China's Next-Gen Fusion Reactor Could Achieve First Plasma in Just 2 Years
China is racing forward in its effort to pave the way in fusion energy science, and state-sponsored media reported earlier this week that one of the country's next-gen reactors is now under construction.
The Burning Plasma Experiment Superconducting Tokamak, or BEST, is an intermediary reactor between China's first-generation reactor and the Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR)—a fusion plant demonstrator.
BEST is planned to go online in 2027, and aims for net energy gain similar to the SPARC reactor currently under construction by Commonwealth Fusion Systems in the U.S.
The promise of fusion energy is hard to overstate. With the ability to leverage the energy-producing physics that powers our Sun, humanity could tap into a near-limitless wealth of carbon-free energy, forever ending our dependence on the fossil fuels that are quickly poisoning the planet.
Of course, such immense promise comes with a few caveats, chief among them being that creating a fusion reaction and sustaining that reaction for net energy output is one of the hardest engineering challenges humans have ever attempted to solve. The challenge is so immense that 35 countries (including the U.S., China, Russia, and several countries in the European Union) have joined forces to build International Thermonuclear Experiment Reactor (ITER)—a magnetic confinement tokamak (a.k.a. donut-shaped) reactor that hopes to see first plasma by 2035—in southern France. While that's the world's best foot forward when it comes to fusion research, individual countries are also pursuing their own thermonuclear energy goals. And none are doubling down harder than China.
Xinhua, a state-sponsored media outlet, reports that country's Burning Plasma Experiment Superconducting Tokamak, or BEST, is now in its final assembly in Hefei, China. This reactor builds on the work of China's first-generation tokamak, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), which is also located at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science. According to South China Morning Post, another state-sponsored media outlet, the BEST reactor—which plans to go online in just two years—will be an intermediary step between EAST and the Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR), the latter of which is a large-scale demonstrator for fusion power plants.
From assembly to first plasma in just two years is remarkably fast, but Song Yuntao—the project's chief engineer from the Institute of Plasma Physics—claim that this fits with China's overall aggressive timeline for achieving utility-scale fusion.
'We have fully mastered the core technologies, both scientifically and technically,' Yuntao told the South China Morning Post.
And he isn't bluffing—China is currently developing several fusion projects across the country. For instance, IEEE Spectrum notes that the country is building an x-shaped facility in Sichuan that resembles the U.S. National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—the first lab to achieve fusion ignition (net energy output) back in 2022. They're also building a 40-hectare complex for fusion research, along with a fusion-fission hybrid power plant in central China.
As IEEE Spectrum notes, fusion is the perfect technology for fulfilling President Xi Jinping's 'Great Rejuvenation' agenda, which focuses on securing domestic energy, reducing emissions, and leading the world in advanced technologies. The U.S., on the other hand, is taking another approach by largely letting private industry invest in fusion, which is why the South China Morning Post compares China's BEST reactor with the reactor built by Commonwealth Fusion Systems—a spinoff from MIT. The company's reactor, SPARC, also aims to demonstrate net output by 2027.
The oft-quoted phrase related to fusion development is that 'it's 30 years away—and it always will be.' However, with a technological race heating up between the U.S. and China, that phrase might soon need revising.
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