It was getting closer and closer to the end of the month.
Finally, all of the contradictions had reached a critical point.
Soon, the next closed-door meeting of the ITER Council would be held in Saint-Paul-Durance, France. During this meeting, the United States would once again question the Chinese representatives on issues related to the STAR research institute and intellectual property.
If everything went according to plan, this might be the last time the ITER Council would discuss this issue.
Because all signs indicated that the results of this meeting would determine whether China would stay in ITER or not.
The outside world didn't have any expectations for China to compromise.
There were even ITER employees who didn't want to be named who said in an interview that this might be the fuse for the collapse of ITER.
This sounded like an exaggeration.
But in fact, it wasn't impossible.
As everyone knew, ITER had a total of seven major participating countries, which were Europe, the United States, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, and India. Almost every participating country, other than ITER, had their own controllable nuclear fusion project.
It had become a consensus among all countries to establish their own technological advantages in controllable fusion research.
It wasn't difficult to predict how countries would push the blame onto each other when it came to an international public project like ITER.
This could be seen from the lack of funding for the ITER project every year.
Obviously, no one thought that this bloated, barely pieced together giant ship could go very far.
Not to mention that the captain of the ship was European.
The United States' sudden attack on intellectual property brought the contradictions onto the table.
The fusion light that was ignited with great difficulty was like a candle flickering in the wind, on the verge of collapsing in the cold night.
However, no matter how the international situation changed, for scholars in this field, they still had to do the necessary experiments.
While Lu Zhou was receiving the good news from Daya Bay, far away in Germany, at the Wendelstein 7-X laboratory, a magnetic confinement time experiment was also underway.
"37 minutes and 6 seconds." Kelvin looked at the timer on the computer screen and said, "This is probably the best result this month."
Even though there was still a huge gap from the STAR machine's one hour, at least they could stabilize the magnetic confinement time for more than half an hour.
Professor Millek asked, "Can we start the ignition experiment?"
Professor Keriber shook his head and said, "We still can't solve the radiation problem."
Professor Millek: "Any progress?"
"Progress?" The expression on Professor Keriber's face became even more bitter. "The only progress is that we vaguely feel that the alloy route may not work. The swelling effect of metal materials under neutron radiation is too obvious. No matter what we do, it's hard to change this situation … unless we can restrain the neutrons? But it sounds too magical. "
The latest technology was to use a kind of molybdenum and zirconium alloy. This alloy was quite effective in resisting the swelling effect of neutron radiation. However, alloys doped with molybdenum were much more difficult to weld than austenitic steel.
Not only that, no matter how miniscule the molybdenum was, the radioactivity of its transmutation products would always be an unstable factor.
Millek pondered for a moment and suddenly thought of something. "If alloys don't work, what about non-metallic materials?"
Calvin shrugged helplessly. "There are many non-metallic materials, but do you have a good suggestion?"
This wasn't the first time this idea had been put forward in the field of controllable fusion research. In fact, it had been proposed in the last century. But the problem was that the research in this field had not made much progress.
Calvin couldn't help but go into deep thought.
If it was Lu Zhou, what choice would he make?
However, Calvin, who was thinking about this problem, didn't have a single clue.
Thinking of this, he sighed.
It would be great if he could cooperate with the STAR Institute on the stellarator research …
If Professor Lu was his teammate, he was confident that the commercialization of controllable fusion could be shortened by at least 20 years.
Once this technology was completed, the entire human civilization would benefit from it.
But looking at the current situation …
This was obviously impossible.
…
Helms was sitting in the lounge outside the laboratory. He leisurely sipped his coffee and looked at his watch from time to time.
A few months ago, he was just an ordinary middle-level official at the CIA. However, because of an evaluation report on controllable fusion research, he was recognized by the higher-ups.
Now, he was the CIA intelligence commissioner on controllable fusion. He was fully responsible for the collection of important information in the relevant fields and had a certain degree of decision-making power.
This time, he came to Germany to understand the latest research progress on stellarator research at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. Also, he wanted to meet with senior officials from the German Ministry of Economy and Energy.
The countermeasures for the China problem were very effective. At least on the surface, it seemed like China's controllable fusion research had come to a halt.
The STAR-1 and HL-2A machines went on strike, and the cooperation between the EAST machine and General Atomics was interrupted. People couldn't help but wonder how far China could go without the "help" of the international community.
In any case, now was the time to take advantage of the situation.
Of course, even though everything seemed to be going smoothly on the surface, he would never do something stupid like underestimating his opponents.
At least the name Lu Zhou was an unstable factor that he couldn't let go of.
From the limited intelligence, the reason for the two machine failures was inextricably related to this person.
At this moment, sitting across from him was Lehmann, the CIA's intelligence attaché in Germany.
Unlike other agents who lurked underground, his identity was public and registered with the Frankberg Ministry of Defense. His main responsibility was to sit in his office and drink coffee or exchange information with the German intelligence department.
He was the one who coordinated the meeting between Helms and the senior officials from the German Ministry of Economy and Energy.
While the two were chatting, they happened to talk about the name Lu Zhou.
Even though Lehmann's focus wasn't on this, he still raised his eyebrows with interest.
"… So how many divisions do you think Professor Lu is worth?"
Helms: "If you really know him, you wouldn't ask such a stupid question. His value shouldn't be calculated by divisions, it should be calculated by Silicon Valley or Seattle. "
Lehmann didn't care about Helms's mockery. He smiled and said, "Since when did Silicon Valley and Seattle become units of measurement?"
Helms: "Silicon Valley and Seattle aren't, but the potential economic value is. If a person can create more than 10 billion GDP or even 100 billion GDP, I think he has the potential. "
Lehmann: "A Nobel Prize laureate can create 100 billion GDP? Is that the currency of Zimbabwe or Venezuela? "
"Of course it's in USD, and it's just a conservative estimate. The more I study his information, the more certain I am. "Helms put down the coffee in his hand and said," However, whether it's the White House or the CIA, they obviously don't pay enough attention to this name. I think this is quite dangerous. "
Lehmann leaned back in his chair and said, "Maybe you can write a detailed report and send it to the White House to remind the president."
Helms: "Actually, I'm doing that."
While they were talking, a group of people came to the door.
The person in the lead was the Secretary General of the German Ministry of Economy and Energy, Norbert.
Helms stood up and reached out his hand with a smile.
"Hello, Mr. Norbert, it's nice to meet you again."
"Hello, Mr. Helms." Norbert shook Helms's hand and went straight to the point. "You probably didn't fly all the way from the United States just to have coffee with me. Just tell me what you want."
"Here's the thing." Helms retracted his hand and organized his thoughts for a second. He smiled and said, "Our Congress re-evaluated the controllable fusion project and restarted an investment budget of around US $2 billion. It is expected that a new stellarator experimental device will be built at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. For German companies, this will mean at least US $1 billion in orders and thousands or even tens of thousands of jobs. I believe you should be interested. "
"Oh yeah?" Norbert raised his eyebrows with interest, but he didn't say anything else. He said, "Even though I'm interested in this topic, why is the CIA discussing with us?"
What he didn't understand was why the CIA would leak this information to him.
"Because the specific bidding plan will be released next month. If you are interested in this project, I have a small proposal. "
Norbert asked calmly, "What suggestion?"
"The closed-door ITER Council meeting at the end of the month." Helms looked at Norbert and smiled. He said, "We think it's time to kick China out."
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