France sets new world record by keeping a fusion reactor running for 22 minutes

France’s WEST tokamak held a hot plasma for 1,337 seconds, a little over 22 minutes. That performance matters because long, steady plasma operation is a core requirement for future nuclear fusion power plants.

The run also edged past the mark set weeks earlier by China’s EAST, improving the duration by about 25 percent.

It showed that researchers can hold tough operating conditions without the machine’s internal surfaces breaking down.

Anne-Isabelle Etienvre, Director of Fundamental Research at the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, the CEA, reported the result.

Plasma and nuclear fusion

Inside WEST, physicists used strong magnetic fields to corral a fast moving gas of charged particles.

The plasma stayed confined while heat and particle exhaust were managed so the parts facing the plasma did not fail.

“WEST has achieved a new key technological milestone by maintaining hydrogen plasma for more than twenty minutes through the injection of 2 MW of heating power,” said Etienvre.

This was achieved by injecting a few megawatts of heating to keep the reaction going. 

The challenge here is control. A plasma pushes back against any mistake, and small instabilities can quickly grow if the team does not respond.

What a Tokamak does

A tokamak is a ring shaped magnetic bottle. Its fields guide charged particles so they loop around the torus instead of striking the walls.

That approach is called magnetic confinement. It lets scientists heat a thin gas until atomic nuclei have enough energy to fuse and release more energy.

The next step in France is the larger ITER device, now under assembly in the same region.

ITER is designed to produce about 500 megawatts of fusion power from roughly 50 megawatts of heating power in the plasma.

How this fits with other records

Long duration is only one part of the fusion puzzle. Energy output is another key indicator.

In the United Kingdom, the JET facility produced 69 megajoules of fusion energy in one five second pulse with a tiny amount of fuel, a record.

That result showed a high energy release for a short period, while the WEST run showed stability for a long period without aiming at high fusion power.

Different devices push different limits, and that is by design. Together, they map what a future plant needs to do reliably.

Why long pulses matter

A power plant must run for long stretches while staying healthy. That means steady temperatures, clean fuel, and components that do not erode or contaminate the plasma.

It also means good exhaust handling. The plasma must shed heat and particles in a controlled way so the metal surfaces behind the magnetic field stay within safe limits.

Materials are central to this work. Tungsten, used in WEST’s divertor region, tolerates heat well but still requires careful operation to avoid damage or unwanted impurities.

A 22 minute plasma does not mean net electricity. WEST is a research device, and this test focused on stability and control rather than producing more energy than it consumed.

Net energy depends on many knobs, including plasma density, temperature, and how well the machine confines heat and particles. It is a multi variable problem, not a single dial you can turn all the way up.

Plasma, fusion, and the future

CEA’s team plans longer campaigns that add up to hours of plasma time while gradually increasing power. Each extension hardens the playbook for safe, repeatable operation.

Data from WEST will inform how engineers operate ITER when it comes online. That translation from experiment to larger machine is how fusion moves from lab runs to plant relevant scenarios.

Fusion reactions themselves do not create long lived radioactive waste like fission does. However, fast neutrons can activate the metal structures around the plasma, which is why material choice and design matter.

International guidance notes that fusion avoids the most long lived wastes but still produces activated components that must be handled and stored for limited periods, and it uses tritium, a radioactive isotope with a short half life, in a closed loop on site.

That context helps explain why researchers emphasize component durability and careful control of fuel and exhaust.

Even with these hurdles, the progress at WEST marks a step closer to practical fusion energy. Each record offers proof that machines can hold plasmas longer, hotter, and cleaner, building the foundation for reactors that may one day provide large amounts of safe and reliable power.

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