Technology: Breaking the Global Monopoly

Chapter 2494 Nuclear Plant
Many financial experts believe that in today's world, there are only two things that can serve as currency anchors, namely gold and energy.

Because these two are highly liquid assets, people in every country and region around the world recognize their value.

The once prosperous America also needed to rely on the Bretton Woods system to forcibly peg the dollar to gold. The amount of money printed depended on the gold reserves. The anchoring to gold reached a certain level, letting everyone "know" that the dollar was "US dollars". Only then could the dollar be safely anchored to oil after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system.

Even though it was anchored to the best energy source at the time - oil, there were still many economic fluctuations during this period.

And a long time ago, the US dollar was actually anchored not only to gold, but also to silver. This special precious metal also caused fluctuations in the American economy in the 19th century and reaped the wealth of many civilians and wealthy people.

If Gu Qing wants to step into the sea of ​​stars, he naturally needs to have a basis that is independent of Blue Star, but can also communicate with various enterprises and economic organizations on Blue Star.

Although in fact, with Jiuzhou Technology's current military capabilities, it does not need this kind of "reliance" against many countries and regions.

But Gu Qing still didn't want to involve too many people.

March, 1037 in the Xia Yinxing calendar.

At the Jiuzhou lunar base, the magnetic levitation launch platform catapulted a sealed capsule loaded with helium-3 into the near-moon orbit. The golden tail crossed the starry sky without the cover of the atmosphere, making the official scientists of Daxia in the lunar city ponder and guess what launch mission the Jiuzhou Xinghai Company was carrying out.

In his work log, Zhang Tianhao, who is no longer a young man, wrote: "At the moment when the return capsule ignited and took off, I saw the lights of the refinery connected into a dazzling star chain in the moonlight. These helium-3 atoms, which have been gifted to the moon by the solar wind for billions of years, will travel 38 kilometers and light up thousands of lights on the blue planet."

While the Moon-Chasing Starship was diligently transporting the purified helium-3, Jiuzhou Technology's automated excavators were tirelessly processing the lunar soil in their target areas with their diamond drills and laser sorting devices.

The lunar soil will be separated from the helium-3-containing ilmenite particles using the magnetic separation system technology, taking advantage of the weak magnetic field characteristics of the moon. It will then be placed in a high-temperature dissociation device and undergo a three-stage gradient heating system, from the initial 200°C to evaporate the volatile substances, to a high temperature of 700°C to crack the ilmenite crystal structure, and finally into the ultimate separator, experiencing an extreme temperature of 1200°C to purify the helium-3 gas.

It's like the top chef using energy from the solar power matrix to cook truly clean and environmentally friendly nuclear energy that will drive human industry forward again.

The Moon Chaser that transports helium-3 is different from the manned spacecraft model. Its internal code name is "Solar System Logistics 01 Series Spacecraft".

It uses a molybdenum-titanium alloy shell and an aerogel insulation layer, which can withstand extreme temperature environments with a temperature difference of -173℃ to 230℃, and can be driven automatically under special circumstances. Relying on the 5G, 6G and soon-to-be-launched 7G networks established by Jiuzhou Technology on the moon, it can achieve safe flight that can be remotely controlled both on the blue planet and on the moon.

The refinery's manufacturing workshop is designed to have an annual production capacity of at least 5 tons of helium-3. Its power generation capacity can meet about 40% of Daxia's annual energy needs.

Compared with traditional nuclear fission power plants, the neutron radiation of helium-3 fusion is reduced by more than 99%, and the reactor volume is reduced by 80%. It is just that the mining difficulty is too high, so there has been no real technological progress.

Even though Jiuzhou Xinghai Company has cooperated with Daxia Aerospace Group for so many years, and has used Daxia Aerospace Group's money and resources and "sent" so many people and materials to the moon for Daxia Aerospace Group, it has not agreed to transport large amounts of lunar soil and lunar rocks to the surface of the Blue Planet for Daxia Aerospace Group.

This resource transportation route has been controlled by Jiuzhou Xinghai Company from beginning to end and has not been given to anyone else.

The Daxia government doesn’t have it, nor does Gou Dahu, and it’s even less likely to happen in other countries and regions.

At the same time, while netizens around the world were frantically leveling up in the game "Omnic Crisis" and striving for higher ranks, in the Gobi desert remaining in Daxia, a circular foundation with a diameter of 1.2 kilometers was being poured with special concrete mixed with iron wire, titanium wire and other materials.

This kind of building material, which is mixed with a lot of "seasonings", can not only withstand the bombardment of artillery shells and nuclear bombs and the torture of armor-piercing shells, but can also easily withstand the bombardment of high-energy particles at 10^18 times/second when the fusion device is running.

Among the projects being built simultaneously is a helium-30 storage facility located 3 meters underground at the base.

This special energy storage facility adopts a double-layer vacuum insulation design, and the inner wall is covered with a palladium-silver alloy film. Combined with other special materials, the annual leakage rate of isotopes can be controlled below 0.0001%, ensuring that the surrounding natural resources are not polluted. At the same time, it can also prevent some special equipment from forcibly drilling into the storage facility without permission.

Of course, the most eye-catching thing in this huge construction complex is the base of the central device - a circular platform assembled from 36 pieces of tungsten steel composite materials.

The official inspectors of Daxia are no longer ordinary "civil engineering experts". Instead, they have civil engineering degrees and are top experts in nuclear energy-related fields.

However, due to the requirements of Jiuzhou Technology, these "outsiders" can only conduct inspections within their authority according to regulations and are not allowed to take any extraordinary actions.

When the time came to April of the 1037th year of the Xia Yin calendar, the base construction project came to an end and the core equipment was installed on site. The Daxia official scientists who knew the situation were watching the project progress with a special eye.

"This should be the plasma confinement system developed by Jiuzhou Technology, right? It is said that it uses magnetic coils woven from high-temperature superconducting tapes, which can generate a special steady-state magnetic field under liquid helium cooling. The intensity is equivalent to more than a thousand times that of our Blue Star's magnetic field. However, they did not provide us with accurate data, which really makes us feel itchy when we see it."

"Are you itching to try this? The vacuum chamber that was built some time ago, according to the information we obtained, has walls covered with a self-repairing beryllium copper alloy armor. It is said that it uses microcapsule technology to automatically fill in surface damage. Even after a violent impact, it can repair the wound in a short time, ensuring that the vacuum environment of the vacuum chamber is not damaged for a long time.

I don’t know what those people at Jiuzhou Technology are thinking.”