A major breakthrough in developing nuclear fusion – in the form of a new plasma operations experiment called the Super I-Mode – was recently discovered and demonstrated at the Experiment Advanced Superconducting Tokamak facility, or EAST.

The outcome at EAST – located in Hefei city, capital of East China's Anhui province – was declared to be a big breakthrough, in an announcement by the Hefei Institute of Physical Science and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The research team from the Institute of Plasma Physics, the Hefei Institute of Physical Science and CAS reported their findings in paper published in the respected journal Science Advances on Jan 6. 

Mastering nuclear fusion, which is an abundant, safe and environmentally competitive energy, is a great challenge for humanity.

Tokamak represents one of the most promising paths towards controlled fusion, according to the research paper.

Obtaining a high-performance, steady-state and long-pulse plasma regime remains a critical issue, it added.

In the study, a steady-state plasma with a world-record pulse length of 1,056 seconds was obtained. The density and the divertor peak heat flux were reported to be well controlled, with no core impurity accumulation – and a new high-confinement and self-organizing regime (the Super I-mode = I-mode + e-ITB) was discovered and demonstrated.

These achievements are understood to have contributed to the integration of fusion plasma technology and physics, which is said to be essential to operating next-step devices.