Office of the Dean of the Institute for Advanced Study.

Looking at Yang Xu, who pushed the door and walked in, Lu Zhou stopped the pen in his hand and cast an inquiring glance at him.

"Are the results of the analysis out?"

took out a USB flash drive from his pocket and put it on Lu Zhou's desk, Yang Xu said, "The materials are all in it." ”

Lu Zhou continued to ask, "What about the originals?" ”

Yang Xu: "It's been backed up to the database...... Any questions? ”

Lu Zhou: "Destroy it." ”

Yang Xu was slightly stunned, but he didn't ask the reason, just nodded.

"Okay."

Seeing the office door close again, Lu Zhou connected the USB flash drive to the laptop, clicked on the folder, and carefully observed the pictures.

After coming out of the underground laboratory yesterday morning, he took a few pieces of debris taken from the arc-shaped double-layer structure between the fuel tank and the temperature exchanger, and took them to Yang Xu for infrared spectral characteristic peak analysis and took transmission electron microscope pictures.

Judging by the situation on several pictures, his guess was indeed confirmed.

Although the fragmented nano-ceramic composites have been embrittlemented, it is difficult to infer the original structural properties, but judging from the carbon residue inside them, it can be concluded that they are some kind of composite materials that are anisotropic to heat conduction and resistant to high temperatures.

In particular, for the sampling of inner materials, the observation of transmission electron microscopy can clearly observe the residue of hydrogen in the defect structure inside several samples.

As far as Lu Zhou knows, there are only two situations that may cause such a result.

In one case, these hydrogen elements are formed by the decay of neutrons that penetrate the material.

In the other case, the high-energy proton beam directly penetrates the inner wall and remains inside the material.

From the point of view that the hydrogen elements and swollen structures inside the material are basically distributed in the shallow area, and then comparing the penetration power of neutrons and protons, Lu Zhou can basically infer that these swollen structures are most likely caused by the latter situation.

In this case, there is at least a 90% chance that the wreckage of the Hall thruster lying in his underground laboratory was used in fusion nuclear energy.

And the nuclear fuel used, there is a high probability that the fusion reaction will release protons of tritium and helium-three!

"Sure enough, it's a fusion battery!"

Confirming this guess, Lu Zhou, who was staring at the picture on the screen and observing it carefully, had an excited look written in his eyes.

Not only that, but he could even roughly deduce the technical route of this thing based on limited clues.

For example, judging by the closed structure and the damage to the inner wall of the reactor, this small fusion reactor is probably a one-off.

That is, the fuel is integrated directly into the core, and the entire core is discarded after use.

This may sound like a wasteful thing, but it's actually the most feasible thing to do.

If the bombardment of high-energy proton beams and the radiation damage caused by a small number of neutrons generated by the tritium-tritium reaction are not taken into account, as well as the economic benefits of long-term operation, many complex designs such as liquid lithium neutron recovery systems can be simply omitted.

This not only reduces the difficulty of the project, but also saves a lot of valuable space.

After all, the one square meter on the spacecraft is not even comparable to the five entrances of the center of the universe.

As for the shielding, heating components, heat exchange system, and observation system to monitor the operation of the core, these more expensive designs can be integrated into the engine itself, along with the generator set, as part of the "battery slot" where the core is mounted.

If you think about it this way, the engineering difficulty of this one-time fusion power supply structure should not be too high......

Of course, what is said here is not outrageous, and it is only relative to the mature second-generation controllable fusion technology.

If this "use up and throw away" disposable design concept to design a second-generation controllable fusion reactor, the engineering difficulty will probably not be very high, and it will even be a little simpler than the STAR-2 demonstration reactor using DT fusion, but the cost of power generation will be unacceptably high.

It's like using space fuel to generate electricity for civilian facilities......

"The design concept is to integrate the fuel inside the core, and control the size of the space in the intermediate reaction chamber and the fuel consumption rate through the design of the double-layer structure, so as to achieve the effect of controlling the engine power...... In this case, the core should not be continuously ignited, but pulsed ignited. ”

"However, the fusion battery on the wreckage of the Hall thruster is probably not magnetically confined, and it should be another technical route."

Although he found a structure similar to a superconducting magnet on the wreckage of the Hall thruster, that scale was clearly not enough to confine a plasma with hundreds of millions of degrees of heat. And spatially, the superconducting magnet is in direct contact with the ionization chamber, and the real function is to provide the alternating magnetic field for the Hall propulsion unit......

So, should it be inertial constraints?

Thinking of this, Lu Zhou, who was writing and drawing on scratch paper with a pen, gradually brightened his eyes.

Pulse ignition, inertial restraint......

The technical roadmap is clear!

Restraining the excitement in his heart, he crumpled the manuscript paper on the table, stuffed it into his pocket, then took out his mobile phone, flipped through the address book and dialed a number.

The bell rang for three seconds, and it was quickly passed, and Secretary Feng's voice came from the opposite side.

"Hello?"

Lu Zhou: "It's me." ”

Mapletree smiled and said, "Professor Lu, is there anything wrong?" ”

Lu Zhou: "How is the reorganization of the STAR-2 demonstration reactor project team going?" ”

Hearing this question, a sudden expression appeared on Mapleki's face and he spoke.

"The work of employee placement, inventory of assets and definition of property rights has basically been completed, and the relevant documents have been handed over to the SASAC, and now we are waiting for the working group in Beijing to come and inspect the situation. If there are no major problems, East Asia Power will be able to split from the STAR-2 project team within a week at the latest. ”

Speaking of this, Mapletree smiled and said, "I wonder if Professor Lu is ready to get on the bus?" If I'm not ready, I'll be two days late. ”

Get in?

Lu Zhou was slightly stunned, but he didn't react to the deep meaning of this sentence for a while.

However, now is obviously not the time to talk about this, so he didn't think deeply, and after asking about the reorganization of the STAR-2 project team, he continued.

"You can just keep an eye on what is going on at East Asia Power Company, and just follow the instructions of the top management. I'm calling today to say something else, I have a new research project that needs to be transferred from the technicians of the original STAR-2 project team. ”

Mapleki Kiyoshi didn't ask much: "Okay, you can report your name to me." ”

Lu Zhou thought for a while and continued: "There may be a bit too many names, and it may not be clear on the phone, I will make a list of specific people and send them to your work mailbox." ”

Hearing this, Mapleshu was slightly stunned.

"Need a lot of people?"

Lu Zhou: "It's not a lot, maybe ten." ”

That's not much?

With a bitter smile in his heart, Mapleki asked cautiously.

"May I ask what the project is?"

Lu Zhou thought for a moment and spoke.

"On the miniaturization of controlled fusion."

Mapleki: "......??? ”