Controlled thermonuclear fusion and the latest progress on China′s HT-7 supercinducting tokamak

After 50 years of research on controlled thermonuclear fusion, a new stage will be reached in 2003, when a site for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project will be chosen to start the construction. Scientists hope that this project could herald a new era in which the energy problem will be solved completely. The great progress made on the HT-7 superconducting tokamak in China has provided positive and powerful support for fusion research. The HT-7 is one of the only two superconducting tokamaks in the world that can carry out minute-scale high temperature plasma research, and has achieved a duration of 63.95s for the hot plasma discharge. This is a major step towards real steady-state operation of the tokamak configuration. We present an overview of the latest progress on the tokamak experiments in the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.