China’s latest fusion experiments have pushed the idea of an “artificial sun” from science fiction into a concrete engineering project with global implications. By sustaining ultra hot plasma for unprecedented durations, Chinese researchers are testing whether the same nuclear reactions that power the Sun can one day drive a virtually limitless source of clean electricity on Earth.
The achievement does not mean the planet is about to be plugged into a single fusion machine, but it does signal that a long standing scientific dream is edging closer to practical reality. I see a clear shift from proof of concept shots to sustained performance, and that shift is what makes the new records worth taking seriously.
China’s fusion push and the race to copy the Sun
China has spent years positioning itself as a central player in advanced energy technology, and fusion is now one of the most visible pillars of that strategy. The country’s investment in large scale experimental reactors is part of a broader industrial and scientific push that has already reshaped global supply chains in solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles, and its leadership clearly wants fusion to be the next frontier where it can set the pace for the rest of the world, as reflected in the scale of projects associated with China.
In fusion, the goal is to replicate the reactions inside The Sun, where light atomic nuclei collide and merge, releasing enormous amounts of energy without the long lived radioactive waste associated with conventional fission reactors. Chinese scientists have built a series of devices to pursue this, including the HL 2M tokamak reactor, which is explicitly designed to confine superheated plasma in a doughnut shaped magnetic cage so that nuclear fusion can occur in a controlled way, a concept explained in detail in analyses of What is China’s “Artificial Sun”?
Inside the “artificial sun”: how HL-2M and EAST actually work
When people talk about China’s “Artificial Sun,” they are usually referring to large tokamak machines such as The HL 2M and the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, often shortened to EAST. I find it useful to strip away the metaphor and focus on the hardware, because these are not glowing orbs in the sky but intricate assemblies of superconducting magnets, vacuum chambers, and high power heating systems that must work in perfect synchrony to keep plasma stable at temperatures far beyond anything found in a conventional power plant.
In a tokamak, powerful magnetic fields twist and confine a ring of ionized gas so that it does not touch the reactor walls, while external systems inject energy to push the plasma to fusion relevant conditions. The HL 2M tokamak reactor and its sibling devices are engineered to reach and sustain those conditions, with the plasma shaped and controlled in real time to avoid instabilities that could abruptly end a discharge, a challenge that has been highlighted in technical discussions of how The Sun generates energy via nuclear fusion and how The HL is designed to address it.
Record breaking heat: 120 million Celsius for over 100 seconds
The headline grabbing numbers from China’s fusion program are not marketing fluff, they are hard metrics that matter for physics. In one widely cited experiment, researchers maintained plasma at 120 million degrees Celsius for over 100 seconds, a world record for that combination of temperature and duration in a magnetic confinement device. That figure is not just a curiosity, it shows that the machine can hold a plasma far hotter than the core of The Sun long enough to probe the conditions needed for net energy gain.
Holding such extreme temperatures for more than a fleeting instant requires exquisite control of both the magnetic fields and the fuel mix, as well as materials that can withstand intense heat fluxes at the reactor’s inner surfaces. The fact that the plasma did not tear itself apart through turbulence or sudden instabilities during that run indicates that the control algorithms and hardware are maturing, a point that Chinese researchers have framed as a major step toward a future in which a fusion reactor could operate in a steady state rather than in short experimental bursts, a claim that aligns with the performance described in reports from CHINA / SOCIETY.
From 100 seconds to 1,066: why endurance is the new frontier
Temperature records are impressive, but the real prize in fusion is endurance, and here too China’s “artificial sun” has set new benchmarks. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak has achieved a plasma discharge that lasted 1,066-second plasma, a run that pushes the device into territory where engineers can start to think seriously about continuous operation rather than isolated experiments.
That 1,066 second milestone is not just a bigger number on a chart, it is a test of whether the superconducting magnets, heating systems, and control software can work together for the kind of durations a commercial reactor would require. Analysts have noted that China’s quest to harness the power of the stars is explicitly framed around generating continuous and clean energy, and the EAST team has presented this long pulse as a historic step toward that goal, a framing that is echoed in coverage of China’s quest to harness fusion.
Stability, not just heat: taming plasma instabilities
As the experiments have grown more ambitious, the main challenge has shifted from simply reaching high temperatures to keeping the plasma stable. Inside a tokamak, the same magnetic fields that confine the plasma can also seed instabilities, and as one technical analysis put it, While the magnetic fields inside the tokamak are effective at confining the plasma, instabilities within the gas build up and can trigger abrupt disruptions that end a discharge.
For a fusion device to move from the lab to the grid, those instabilities must be predicted and suppressed in real time, which is why the EAST experiments focus so heavily on advanced diagnostics and feedback control. By learning how to shape the plasma and adjust the magnetic configuration on the fly, researchers are trying to create operating regimes where the plasma remains quiescent for long periods, a prerequisite for any viable nuclear fusion reactor and a central theme in the work on China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak described in reports on China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak.
How China’s work fits into the global fusion ecosystem
China’s “artificial sun” projects do not exist in isolation, they are part of a broader international ecosystem that includes the large scale ITER collaboration in southern France. ITER is designed as a demonstration reactor that will test whether a tokamak can produce more energy from fusion reactions than it consumes, and China is one of the key partners contributing components and expertise to the project, which is detailed on the official site for ITER.
By running advanced experiments at home while also participating in ITER, Chinese scientists are effectively hedging their bets, gaining experience with both national and multinational approaches to fusion. The lessons learned from devices like HL 2M and EAST can feed into ITER’s design and operation, while ITER’s eventual performance will inform how China scales its own reactors, a feedback loop that underscores how national prestige projects and global scientific collaborations are increasingly intertwined in the race to commercialize fusion energy.
“Indefinitely” is the goal: why 1,000 seconds still is not enough
Even with the 1,066 second record, fusion researchers are clear that they are still far from the ultimate target. Commentators have noted that when discussing endurance, the phrase Indefinitely is far preferable to “at least” a certain number of seconds, because a power plant must run continuously for months or years, not just for a quarter of an hour.
From my perspective, that distinction matters because it highlights the gap between experimental success and commercial viability. A fusion device must achieve stable operation for the rest of time in practical terms, which means not only sustaining plasma but also integrating fuel handling, heat extraction, and maintenance in a way that is economically competitive with existing energy sources, a bar that no current machine, in China or elsewhere, has yet cleared according to the performance benchmarks discussed in coverage of the EAST fusion endurance record of over a thousand seconds at over a thousand.
From lab shots to power plants: the stubborn gap
For all the excitement around China’s “artificial sun,” it is important to remember that nuclear fusion technology does not yet exist outside of experimental laboratories. As one critical analysis put it, Meanwhile, nuclear fusion technology does not exist outside of some experimental laboratories, and certainly not at any scale that feeds a useful amount of energy into a commercial grid.
I see that gap reflected in the way policymakers still talk about fusion as a long term option rather than a near term climate solution. While China’s progress is real and significant, the machines in question are research tools, not power plants, and they are still working toward the basic milestone of producing more energy than they consume in a sustained, repeatable way, a reality that tempers some of the more breathless claims about an imminent fusion powered planet.
Why this still matters for climate and energy policy
Even if fusion is not ready to replace coal or gas tomorrow, the trajectory of China’s “artificial sun” experiments has real implications for climate and energy policy. Each new record in temperature, duration, or stability strengthens the case that controlled nuclear fusion could eventually provide almost infinite clean energy, a phrase that has been used to describe the ultimate goal of tokamak research and that captures why governments and investors are willing to pour resources into projects like China’s ‘Artificial Sun’.
For climate planners, the prudent approach is to treat fusion as a potential game changer in the second half of this century while still accelerating deployment of proven technologies like wind, solar, and storage today. China’s work on HL 2M and EAST shows that a major industrial power can pursue both tracks at once, building out massive renewable capacity while also betting on high risk, high reward research that might, one day, give the world an artificial star in every region instead of a single machine that powers the planet.
How far China has come, and what comes next
Looking across the recent milestones, I see a clear narrative arc in China’s fusion program: from early shots that simply proved a tokamak could ignite plasma, to record setting runs at 120 million degrees and 1,066 seconds, to increasingly sophisticated efforts to tame instabilities and approach steady state operation. Each step has been framed domestically as evidence that China is catching up with, and in some areas surpassing, long established fusion programs in Europe, Japan, and the United States, a framing that is reinforced by reports that describe how China’s artificial sun just broke its own nuclear fusion record.
The next phase will likely focus on integrating these experimental insights into designs that look more like pilot power plants, with attention shifting from pure physics to engineering questions such as how to extract heat efficiently, breed tritium fuel, and maintain complex superconducting systems over years of operation. Whether China ultimately builds the first commercially viable fusion reactor or not, its “artificial sun” has already altered the global conversation, turning fusion from a distant dream into a live contest of engineering and political will.
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