Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research , or KSTAR , is one of the most advanced test coalition reactor on the satellite . Nicknamed theKorean contrived sun , it has now exhibit sustained fusion temperature for almost a mo and the power to contain extremely hot blood plasma for over 100 minute .

Fusion is what powers lead , but in star topology , it bump at lower temperature than we call for to do it here on Earth . That ’s because gravity is keeping everything packed together so fusion is more probable to happen . So the temperature required on Earth for aTokamak system of rules – which is a donut - shaped reactor – is about seven times the temperature at the gist of the Sun : 100 million ° C ( 180 million ° F ) .

KSTAR first reached this threshold in 2018 but only for 1.5 seconds . A class afterward , they were able to keep the plasma that red-hot for 8 minute , increasing it to20 secondsin 2020 . Thelast recordwas in 2021 , when the plasma was kept that hot for half a bit . Since then , the team at the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy ( KFE ) has upgraded the gadget by building a novel tungsten divertor environment and they have pushed the temperature for longer .

Now , KSTAR can sustain 100 million ° C for 48 seconds – and it can keep raging plasma in the high - confinement manner ( also known as H - mode ) for 102 second . The goal is to reach 300 seconds of burning plasm by the close of 2026 .

“ Despite being the first experimentation prevail in the environment of the new tungsten divertors , thoroughgoing hardware examination and political campaign preparation enabled us to reach results surpassing those of late KSTAR records in a short period , ” Dr Si - Woo Yoon , Director of the KSTAR Research Center , said in astatement .

“ To achieve the ultimate goal of KSTAR operation , we plan to consecutive raise the performance of heating and current effort gimmick and also plug the core technologies required for foresighted - pulse rate high performance blood plasma operations . ”

Beyond the tungsten divertors , the whole system has been test for how it behaves under the fusion regime . experiment like KSTAR or the Joint European Torus ( JET ) – which has break adifferent recordrecently – are testbeds for both our ability to conflate using a tokamak and for the applied science needed to make the unification achievable , efficient , and sustainable .

KSTAR and JET are pathfinder reactor pave the way for prototypes like ITER and DEMO , which are full - scale prototypes of nuclear fusion reactors . ITER will make out on next year and should generate 10 time as much energy as put in . Its successor , DEMO , will generate electrical energy and 25 times the vigour put in .

“ This research is a gullible light for acquiring Congress of Racial Equality technologies required for the nuclear fusion reaction DEMO nuclear reactor , ” added KFE President , Dr Suk Jae Yoo . “ We will do our good to secure essence technologies essential for the operation of ITER and the grammatical construction of future DEMO reactors . ”

DEMO is gestate to commence construction soon as building architectural plan are require to be concluded this year .