China claims major fusion advance and record after 17-minute Tokamak run
China’s Hefei Institutes of Physical Science has claimed a new world record for maintaining a steady-state high-confinement plasma operation, a feat needed to create a fusion reactor that in theory will produce vast amounts of energy at little cost.
The operation was performed in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) which, according to the institute, maintained the operation for 1,066 seconds – almost 18 minutes and considerably longer than the previous record of 403 seconds the facility achieved in 2023.
Creating plasma and keeping it contained is hard. Tokamaks do it in a chamber, often doughnut-shaped, that contains gases that are heated to high temperatures and subjected to enormous pressure until they becomes a plasma. That’s just the start of the fun, as that plasma is so hot it must then be contained with giant magnets lest...
