The EAST tokamak in Hefei has set a new world record in nuclear fusion research: on January 20, 2025, the reactor sustained a plasma in steady-state high-confinement mode for 1,066 seconds — just under eighteen minutes. The result, achieved by the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, more than doubles the previous record of 403 seconds, which was itself set by EAST in 2023.
Sustaining stable plasma beyond the one-thousand-second threshold is considered a decisive milestone in fusion physics. Tokamaks operate by confining ionized gases at extreme temperatures inside toroidal chambers using powerful magnetic fields. In EAST’s case, temperatures during the experiment exceeded 100 million degrees Celsius — roughly seven times the temperature at the Sun’s core. Holding plasma under these conditions for nearly eighteen consecutive minutes demonstrates a level of stability and control that, just a few years ago, was considered out of reach.
EAST operates in the so-called “H-mode,” the high-confinement regime that will also be adopted by ITER, the international reactor currently under construction in Cadarache, France. This is no coincidence: the Chinese tokamak explicitly serves as a testbed for the technologies ITER will need to deploy on a much larger scale. In recent years, EAST has received significant upgrades, including new plasma diagnostic tools and a doubling of its heating system’s power output. These improvements account for the performance leap compared to 2023. In January 2026, the team announced a further advance: EAST achieved electron plasma densities well beyond conventional limits, operating in what physicists call a “density limit-free regime” — a territory that had been theorized but never experimentally explored until that point.
Hefei is not stopping at EAST’s record. The same city is home to the construction of BEST, the Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak. In October 2025, the project reached a concrete milestone with the installation of the base — the first major component of the device’s central unit. BEST is designed as an enhanced version of EAST and aims to achieve something no reactor has ever done: demonstrate actual electricity generation from nuclear fusion. Completion is expected by 2027.
The road from Hefei to commercial fusion remains long. But the trajectory is clear. In less than two years, the Chinese city has twice redrawn the boundary of what is possible with magnetically confined plasma. With EAST as an operational laboratory and BEST as the next proving ground, Hefei is establishing itself as one of the most active hubs in the global race for fusion. A race in which France is also competing: the WEST reactor at Cadarache surpassed 1,336 seconds of stable plasma in February 2025, showing that scientific competition is driving the entire fusion community forward at an unprecedented pace.
