Korean Fusion Project Announces World Record Operation for a Fusion Reactor

An article on the Phys.org site reports that the South Korean fusion project The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) has broken a world record for the operation of a fusion reactor.

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-korean-artificial-sun-world-sec-long.html

KSTAR announced that it had been able to operate their Tokama for 20 seconds at temperatures of over 100 million degrees. Until now, no fusion reactor of this kind has been able to sustain such temperatures beyond 10 seconds.

Director of KSTAR Si-Woo Yoon made this comment on the achievement:

“The technologies required for long operations of 100 million- plasma are the key to the realization of fusion energy, and the KSTAR’s success in maintaining the high-temperature plasma for 20 seconds will be an important turning point in the race for securing the technologies for the long high-performance plasma operation, a critical component of a commercial nuclear fusion reactor in the future.”