Raymond Zhong, Chris Buckley, Keith Bradsher, and Harry Stevens in the New York Times:
On a leafy campus in eastern China, crews are working day and night to finish a mammoth round structure with two sweeping arms the length of aircraft carriers.
On former rice fields in the country’s southwest, a hulking, X-shaped building is being built with equal urgency under great secrecy. That facility’s existence wasn’t widely known until researchers spotted it in satellite images a year or so ago.
Together, the colossal projects are China’s most ambitious efforts yet to harness an energy source that could transform civilization: fusion.
Fusion, the melding together of atoms to release extraordinary energy, uses fuels that are plentiful, carries no risk of meltdowns and leaves no long-lived radioactive waste. It promises near-limitless energy that might not only satisfy the surging demand for electricity to power artificial intelligence but also end reliance on the fossil fuels that are perilously overheating the planet.
More here.
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