China's"artificial sun" has reached a new milestone in the rapidly advancing field of nuclear fusion. On April 12, a superhot fusion plasma was generated, sustained and confined for 403 seconds, bringing commercial-scale fusion energy one step closer to reality.
. This achievement breaks the reactor's previous record for steady-state high confinement plasma which was set in 2017, at 101 seconds.EAST is sometimes referred to as China's"artificial sun" as it creates energy in the same way as our sun. In the case of EAST, and many other reactors, two atoms of hydrogen are thrust together with such force that they combine into a single, larger helium atom, releasing huge amounts of energy in the process.
However, there is one problem: fusion requires vast amounts of energy to achieve the required temperature and pressure for the reaction to take place. So far scientists have not managed to get significantly more energy out of a fusion reaction than they put in. These positively charged ions will usually repel each other but, in the sun, a high pressure is created by its intense gravitational forces that thrust the ions together and overcome this repulsion. However, on Earth it is nearly impossible to replicate this, so the plasma must be heated even more, to temperatures roughlyTo maintain these superhot temperatures, the plasma must be contained in a small area, which is where the magnets come in.