China’s “artificial sun,” the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (“EAST”), has achieved a significant milestone by sustaining a steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for 1,066 seconds on 20 January 2025, breaking its previous record of 403 seconds set in 2023.
This breakthrough is claimed to be a crucial step toward the development of fusion power, which promises a nearly unlimited and “clean” energy source.
There are two nuclear reactions that release large quantities of energy and can potentially be used to produce electricity: nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.
Nuclear fission is commonly used in nuclear reactors to generate heat which produces the steam that drives a turbine to produce electricity. Nuclear fission reactions are also used to generate the explosive power of nuclear or atomic bombs.
Nuclear fusion is at the experimental stage and has been for more than 70 years.
The process of fission involves the division of a heavy atom into two light atoms. Nuclear fusion is the reverse. Fusion involves the combination of two light atoms to form a larger atom.
An “artificial sun” is a mega nuclear fusion device that generates energy through a fusion process similar to that of the Sun. It uses atomic nuclei to generate large amounts of energy into electricity by merging hydrogen atoms to create helium.
Nuclear fusion reactors are nicknamed “artificial suns” because they generate energy in a similar way to the Sun. The Sun has a lot more pressure than Earth’s reactors, so scientists compensate by using temperatures that are many times hotter than the Sun.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (“ITER”) in France is the world’s biggest “artificial sun” project, a globe-spanning collaboration of 35 nations, including China which is responsible for the development and manufacture of the whole magnet supporting system.
The magnet supporting system, weighing over 1,600 tonnes, is a core structural safety component of the ITER, and its delivery concluded the magnet support system development and manufacturing component of the ITER scheme.
The ITER is designed to yield 500 megawatts of fusion power from 50 megawatts of input heating power for at least 400 seconds continuously, providing a “carbon-free” source of energy. It will be an experimental tool designed to create sustained fusion for research purposes but could pave the way for fusion power plants. It will fire up in 2039 at the earliest, according to Live Science.
In April 2023, the Chinese Academy of Science wrote that one of China’s “artificial suns,” named the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (“EAST”), achieved a steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for 403 seconds, providing an important experimental basis for the operation of ITER.
Now it has been reported that scientists at EAST have broken their previous records by keeping their fusion drive running for 1,066 seconds, or almost 18 minutes, on 20 January 2025.
The EAST team, led by researchers from the Institute of Plasma Physics (“ASIPP”) and the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (“HFIPS”), achieved this breakthrough by improving their heating system, which can now reach the equivalent power of 140,000 microwave ovens being switched on at once.
According to nuclear physicist Song Yuntao from ASIPP at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, achieving stable operation at high efficiency for thousands of seconds is crucial for the success of fusion devices and the continuous power generation of future fusion plants.
The EAST is one of several nuclear fusion reactors being developed to produce virtually limitless amounts of “clean” energy, simulating the way the Sun produces energy by smashing together hydrogen atoms at incredible speeds and under intense pressure. It uses high-confinement plasma (designed to keep the plasma continuously burning for prolonged periods), a better way of trapping the gas and magnetic fields to create the conditions for nuclear fusion, and has made steady progress in increasing the temperature and stability of the plasma since it first went online in 2006.
Magnetic confinement reactors have never achieved ignition, which is the point at which nuclear fusion creates its own energy and sustains its own reaction, but it is claimed that the new record is a step forward.
In 2022, the US National Ignition Facility’s fusion reactor briefly achieved ignition in its core using a different experimental method to the EAST, relying on quick bursts of energy, but the reactor as a whole still used more energy than it consumed.
Scientists have been working on nuclear fusion for more than 70 years and while a fully functioning nuclear fusion reactor that can connect to power grids is still a long way off, the EAST’s achievement is seen as an encouraging step forward in the technology and adds to the evidence that nuclear fusion may one day be a viable power source.
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