China Readies Tokamak for Thailand

Nov. 30, 2022 (EIRNS)—China’s HS HT-6M tokamak, one of four fusion devices developed by China’s Academy of Sciences Institute of Plasma Physics, has been dismantled into 462 major parts and packaged carefully into six containers, for its mid-December shipment to its new home at the Thailand Institute of Nuclear Technology (TINT), in a specially erected building. This is a huge operation: The tokamak, now renamed the Thailand Tokamak 1 (TT-1) weighs 84 tons.

In its coverage Nov. 18, Xinhua wrote that the TT-1 is expected to arrive in Thailand in early January 2023. Some 60 Chinese scientists and engineers will be sent to Thailand in three groups to help assemble, adjust and test the machine before its official launch early next year.

Thai engineers and scientists had been training for months at the Institute of Plasma Physics in Hefei’s fusion program, to prepare to operate it. This was based on an agreement Thailand and China signed in 2018 in the presence of Thai Queen Maha Chakri Sirinhorn.

“We have joined with TINT to develop Thailand’s first tokamak. Besides providing funding, we will also offer support to engineers and researchers on this project. Our goal right now is to train our staff to understand the basis of, and how to assemble, operate and maintain, the machine,” says Matinon Maitreeborirak, an electrical engineer with Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, who is also a coordinator of TT-1 and in charge of the project’s plasma control system.