The key question is, "When are we going to get fusion?" It's really been a long time since we've known about fusion. We've known about fusion since 1920, when Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington and the British Association for the Advancement of Science conjectured that that's why the sun shines.
关键问题是:“我们何时才可以使用核聚变呢?” 我们对核聚变的认知其实可以追溯到很久以前。 自从1920年起,我们便开始对核聚变有所了解, 当时亚瑟·斯坦利·爱丁顿爵士 以及英国科学联合会 推断核聚变是太阳发光的原因所在。
I've always been very worried about resource. I don't know about you, but when my mother gave me food, I always sorted the ones I disliked from the ones I liked. And I ate the disliked ones first, because the ones you like, you want to save. And as a child you're always worried about resource. And once it was sort of explained to me how fast we were using up the world's resources, I got very upset, about as upset as I did when I realized that the Earth will only last about five billion years before it's swallowed by the sun. Big events in my life, a strange child. (Laughter)
我一直都对资源问题充满担忧。 我不知道你是不是也和我一样, 但至少当我妈妈给我食物的时候, 我总是把我不喜欢的食物 和我喜欢的分开来。 而且我总是从不喜欢的食物开始吃起, 因为对于你喜欢的食物,你应该保留起来才对。 作为孩子的我们总是很担心资源问题。 所以当有人告诉我说 地球上的资源正因为我们而快速枯竭时, 我感到非常不安, 就像当初我得知 地球只能再活50亿年就要被太阳吞噬时 一样的不安。 这些都是我有生之年的重大事件呀。 我算得上是个奇怪的小孩。 (笑声)
Energy, at the moment, is dominated by resource. The countries that make a lot of money out of energy have something underneath them. Coal-powered industrial revolution in this country -- oil, gas, sorry. (Laughter) Gas, I'm probably the only person who really enjoys it when Mister Putin turns off the gas tap, because my budget goes up.
在当下,能源是受控于资源。 那些通过能源来赚大钱的国家 都拥有大量的地下宝藏。 这个国家所经历的煤炭引导的工业革命── 不好意思,我想说石油、天然气(不是煤炭)。 (笑声) 说到天然气,我可能是唯一一个 听到普京总理要切断天然气管道时 欣喜若狂的人,因为(他如果真的这么做的话)我的预算就会增加。
We're really dominated now by those things that we're using up faster and faster and faster. And as we try to lift billions of people out of poverty in the Third World, in the developing world, we're using energy faster and faster. And those resources are going away. And the way we'll make energy in the future is not from resource, it's really from knowledge. If you look 50 years into the future, the way we probably will be making energy is probably one of these three, with some wind, with some other things, but these are going to be the base load energy drivers.
我们现在已经真正地被那些 我们极速消耗的事物所制约。 当我们正竭尽所能地帮助 第三世界、发展中国家的人们脱离贫穷的同时, 我们使用能源的速度也是在逐步加快。 而相对应的资源也是快速消逝。 而在未来,我们获取能源的方式 将不再是通过资源, 而是通过知识。 如果你着眼于未来的五十年, 届时我们获取能源的方式 很有可能是这三种中的一个(核裂变、核聚变、太阳能), 外加上一些风能和其他辅助方式, 但这三项将成为驱动能源的根基。
Solar can do it, and we certainly have to develop solar. But we have a lot of knowledge to gain before we can make solar the base load energy supply for the world. Fission. Our government is going to put in six new nuclear power stations. They're going to put in six new nuclear power stations, and probably more after that. China is building nuclear power stations. Everybody is. Because they know that that is one sure way to do carbon-free energy.
太阳能可以肩负这一职责。我们必须大力发展太阳能。 但在把太阳能作为世界基础能源之前, 我们还要对很多知识需要得以了解。 再来看看核裂变。 我们政府正打算建立6个新的核电站。 他们计划增加6个核电站, 但很有可能不止这些。 中国也在扩建核电站。每个国家都是这样。 因为他们知道这是可以确保获得无碳能源 的途径之一。
But if you wanted to know what the perfect energy source is, the perfect energy source is one that doesn't take up much space, has a virtually inexhaustible supply, is safe, doesn't put any carbon into the atmosphere, doesn't leave any long-lived radioactive waste: it's fusion. But there is a catch. Of course there is always a catch in these cases. Fusion is very hard to do. We've been trying for 50 years.
但如果你想知道最完美的能源来源是什么的话, 让我来告诉你,最完美的能源来源 不需要占据这么大的空间, 拥有几乎无穷无尽的供给, 使用安全,不会向大气中投放任何碳物质, 并且不会残留任何长期的辐射废物。 这就是核聚变。 但这其中却是暗藏玄机,当然了,这么好的事情的背后总是暗藏玄机。 核聚变实施起来困难重重。 我们已经努力尝试了50年。
Okay. What is fusion? Here comes the nuclear physics. And sorry about that, but this is what turns me on. (Laughter) I was a strange child. Nuclear energy comes for a simple reason. The most stable nucleus is iron, right in the middle of the periodic table. It's a medium-sized nucleus. And you want to go towards iron if you want to get energy. So, uranium, which is very big, wants to split. But small atoms want to join together, small nuclei want to join together to make bigger ones to go towards iron.
所以核聚变究竟是什么呢?好,接下来就是原子物理学教学时间。 还望大家包涵,因为这些东西着实让我热血沸腾。 (笑声) 我跟你说过,我是个怪胎。 核能源的产生非常简单。 最稳定的原子核是铁元素,就在元素周期表的正中间。 它的原子核是中等大小。 所以如果你想得到能源的话,就要向铁元素靠近。 因此大体积的铀元素就想要分裂, 而小体积的原子们则想要聚集在一起, 小的原子核们聚到一起, 变成大的原子核,来趋近铁元素。
And you can get energy out this way. And indeed that's exactly what stars do. In the middle of stars, you're joining hydrogen together to make helium and then helium together to make carbon, to make oxygen, all the things that you're made of are made in the middle of stars. But it's a hard process to do because, as you know, the middle of a star is quite hot, almost by definition. And there is one reaction that's probably the easiest fusion reaction to do. It's between two isotopes of hydrogen, two kinds of hydrogen: deuterium, which is heavy hydrogen, which you can get from seawater, and tritium which is super-heavy hydrogen.
你可以通过这种方式来得到能源。 而这正是星体们获取能源的方式。 在星体的中心,氢原子们聚集到一起转变成氦原子, 氦原子又聚到一起变成碳原子, 再变成氧原子,我们身体里的一切 都是这样在星体的中心制造出来的。 但这个过程却是十分艰难的, 因为星体的中心,如你所知,是非常炽热的, 这一点不难想象。 而有一个化学反应 可能算得上是最简单的核聚变反应了。 是氢原子的两个同位素之间的反应,两种氢原子, 这两个同位素就是氘原子, 一种可以从海水中获得的重氢元素, 以及氚原子,一种超重氢元素。
These two nuclei, when they're far apart, are charged. And you push them together and they repel. But when you get them close enough, something called the strong force starts to act and pulls them together. So, most of the time they repel. You get them closer and closer and closer and then at some point the strong force grips them together. For a moment they become helium 5, because they've got five particles inside them.
这两个原子核,在相隔甚远的时候,带电粒子。 当你把它们俩放到一起的时候,它们会彼此相斥。 但当它们之间的距离变得足够近的时候, 一种叫做强相互作用的力量将会发挥功效, 会将它们拉拢到一起。 也就是说,大部分的时候它们都是彼此相斥的, 但当它们开始一点一点的逼近彼此的时候,在某个时刻 强相互作用会将它们聚到一起。 它们先是会变成氦5, 因为它们包含着5个粒子。
So, that's that process there. Deuterium and tritium goes together makes helium 5. Helium splits out, and a neutron comes out and lots of energy comes out. If you can get something to about 150 million degrees, things will be rattling around so fast that every time they collide in just the right configuration, this will happen, and it will release energy. And that energy is what powers fusion. And it's this reaction that we want to do.
这就是整个过程。氘原子和氚原子聚集到一起 制造出氦5原子。 随后氦原子产生分裂,释放一个中子 和大量的能量。 如果你能把温度提升到大概1.5亿摄氏度, 物质的移动速度将变得如此之快, 以致于每次它们以正确的构型相撞的时候, 这个核聚变反应都会发生,并且会释放能量。 而这个能量就是核聚变能源的根本所在。 这个反应也正是我们所需要的。
There is one trickiness about this reaction. Well, there is a trickiness that you have to make it 150 million degrees, but there is a trickiness about the reaction yet. It's pretty hot. The trickiness about the reaction is that tritium doesn't exist in nature. You have to make it from something else. And you make if from lithium. That reaction at the bottom, that's lithium 6, plus a neutron, will give you more helium, plus tritium. And that's the way you make your tritium. But fortunately, if you can do this fusion reaction, you've got a neutron, so you can make that happen.
但这个反应有一个棘手之处, 除了要把温度提升到1.5亿摄氏度, 这个反应本身已有一个阻碍, 非常大的阻碍。 那就是 氚元素在大自然中并不存在。 必须由其他物质生成。 而这个其他物质就是锂元素,所利用的是底部的这个反应。 锂6原子加上一个中子 会生成氦元素以及氚元素。 这就是生成氚元素的方式。 值得庆幸的是,上述提到的核聚变反应的产物之一 就是一粒中子,可以用于这个氚生成反应中来。
Now, why the hell would we bother to do this? This is basically why we would bother to do it. If you just plot how much fuel we've got left, in units of present world consumption. And as you go across there you see a few tens of years of oil -- the blue line, by the way, is the lowest estimate of existing resources. And the yellow line is the most optimistic estimate.
但问题是,我们为何要话费心机这么折腾一番呢? 原因就在于此: 如果我们以当下世界的能源消耗为单位, 绘制出我们所剩的资源储量 我们就会发现, 当我们放眼看去, 我们只剩下几十年的石油储量──那条蓝色的线 是现有资源的最低估测量, 而那条黄色的线,则是最乐观的估测量。
And as you go across there you will see that we've got a few tens of years, and perhaps 100 years of fossil fuels left. And god knows we don't really want to burn all of it, because it will make an awful lot of carbon in the air. And then we get to uranium. And with current reactor technology we really don't have very much uranium. And we will have to extract uranium from sea water, which is the yellow line, to make conventional nuclear power stations actually do very much for us. This is a bit shocking, because in fact our government is relying on that for us to meet Kyoto, and do all those kind of things.
这么看过去,你就会发现 我们只剩下几十年的,多说100年的 化石燃料。 苍天作证,我们的确是不想把这些燃料全部用尽。 因为它们将向大气中释放大量的碳物质。 再来看看铀产量, 依据现有的核反应堆技术, 我们的确是没有太多的铀元素。 我们不得不从海水中提取铀元素── 就是这条黄色的线── 用来建造传统的核电站 帮助我们实现很多目标。 这其实是很惊悚的,因为事实上,我们政府 正依赖这些技术来帮助我们履行《京都协议书》中的职责 以及其他的相关事项。
To go any further you would have to have breeder technology. And breeder technology is fast breeders. And that's pretty dangerous. The big thing, on the right, is the lithium we have in the world. And lithium is in sea water. That's the yellow line. And we have 30 million years worth of fusion fuel in sea water. Everybody can get it. That's why we want to do fusion. Is it cost-competitive? We make estimates of what we think it would cost to actually make a fusion power plant. And we get within about the same price as current electricity.
而若想取得更长足的进展,我们就必须开放裂变增殖技术。 增殖技术可以快速提升产量,是相当危险的。 而最重要的资源,就在最右侧, 是世界现有的锂元素。 锂元素存在于海水中,就是那条黄色的线。 我们大概有可以持续3千万年的化学燃料存储于海水中。 每个人都可以开发利用。这就是我们为什么要研发核聚变。 那么,这是不是一项低成本的科技呢? 我们根据我们现有的知识,来估测 建造一个核聚变能源站的费用。 而我们随得到的数据,跟建造现有的电厂的花销 不相上下。
So, how would we make it? We have to hold something at 150 million degrees. And, in fact, we've done this. We hold it with a magnetic field. And inside it, right in the middle of this toroidal shape, doughnut shape, right in the middle is 150 million degrees. It boils away in the middle at 150 million degrees. And in fact we can make fusion happen. And just down the road, this is JET. It's the only machine in the world that's actually done fusion.
那我们要如何是实现这项技术呢? 我们得想办法承担1.5亿度的高温。 事实上,我们曾经做过这样的事情。 我们用一个磁场来承担这个高温。 在这个中心,这个环形、甜甜圈形状的正中心, 就是1.5亿度的高温。 1.5亿度的高温就在正中央沸腾着。 事实上,我们可以促成核聚变反应的发生。 就在不久的将来。这是JET。 是世界上唯一一个已经促成核聚变反应的仪器。
When people say fusion is 30 years away, and always will be, I say, "Yeah, but we've actually done it." Right? We can do fusion. In the center of this device we made 16 megawatts of fusion power in 1997. And in 2013 we're going to fire it up again and break all those records. But that's not really fusion power. That's just making some fusion happen. We've got to take that, we've got to make that into a fusion reactor. Because we want 30 million years worth of fusion power for the Earth. This is the device we're building now.
当人们说核聚变还需要30年的时间,永远不会成为现实的时候, 我就会反问他们:“但是我们已经进行过核聚变反应了呀!” 我们可以进行核聚变反应。在1997年,就在这个仪器的中心, 我们制造出了16兆瓦的核聚变能量。 而在2013年,我们将再次将它启动, 打破之前的这些记录。 但那并不是真正的核聚变能量,只是使核聚变产生的过程。 我们需要在此基础上,研发出核聚变反应堆。 因为我们需要我们的星球提供3千万年的核聚变能量。 这是我们正在建造的装置。
It gets very expensive to do this research. It turns out you can't do fusion on a table top despite all that cold fusion nonsense. Right? You can't. You have to do it in a very big device. More than half the world's population is involved in building this device in southern France, which is a nice place to put an experiment. Seven nations are involved in building this. It's going to cost us 10 billion. And we'll produce half a gigawatt of fusion power. But that's not electricity yet. We have to get to this. We have to get to a power plant. We have to start putting electricity on the grid in this very complex technology. And I'd really like it to happen a lot faster than it is. But at the moment, all we can imagine is sometime in the 2030s.
这项研究非常昂贵。 那些冷聚变的谣言纯属胡扯, 核聚变是无法在实验桌上完成的。 一切必须在一个巨大的装置中进行。 世界上半数以上的人口都和这个在法国南部建造的装置相关联。 法国南部是一个不错的做试验的地方。 7个国家正携手建造这一装置。 大概要花费100亿。我们将可以制造5亿瓦特的核聚变能量。 但这还算不上是电能。 我们还需要把这些能量转化为电能。 我们要建立个电厂。 我们需要利用这项十分复杂的科技 通过电网来输送电能。 我真的希望一切能进展得更快一些。 但根据现有的情况,我只能说一切要到本世纪30年左右才能完成。
I wish this were different. We really need it now. We're going to have a problem with power in the next five years in this country. So 2030 looks like an infinity away. But we can't abandon it now; we have to push forward, get fusion to happen. I wish we had more money, I wish we had more resources. But this is what we're aiming at, sometime in the 2030s -- real electric power from fusion. Thank you very much. (Applause)
我真心希望现实并非如此,因为我们对这项技术是迫切得需要。 在接下来的五年里,我们这个国家 将会面临能源问题。 所以2030年看起来是无比的遥远。 但我们不能就此而放弃,我们应该勇往直前, 让核聚变成为现实。 我希望我们能有更多的资金,能有更多的资源。 但这是我们根据现有情况定下的目标 本世纪30年代── 核聚变将带来真正的电力能源。感谢大家。 (掌声)