Chapter 871
A genius is one who can do what others cannot.
The winds of the Gobi Desert, carrying sand and gravel, lashed against the thick radiation-proof glass of the "Xihe" Experimental Center.
The atmosphere in the conference room was colder than the Gobi Desert outside the window.
Wang Donglai, the business tycoon who just dropped a "300 billion yuan bomb" on the internet, causing chaos in the retail and education industries, is now sitting at one end of a long table.
Opposite them were a dozen or so national treasure-level experts with an average age of over fifty, gray hair, and eyes as sharp as surgical scalpels.
Chief Scientist Academician Chen Mingyuan adjusted his reading glasses, his voice steady yet carrying an undeniable authority: "Academician Wang, we have read your 'technical proposal.' It is very bold, even romantic."
"But this is a national major science and technology project laboratory. We talk about data, engineering feasibility, and meticulous precision."
He paused, looked around, and said with emotion, "Among all of you here, the least experienced has been working hard here for at least fifteen years. We are facing real, pressing problems."
Although Wang Donglai's performance just now has already earned him the initial approval of everyone.
However, thorium-based molten salt nuclear energy systems, the world's most cutting-edge research field in nuclear physics, present immense challenges for current technology at every stage.
Using the phrase "eighty-one tribulations" to describe it is not an exaggeration at all; in fact, it's somewhat conservative.
The theoretical concepts about thorium-based molten salt nuclear energy systems relayed by the leaders above were somewhat beyond the comprehension of most people.
They had already held a meeting to discuss this before Wang Donglai arrived.
Regarding Wang Donglai's technical ideas, it was generally agreed that they were not very feasible.
In particular, Wang Donglai's idea about molten salt materials seemed even more far-fetched.
At this point, Zhao, a hot-tempered leading expert in materials science who was in charge of this area, simply took out a stack of photos.
In the photos, various high-end alloys are riddled with holes by molten salt corrosion, resembling hollowed-out teeth.
"Academician Wang, look! In a 700-degree fluoride salt environment, even the best materials can only last for a little over a thousand hours! That's far from the decades required for commercial use! What guarantees the long-term stable operation you envision? Are you going to just throw money at it?"
The laughter was low, but it did escape the lips of several young researchers.
They had seen the trending topics and knew that the person in front of them was rich, but here, money might be the most useless thing.
After all, with the backing of the nation, such a major scientific research project would naturally not lack funding.
Hearing the laughter, Wang Donglai was not angry. Instead, he waited until all the doubts subsided before slowly standing up.
He didn't look at the photos or respond to the mockery. He simply walked to the blackboard covered with complex formulas and picked up half a piece of chalk.
"Academician Chen, you just mentioned that the simulated and measured data of the 'Xihe-2' reactor core deviated by more than 18%, especially when the power was increased to 25% of the design value, there were inexplicable local oscillations in the neutron flux, is that right?"
His voice wasn't loud, but it clearly drowned out the sound of the wind outside the window.
Chen Mingyuan was taken aback: "How...how did you know?"
This is highly confidential internal data.
Wang Donglai didn't answer, but turned around and wrote rapidly on the blackboard.
The "scratching" sound of chalk slicing across the blackboard became the only noise in the conference room.
There was no explanation, only lines of cryptic partial differential equations, matrix symbols, and... a coupling operator that no one had ever seen before, with a structure as exquisite as a work of art.
Three minutes, and the entire blackboard was filled.
As he wrote the last symbol and turned around to flick the chalk tip precisely into the pencil holder in the corner, Old Zhao, who had started the argument, had already involuntarily stood up, his eyes fixed on the blackboard, his lips trembling.
“This…this is…” Old Zhao’s voice trembled.
"This is the core of the mathematical model describing the local hardening of the neutron energy spectrum caused by the uneven microscopic distribution of thorium particles in molten salt, coupled with thermal turbulence to generate millisecond-level microscale oscillations."
Wang Donglai spoke as calmly as if he were describing tomorrow's weather.
“Your previous model ignored the cross-scale correlation feedback between the microscopic distribution function and the macroscopic flow field, which I have made up for with this nonlinear decay kernel.”
He walked up to the pile of corrosion photos of Old Zhao, pointed at them, and said, "As for the materials, Old Zhao, you've tried more than three hundred alloy formulas. The main idea is to add chromium, molybdenum, and tungsten to nickel-based alloys to improve corrosion resistance, right?"
Old Zhao nodded subconsciously.
"The idea was correct, but we've reached a dead end."
"Fluoride ions and fission product tellurium, like a Trojan horse, target your reinforced grain boundaries."
Wang Donglai brought up an interface on his tablet, displaying an extremely complex dynamic simulation of molecular structures. He said, "Why not think about it the other way around? Instead of 'reinforcing the fortress,' why don't we make the material surface 'voluntarily surrender' to a 'camouflage film' that can never be corroded?"
He swiped the screen to reveal a previously unseen virtual structure of a multi-component high-entropy alloy.
"Look, this composition, in a molten salt environment, will spontaneously and continuously precipitate a nanoscale passivation layer enriched with yttrium and lanthanum on the surface."
"Corrosion? It will chase after this ever-new 'skin' and never touch the real 'flesh'."
He casually pushed the tablet to a PhD student next to him who was in charge of computer simulations and said, "Use your database and computing power to run an accelerated lifetime prediction for this model."
The doctor glanced at Chen Mingyuan and asked for his opinion.
Chen Mingyuan nodded, and with the instructions, the doctor immediately connected to the center's supercomputer.
Ten minutes later, he stared at the screen, his expression shifting from doubt to shock, and finally to horror. His voice betrayed his astonishment as he exclaimed, "The simulation...it shows...in an equivalent 700-degree corrosion environment...the theoretical lifespan...exceeds...exceeds 30,000 hours?! That's impossible!"
"Whether it's possible or not, we'll know once we synthesize it and try."
Wang Donglai turned his gaze to the team responsible for online separation technology and said, "There's also the problem of low separation efficiency. You're using static cold traps and distillation columns, which are too bulky!"
"Why not use supercritical carbon dioxide to create microbubbles and achieve dynamic gradient extraction in the pipeline? Like blowing bubbles with a straw, we can 'blow' out the elements we need."
He quickly drew a diagram, the ingenuity of which made the separation team leader slap his thigh in realization, exclaiming, "Damn! It's so simple... How come we didn't think of that!"
Finally, he looked at Chen Mingyuan and dropped his trump card, saying, "Academician Chen, the thermal efficiency of 'Xihe-2' is limited to 42% because it uses molten salt to boil water."
"What if we don't use water? What if we open a small 'side window' next to the reactor core, allowing some of the high-energy fission fragments to escape directly, and then use a high-voltage electrostatic field to 'steal' their brute force and convert it into electricity... Could the efficiency be doubled?"
Direct energy conversion!
This is one of the holy grails in the field of nuclear energy research!
Many theoretical physicists have drawn up this on paper, but the engineering difficulty is like climbing to the sky!
The entire conference room fell into complete silence.
Only heavy breathing and the pounding of hearts could be heard. The researcher who had initially chuckled was now deathly pale, his back soaked with cold sweat.
He looked at the blackboard. The formulas seemed to have a magical power. He could barely understand one-tenth of them, but even that one-tenth had overturned his understanding of five years of research.
Old Zhao walked excitedly to the blackboard, his fingers tracing the chalk marks, his expression one of overwhelming emotion. He said, "I...I've studied materials science for forty years...this...this path...so this is where the path was..."
Academician Chen Mingyuan slowly took off his glasses, rubbed his temples vigorously, and when he looked at Wang Donglai again, all the scrutiny, doubt, and condescension in his eyes were replaced by a huge, almost shocking shock.
That's not the way you look at a successful businessman, or even an outstanding scientist.
It was like looking at a strange peak that suddenly rose from the ground and pierced the clouds.
"...Academician Wang!"
Academician Chen's voice was hoarse, "Where...where did you get all this from..."
Wang Donglai smiled, a smile brimming with confidence, but even more so with a calm acceptance of control. He said, "Business deals with the complex behaviors of millions of people, and education designs diverse paths for personal growth. A nuclear reactor is simply another, even more 'hardcore' complex system. The underlying principles are the same!"
"What utter nonsense! The same logic applies!" everyone roared inwardly.
This is a complete dimensional reduction attack!
This is the crushing power of a god-like brain over mortal wisdom!
Two consecutive technological breakthroughs completely overturned everyone's perception of Wang Donglai.
One time could be considered a coincidence, but two times is definitely not a coincidence.
Therefore, Chen Mingyuan's tone became extremely serious and proper.
"Wanyuan City, you mentioned in your vision that 'the key to miniaturization and efficiency improvement lies in reconstructing the neutron economy.' Our current TMSR design has optimized neutron utilization as much as possible. Do you think there is still room for fundamental breakthroughs?"
Wang Donglai did not answer directly.
He walked to the whiteboard covered with design drawings, picked up a red pen, and drew an X on the schematic diagram of a traditional "single-flow" molten salt reactor core.
“We have been constrained by the concept of ‘core reactor’.”
He turned around, his gaze sweeping over the more than twenty core experts present, and asked, "Why must it be a huge, uniform 'core'? Why can't it be multiple highly efficient neutron 'furnaces' intelligently coupled through a molten salt flow network?"
He drew a diagram on the whiteboard that resembled a neural network: a dozen miniaturized fission reaction units connected by carefully designed molten salt pipes to form a dynamic network.
“Each ‘stove’ is a supercritical module, and its volume can be reduced to one-tenth of its current size.”
"The key lies in!"
Wang Donglai pointed his pen at the connecting pipe and said, "By coordinating the real-time flow rate of molten salt, the fuel concentration, and the proportion of graphite moderator, we enable neutrons to achieve directional 'migration' and 'multiplication' between these 'furnaces'."
"Before a 'furnace' weakens in combustion, its high-energy neutrons and fission products have already been carried by the flowing molten salt to the next 'furnace' that is ready to be ignited."
"In this way, instead of maintaining a large critical mass, we maintain a burning wave that continues to propagate in the network."
The conference room was deathly silent.
Chief Engineer Liu, who is in charge of reactor physics, is an old expert known for his rigor and even rigidity, and his fingers trembled slightly.
The idea was too unconventional, but in a flash, a long-standing blockage in his mind seemed to loosen with a "click".
"This...this requires an extremely precise real-time control system. The monitoring and feedback delay for neutron flux, temperature, and flow rate must be less than milliseconds!" Chief Engineer Liu said in a hoarse voice, with a hint of vision for the technology.
"So this is necessary."
On another whiteboard, Wang Donglai wrote down a set of complex core terms of the control equations and said, "Based on the forward-looking predictive control model of the pre-trained flow field-neutron field coupled neural network, we do not rely entirely on real-time feedback, but use the AI model to predict the system state hundreds of milliseconds in advance and give the optimal adjustment amount."
“Model training requires massive amounts of data, which is exactly what ‘Xihe-2’ can provide now—even unstable running data are valuable training samples.”
Academician Chen Mingyuan took a deep breath, took off his glasses, and slowly wiped them.
This approach completely integrates reactor engineering, nuclear physics, fluid mechanics and cybernetics, and artificial intelligence. It is audacious yet logically consistent.
For the first time, he realized that the thinking of this "youngest academician in China" might be on a higher level than that of scholars who had specialized in a field for decades.
Although not a scholar in the field of nuclear physics, geniuses are never conventional.
"We still need to verify the technical theories that Academician Wang mentioned. How about we stop here for today?"
Scientific research cannot be accomplished overnight.
What Wang Dong said today is already equivalent to several years of research and development by their entire R&D center, and may not even be achieved in several years.
Chen Mingyuan's current idea is simple: to first absorb and digest what Wang Donglai said.
One should not be impatient; a steady and methodical approach is the true mindset for scientific research.
Unexpectedly, Wang Donglai shook his head.
"Academician Chen, I can't stay here for long, so let's hurry up."
"Let's reach a theoretical agreement first. If there are any technical issues later, you can ask me."
"Before I leave, I will try my best to assist you in completing a general plan."
All told, Wang Donglai only gave the thorium-based molten salt R&D center three days.
He's not an expert or scholar specializing in this area; he has other things to do.
Room temperature superconducting materials, brain-computer interfaces, artificial intelligence, space rockets, biotechnology...
It doesn't matter which technology he uses; in fact, he is undoubtedly a core member in every single one of them.
Now that he has laid his cards on the table with his superiors, Wang Donglai no longer needs to pretend or keep a low profile.
However, Wang Donglai wanted to speed things up.
However, the technologies he proposed were far too advanced and extremely difficult.
Even with his on-site explanation, it wasn't so simple for the experts and scholars present to absorb and digest the information.
After a whole day, they had only just managed to give everyone a general understanding of the technologies that had been presented. (End of Chapter)