Earlier this month the KSTAR fusion reactor broke its previous record and successfully sustained the plasma with ion temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius for 48 seconds.

The Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE) announced improvements in the performance of the plasma heating systems and advancements in high-temperature plasma operation and control techniques and also successfully maintained H-mode for a continuous duration of 102 seconds, which is the baseline operation mode for sustaining a high-temperature, high-density plasma state.

Dr Si-Woo Yoon, director of the KSTAR Research Center remarked that “Despite being the first experiment run in the environment of the new tungsten divertors, thorough hardware testing and campaign preparation enabled us to achieve results surpassing those of previous KSTAR records in a short period”. He further added that “To achieve the ultimate goal of KSTAR operation, we plan to sequentially enhance the performance of heating and current drive devices and also secure the core technologies required for long-pulse high performance plasma operations.”

The ultimate goal of KSTAR is to achieve 300 seconds of plasma operation with ion temperatures over 100 million degrees.

---