Fusion Tokamak WEST Breaks Plasma Duration Record

Feb. 22—Fusion plasma breakthroughs are coming at a faster pace. On Jan. 20, China’s EAST tokamak reactor broke the record when it sustained a plasma for over 1,066 seconds (some 17.7 minutes). About three weeks later, on Feb. 12, France’s Atomic Energy and Alternative Energy Commission (CEA) WEST tokamak reactor maintained a hydrogen plasma for 1,337 seconds (about 22 minutes) and reached a temperature of 50 million degrees, according to Power Engineering International.

CEA’s Director of Fundamental Research Anne-Isabelle Etienvre expects even greater breakthroughs in the near future as they literally turn up the heat inside the reactors, above the 2 MW of heating power which was injected during the February experiment. The WEST facility welcomes researchers from around the world, who are often drawn to study its superconducting coils, and the system which actively cools components of the tokamak.

Getting atoms to fuse is considered relatively easy. The difficult part is to control the naturally unstable plasma, maintain the needed temperatures and pressures, operate efficiently, and achieve the duration required for ignition. There are many designs and many variations on those designs, but these most recent breakthroughs have occurred in tokamak magnetic containment reactors.

Some important fusion research programs include the JT-60SA in Japan, and KSTAR in South Korea. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved “breakeven” in December 2022, when the energy coming out of the reaction was equal to the energy directed at the reaction. One of the most successful programs was the EUROfusion’s 31-nation Joint European Torus (JET), based in the U.K., which broke several records, including the highest temperatures anywhere in the Solar System, but unfortunately the JET was closed in 2023. JET’s fusion energy research has laid the basis for the construction of the 33-nation ITER tokamak reactor in Cadarache, southern France, which will have the largest magnets in the world, and utilize several design features from the JET, but is said to be running many years, if not decades behind schedule.