China team heralds fusion breakthrough as step towards new energy future
Team sets record for man-made temperature sustained for over 100 seconds but physicist says power plants are still a long way off
Chinese scientists have set a new record for artificial sun technology – nearly doubling the burn time of extremely hot plasma in near perfect conditions, the country’s top research institute says.
The team generated and maintained the plasma at a temperature three times that of the sun’s core for more than 100 seconds, the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a statement on Wednesday.
It was an experiment conducted at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak facility in Hefei, in the southeast province of Anhui on Monday, where the previous world record – maintaining that temperature for about a minute – was set last year.
Similar experiments in other countries have created plasmas that lasted longer but were less stable and difficult to control for the purpose of power generation.
