of the first inner wall material now, can it meet the application standards of the demonstration reactor?" Lu Yi put the backpack containing the toiletries of the three people behind his back and asked the material expert who came with him about the situation.

Experimental reactors and demonstration reactors are two different concepts, one is mainly for the study of plasma confinement, ignition fusion will be emitted in less than three seconds, and the other is to carry out actual fusion reactions, strictly speaking, the demonstration reactor completes the test that is a commercial reactor.

From the difference between the two, it can be seen that the fusion intensity and the number of neutrons emitted by the demonstration reactor are not many orders of magnitude higher than those of the experimental reactor.

The resistance of ceramic materials and carbon nanomaterials to neutron irradiation is far greater than that of metal materials, and the neutron permeability is good.

The neutron energy produced by DT fusion is as high as 14 MeV, and it crashes into the first inner wall like an anti-aircraft shell.

After actual experiments, although the neutron permeability of ceramics and carbon nanomaterials is better, most of the neutrons can directly pass through the lithium breeding cladding reaction and regenerate tritium, but a small number of neutrons hit the nucleus and directly cause material transmutation.

The products of the transmutation did not matter, but the damage to the inner wall material exceeded estimates.

What's even more disgusting is that if plasma irradiation can also be controlled by strengthening the confined magnetic field, but neutrons?

This thing only accepts the constraints of strong interaction forces, and in its eyes, the magnetic field is nothing, and it is directly non-existent.

If there is no way to slow down the neutrons, then even if the conforming structure of ceramic materials and carbon nanomaterials is used, according to the neutron irradiation level of the demonstration reactor, it is estimated that the reactor will have to be shut down for maintenance and replacement of the first inner wall within a month of operation.

Who has ever seen a nuclear reactor shut down for maintenance in less than a month?

Nuclear reactors do not mean that they can be stopped, they must be left for a period of time to completely cool down inside, and then the relevant anti-radiation diffusion measures can be taken on the periphery before they can be opened, and the time before and after this can be more than 20 days.

Less than a month of operation and 20 days of shutdown, this is not a commercial fusion reactor, this is a funny reactor.

"We tried a variety of ceramic alloys, but none of them worked well, and the damage caused by the 14MeV neutron to the material was too strong."

Professor Cai shook his head with a wry smile: "Now the laboratory is using beryllium ceramic alloy for testing. ”

"Beryllium? Decelerating neutrons to reduce irradiation intensity? ”

Lu Yi frowned: "But can beryllium metal be smelted into ceramic alloy with ceramics?" What to do with its own hydroxide? How do you know the boundaries of neutron reflection and deceleration? How do you dissipate the heat energy generated by neutron deceleration? ”

Lu Yi doesn't know much about materials research, but as a chief engineer, it is basic that he is familiar with the various properties of materials used in nuclear fusion demonstration reactors or possibly used in demonstration reactors.

Beryllium, that is, the layer of material used to reflect neutrons behind the lithium breed cladding, adjusting the composition of beryllium compounds and the purity of beryllium can also play a role in neutron deceleration, if it is a simple beryllium oxide, then this limit is easy to control, which has decades of experience in the nuclear industry, and can be smelted into ceramic alloys, then I don't know how to control.

At the same time, whether beryllium can be smelted with ceramics to become a ceramic alloy is also an unknown question that has never been tested in the industry.

Ceramic alloy does not mean that metal and ceramic are melted together, it needs to be combined with each other at the atomic crystal level to be considered a ceramic alloy.

In addition, beryllium itself has hydroxide properties, and if this problem is not dealt with properly, it will be a disaster if it is used in the first inner wall material.

Finally, the deceleration behavior of beryllium on neutrons, the energy cannot disappear out of thin air, the energy lost by neutron deceleration will be converted into heat, and the thermal conductivity of the ceramic material itself is not good.

"After discovering that simple nano-ceramic materials and carbon nano-materials could not withstand the high-energy neutron irradiation of fusion, we began to study various ceramic alloys.

Now Chief Engineer Lu, the first two problems you mentioned have been solved, and the hydroxide of beryllium after smelting into a ceramic alloy is completely gone.

The fourth problem of heat dissipation can be solved by adjusting the heat dissipation surface area and material layer thickness of ceramic materials, and relevant experiments are being carried out in the laboratory to collect data.

The latest data and the test data of beryllium ceramic alloy last night will probably be sent to Professor Lin for modeling and analysis this evening.

Now the real difficulty remains, which is that it is difficult to control the boundaries of the reflection and deceleration of neutrons by the beryllium ceramic alloy. ”

Professor Cai took an experimental report and submitted it to Lu Yi, and continued: "Yesterday, the material samples of the relevant beryllium ceramic alloy were urgently sent over in Beijing, and we have started the ignition test of Tokmak, but the effect is not ideal, and the second batch of improved beryllium ceramic alloy tests will be carried out tonight." ”

Regarding Lu Yi's identity as the chief engineer, many domestic scientists thought at first that it was just borrowing the light of the first domestic stellarator, and their hearts were full of disdain.

And then over time began to gradually take it seriously, treat it equally, and now admire it.

People are afraid of comparison, in all fairness, if they are the chief engineer, it has only been more than two months since the end of the nuclear fusion joint meeting, not to mention that the entire nuclear fusion project has been pushed to this progress, and the entire project can be straightened out.

Sometimes, more people don't necessarily mean more power.

Not to mention that when they reported the progress and discussed problems with Lu Yi, they were all surprised to find that in addition to the problems in the field of stellars in physics, Chief Engineer Lu also had deep attainments in other professional fields.

Although it can't reach their level, you must know that this is a part-time job, and the main business is physics and stellarics, and none of them have been playing research for decades to get to this point.

"At what time does the evening trial start?" Lu Yi glanced at his watch, it was nearly six o'clock in the afternoon, and it was dark early in Luzhou in September.

"The EAST Tokmak unit is still undergoing overhaul after the ignition test, and the second test can only start at about 8 o'clock in the evening, and the project is preparing dinner, and the test can be carried out after returning for dinner."

Professor Cai hesitated after speaking, and reminded: "In addition, Academician Wang's face has not been very good all day, Chief Engineer Lu, pay attention." ”

"Academician Wang? Isn't he not in the EAST project? Lu Yi was a little strange, and he called him before getting on the plane.

"No, he's been there all day, and he seems to be very unhappy with our experimentation with the EAST Tokmak device to collect data."

"Okay, I see, call me when it's time to call me." The corners of Lu Yi's mouth twitched, and he leaned back in the chair and continued to close his eyes and rest.

This old guy really sees the Tokmak device of the EAST project as more important than his own son.