Pathfinder for steady-state high-confinement physics in tokamaks——EAST

With the achievement of controlled deuterium-tritium nuclear fusion on the scale of 10 MW in a tokamak, magnetic-confinement fusion entered the era of experimental reactors. A high-confinement steady-state tokamak is the key step to realize commercial fusion energy. China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) aims to solve the issues challenging ITER and future steady-state operation of fusion reactors, and has recently made significant progress in this area, demonstrating for the first time long pulse operation of a steady-state high-confinement regime of tokamak. This is an important step forward for ITER operation and future fusion reactor design.