A tokamak operated by the French Atomic Energy Commission was able to maintain a high temperature plasma for more than 22 minutes earlier this year, smashing the previous record and bringing commercial fusion one step close to reality.
WEST, a tokamak located at the Cadarache site in southern France and one of the EUROfusion consortium medium-size Tokamak facilities, was able to maintain a plasma temperature of 50 million ºC.
Over the coming months, the WEST team plans to continue focusing on achieving very long plasma durations – up to several hours combined – but also to heat the plasma to even higher temperatures with a view to approaching the conditions expected in fusion plasmas.
Long duration plasmas are seen as a crucial milestone for machines like Iter, which will need to maintain fusion plasmas for several minutes. The end goal is to control the naturally unstable plasma while ensuring that all plasma-facing components are able to withstand its radiation without malfunctioning. Setting this new record for plasma duration with a tokamak illustrates the level of technological control that is now achievable and suggests the next generation of fusion plasma machines will be able to achieve the long duration plasma goal.
The 1337 second-long plasma record came just a few weeks after China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) set a previous world record by maintaining steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for 1066 seconds. The tokamak, operated by the Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences He Fei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) achieved at a temperature close to 70m ºC. Its latest experiment was more than double the previous world record of 403 seconds, which was also set by EAST in 2023. According to the academy, this new achievement also marked a significant breakthrough in the pursuit of fusion power generation.
The latest WEST record was a further 25% improvement on the previous record established by EAST. Despite these accelerated developments, the CEA nonetheless believes that given the infrastructure needed to produce fusion energy on a large scale, it is unlikely that the technology will make a significant contribution to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. One technological sticking point that needs to be addressed is the economic feasibility of this fusion energy production that must still be demonstrated.
While at the moment, magnetic confinement fusion is broadly considered the most advanced fusion technology several others are also revealing important breakthroughs.
Substantial progress on the industrialisation came after Germany’s first fusion industry consortium was launched in Hesse with government, industry and academia. Including Focused Energy, Technische Universität Darmstadt, TRUMPF Scientific Lasers, SCHOTT, RWE Power, RWE Nuclear, Siemens Energy, GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, and the European Investment Bank (EIB), the consortium aims to position Hesse as a major hub for laser fusion technology. The partners signed a memorandum of understanding, that lays the groundwork for repurposing a decommissioned nuclear power plant at Biblis into a future fusion plant. The agreement comes as the state government has also committed up to €20m for fusion R&D. Focused Energy already operates a targetry lab in Hessen and now has commitments across government and industry to work toward a commercial laser fusion plant.
In a related development, Focused Energy also recently signed an agreement with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop a model simulating the behaviour of low-density foams containing liquid deuterium and tritium during implosion.
In another recent fusion technology record, inertial fusion company First Light Fusion says it has set a new record for the highest quartz pressure achieved on the ‘Z Machine’ at Sandia National Laboratories in the US at 3.67 terapascal (TPa). This doubles the previous record set by First Light in 2024. First Light uses the Z Machine to electromagnetically accelerate projectiles into various targets.
Dr Jon Skidmore, Principal Scientist at First Light Fusion, said: “The concept of target-based power amplification successfully demonstrated on the Z machine can enable a simpler and more cost-effective route to commercial fusion across multiple drivers.
