France tops China’s tokamak record with 22-minute plasma containment run
- Reference: 1740030308
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/02/20/france_tops_chinas_tokamak_record/
- Source link:
The Commissariat (French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, or CEA) [1]announced that its CEA WEST Tokamak maintained plasma for more than 22 minutes last week.
China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak [2]maintained a steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for almost 18 minutes in January.
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It’s not easy to create plasma, never mind maintain it, because doing so first requires heating gases under enormous pressure to the point at which some electrons are freed from atomic nuclei. The test at the CEA WEST Tokamak saw temperatures reach 50 million degrees.
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The prospect of anything at that temperature getting out of hand is deeply unpleasant, so tokamaks use giant magnets and shielded walls (often built with Tungsten) to contain the plasma. The machines also need plenty of cooling.
The astounding temperatures involved mean it’s possible the shields can pollute plasma, an unwelcome prospect if it prevents production of the even hotter plasmas needed to power a fusion reactor.
[6]China claims major fusion advance and record after 17-minute Tokamak run
[7]Helion bags $425M in fresh funding despite fusion power still being a distant dream
[8]Viable fusion power in a decade? Tokamak Energy dares to dream
[9]ITER delays first plasma for world's biggest fusion power rig by a decade
CEA West isn’t powerful enough to produce the fusion plasma needed expected to produce electricity in a reactor. That job goes to the planned [10]International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor which is hoped to create plasma and contain it for the many minutes required to sustain a fusion reaction and use the resulting heat to produce steam and spin turbines to make electricity.
This test at CEA WEST was nonetheless rated as a welcome advance.
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“This leap forward demonstrates how our knowledge of plasmas and technological control of them over longer periods is becoming more mature, and offers hope that fusion plasmas can be stabilised for greater amounts of time in machines such as ITER,” CEA wrote.
The CEA WEST team will now “double down on its efforts to achieve 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.”
The big unanswered question in all of this is whether a fusion reactor will reliably create more energy than is needed to produce plasma and operate a tokamak. At least one experiment has proved that’s possible. This effort at CA WEST saw “the injection of 2 MW of heating power.”
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Future experiments will continue with increased power. ®
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[1] https://www.cea.fr/english/Pages/News/nuclear-fusion-west-beats-the-world-record-for-plasma-duration.aspx
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/22/china_tokamak_plasma_record_claim/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Z7cLV4V9VxBt4bCF0Goz_gAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/22/china_tokamak_plasma_record_claim/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/29/helion_funding/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/16/tokamak_fusion_pilot/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/04/iter_new_baseline_project_delays/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/04/iter_new_baseline_project_delays/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z7cLV4V9VxBt4bCF0Goz_gAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: French fry me right up
Canada is interested in your way of thinking and world like to subscribe
"heating gases under enormous pressure"
Hold - ENORMOUS PRESSURE ??? Hey, that is a near vacuum in there to make those H and H² fly! Else they'd constantly bumping into other atoms, never reach the speed, never reach the heat, and we could not control their direction with magnet fields but with baseball bats strategically placed...
Article lost, not worth reading any more after those five words.
Re: "heating gases under enormous pressure"
Enormous pressure at the point of transition to plasma; an incredibly steep pressure gradient to near-vacuum in the vicinity.
That's how they control it.
Re: "heating gases under enormous pressure"
Peak plasma pressures in the tokamaks I know about are measured in millionths of an atmosphere. The peak pressure is near vacuum, and pressures get lower (ideally) as you get closer to the walls of the chamber or else you leak too much heat. Because the temperatures are so high, the density of the plasma to produce such (low) pressures is very very low (high temperature = high particle velocity, and the pressure comes from the density of particles multiplied by their momentums).
The big unanswered question in all of this is whether [we'll see a working fusion reactor in the next 40 years]
20 years. It's always 20 years. Get yer facts right!
Still In the Steampunk Era
Oh great, the world's greatest scientists still cannot concieve of an energy generation system that doesn't require heating water to produce steam.
We need new/better scientists.
French fry me right up
Ah! That'll explain why Paris will see 60F (15C) temperatures tomorrow ... hopefully they don't run this 50 million degrees machine right smack in the middle of summer now!