WEST tokamak run by the CEA © L. Godart/CEA
Feb. 18, 2025 — French analysis group CEA reported that on 12 February, the CEA’s WEST tokamak maintained a nuclear fusion plasma for greater than 22 minutes, a 25 % enchancment over the earlier document.
“This leap ahead demonstrates how our data of plasmas and technological management of them over longer durations is turning into extra mature, and affords hope that fusion plasmas may be stabilised for higher quantities of time in a machine similar to the huge ITER tokamak, a machine that confines a plasma utilizing magnetic fields, in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, France.
The WEST tokamak is run from the CEA Cadarache facility in southern France and is likely one of the EUROfusion consortium’s medium dimension tokamak services. The earlier document time was achieved by EAST, in China, a number of weeks beforehand.
In its announcement, CEA mentioned reaching durations similar to these is an important milestone for machines like Iter, which might want to keep fusion plasmas for a number of minutes. The tip objective is to manage the plasma, which is of course unstable, whereas making certain that every one plasma-facing elements are capable of stand up to its radiation with out malfunctioning or polluting it.
That is what CEA researchers intend to attain and what explains the present document. Over the approaching months, the WEST workforce will double down on its efforts to attain very lengthy plasma durations – as much as a number of hours mixed – but additionally to warmth the plasma to even greater temperatures with a view to approaching the situations anticipated in fusion plasmas, in response to CEA.
CEA mentioned the WEST facility welcomes researchers from world wide, who make use of its key traits that enable long-duration plasmas, significantly its superconducting coils and actively cooled elements. WEST is one side of a world motion comprising different main experiments wherein CEA researchers are concerned, similar to JET, the Joint European Torus tokamak in the UK (closed in late 2023), which holds the document for fusion vitality, JT-60SA in Japan, EAST in China, and KSTAR in South Korea, to not point out the flagship machine that’s ITER.
“WEST has achieved a brand new key technological milestone by sustaining hydrogen plasma for greater than twenty minutes by means of the injection of two MW of heating energy. Experiments will proceed with elevated energy. This glorious outcome permits each WEST and the French group to paved the way for the longer term use of ITER.”, remark Anne-Isabelle Etienvre, Director of Elementary Analysis on the CEA.
Nuclear fusion is a know-how with the final word objective of controlling naturally unstable plasma. It makes use of even fewer assets and fewer gas than fission, which was already very concentrated, and doesn’t produce long-lived radioactive waste.
Of the varied potential strategies for producing vitality, essentially the most superior is magnetic confinement fusion , the place plasma is held in a torus by an intense magnetic discipline and heated till the hydrogen nuclei fuse. Confinement fusion has been proven by JET to provide fusion energy of 15 MW for a number of seconds.
France, dwelling to each WEST and ITER, is well-placed to accommodate the primary prototype nuclear fusion reactor. Nuclear fusion is a supply of vitality that exploits nuclear reactions, with many potential complementary features with nuclear fission vitality and related strategies regarding neutrons and matter, that are nicely understood.
However, given the infrastructure wanted to provide this vitality on a big scale, it’s unlikely that fusion know-how will make a major contribution to attaining net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. For this, a number of technological sticking factors have to be overcome, and the financial feasibility of this type of vitality manufacturing should nonetheless be demonstrated.
France has achieved a major milestone in nuclear fusion know-how by setting a brand new world document on the CEA Cadarache middle. The WEST tokamak sustained a plasma response for over 22 minutes, surpassing China’s earlier document by 25%. This breakthrough, which concerned sustaining a fusion plasma at temperatures of tens of thousands and thousands of levels, marks an important development in the direction of the objective of secure, long-duration fusion reactions. The achievement is well known globally as a step nearer to realizing fusion vitality, doubtlessly providing a limitless and clear vitality supply.
France has simply sustained a fusion response for greater than 22 minutes, breaking China’s document (from few weeks in the past) of 18 minutes. The CEA’s WEST machine was capable of keep a plasma for 1,337 seconds.
There’s a revolution occurring proper now. This breakthrough is huge — and the world must know. We’re getting ready to practically free, limitless vitality, the very basis that drives technological and scientific development.
This leap ahead demonstrates how our data of plasmas and technological management of them over longer durations is turning into extra mature.
