Chinese tokamak donation helps fuel Thailand’s ambitions in fusion energy research
- Southeast Asian country aims to become regional hub for research on clean fusion energy
- Device to arrive from China this month before installation in facility northeast of Bangkok
Thailand wants to become Southeast Asia’s hub for fusion energy research, with the region’s first tokamak device due to arrive in the country from China this month.
Thailand Tokamak-1, a renovated device formerly used by Chinese researchers, will become a training ground for scientists and engineers from Asean member states, said Thawatchai Onjun, executive director of the Thailand Institute of Nuclear Technology.
A team of Thai scientists spent three months at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Plasma Physics in Hefei, Anhui province, this year to learn how to run the tokamak. It will assemble and install TT-1 in central Thailand with on-site support from Chinese peers.
“Fusion energy is the future energy,” Thawatchai said in an interview in Bangkok. “It is not just for Thailand but for everyone.
“It’s a regional facility. It’s for all of the Asean community to learn about fusion in terms of engineering, technology and basic science.”