A Chinese fusion reactor maintained a plasma temperature of 120 million Celsius for 101 seconds and 160 million Celsius for 20 seconds. The achievement at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor surpassed the previous record, which was held by a South Korean experiment. It managed to reach 100 million degrees for 20 seconds at the end of 2020.  

“The breakthrough is significant progress, and the ultimate goal should be keeping the temperature at a stable level for a long time,” said Li Miao, director of the physics department of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen.

Speaking to Global Times, Li added that the next milestone might be to maintain the stability for a week or more. However he cautioned that mature fusion power is still at least 30 years away.

Maintaining temperatures of 100 million degrees is seen as a key technical milestone. The temperature of the sun, by comparison, is 15 million degrees. Achieving fusion on a human scale requires higher temperatures than those occurring in our nearest star.

You can learn more about fusion in episode #96 of Engineering Matters – Fusion: Britain Builds a Star, which was released in March 2021. Click here to listen.