EAST’s Progress in Nuclear Fusion

• EAST, a tokamak, has set several records and validated technologies for high-confinement plasma.

• In 2016, it was the first to sustain a plasma in high-confinement mode at 50 million degrees C for over 60 seconds.

• In 2023, EAST achieved the world’s first steady-state high-confinement plasma for 403 seconds, breaking the record on January 20, 2025.

• Currently, EAST is not producing electricity and is yet to reach a milestone called ignition, meaning it doesn’t produce enough heat for more fusion reactions to occur.

• EAST is a testbed reactor for ITER, an international megaproject involving six countries, including India and the European Union, to build a tokamak that sustains nuclear fusion.

• EAST’s successes are crucial for ITER’s future, which has been criticized for its delayed timelines and cost overruns.

• Some research groups have been trying to achieve nuclear fusion using methods that require fewer resources, such as a stellarator or laser beams of extreme power.

• The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s ‘Laser Inertial Fusion Energy’ project was cancelled in 2013 after it couldn’t achieve ignition.

• The National Ignition Facility (NIF) achieved the milestone in 2022, using a system of 192 high-power lasers to deliver 2.05 megajoules of energy towards a small cylindrical capsule called a hohlraum.

• ITER, launched in 2007, is expected to produce its first plasma only in 2033 and consume the world’s tritium reserves.

• The technology that gets nuclear fusion over the line remains to be seen, with some private sector enterprises also entering the mix.