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China’s ‘artificial sun’ hits new high in clean energy boost

  • Research facility in Anhui ran at 70 million degrees Celsius for more than 17 minutes, state media reports
  • The achievement ‘lays a solid scientific and experimental foundation towards the running of a fusion reactor’, scientist in charge says

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Facilities such as EAST are called “artificial sun” because they mimic the nuclear fusion reaction that powers the Sun. Photo: Xinhua
Echo Xie
China has made a new breakthrough in its quest for clean fusion energy, as one of its “artificial suns” set a new record in sustained high temperatures, according to state media.

The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), a nuclear fusion reactor research facility, ran at 70 million degrees Celsius for as long as 1,056 seconds (17 minutes, 36 seconds), Xinhua reported.

This comes after EAST achieved another milestone in May, running at a plasma – or hot gas – temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds.

For another 20 seconds during the experiment in May, the facility achieved a peak temperature of 160 million degrees Celsius, which is more than 10 times hotter than the Sun, Xinhua reported.

“These are the goals for different stages … The recent operation lays a solid scientific and experimental foundation towards the running of a fusion reactor,” Gong Xianzu, a researcher at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was quoted as saying by Xinhua on Friday.

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China sets new world record in development of ‘artificial sun’

China sets new world record in development of ‘artificial sun’

Gong was in charge of the experiment at EAST, which is located at the academy’s Hefei Institute of Physical Science in the eastern province of Anhui.

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