China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), dubbed China’s “artificial Sun,” achieved a remarkable steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for 1,066 seconds—nearly 18 minutes—on Jan. 20, setting a new world record, and marking a leap in the quest for fusion power generation, Xinhua reported on Jan. 21], posted on the website of China’s State Council.
The plasma sustained a temperature over 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit). That a plasma sustained temperatures of 100 million degrees C is considered a threshold for successfully generating electricity, along with stable long-term operation, for ensuring the controllability of the reaction in nuclear fusion devices.
The State Council posting explained: “The duration of 1,000 seconds is considered a key step in fusion research. The breakthrough, achieved by the Institute of Plasma Physics, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP), greatly improved the original world record of 403 seconds, which was also set by EAST in 2023.
“The ultimate goal of an artificial sun is to create nuclear fusion like the sun, providing humanity with an endless, clean energy source, and enabling space exploration beyond the solar system.”