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Nuclear fusion: WEST beats the world record for plasma duration
On 12 February, the CEA’s WEST machine was able to maintain a plasma for more than 22 minutes. In doing so, it smashed the previous record for plasma duration achieved with a tokamak. 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.
WEST is one facet of an international movement comprising other major experiments in which CEA researchers are heavily involved, such as JET, the Joint European Torus tokamak in the United Kingdom (closed in late 2023), which holds the record for fusion energy, JT-60SA in Japan, EAST in China, and KSTAR in South Korea, not to mention the flagship machine that is ITER. This excellent result allows both WEST and the French community to lead the way for the future use of ITER.”, comment Anne-Isabelle Etienvre, Director of Fundamental Research at the CEA. Nevertheless, given the infrastructure needed to produce this energy on a large scale, it is unlikely that fusion technology will make a significant contribution to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
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