France runs fusion reactor for record 22 minutes

In the latest test, the WEST Tokamak held its reaction for 1,337 seconds.

They could have gone a few seconds longer but decided to stop it there.

France really becoming returning to it's position as an international leader in so many different ways.

It amuses me that the two longest-running tokamaks are now EAST in China and WEST in Europe

Holy fuck that's pretty fucking good.

According to CEA, the next step will be to create even longer reactions that could amount to a combined time of several hours, with the temperature growing increasingly hotter.

This is actually pretty huge right? I know for the longest time there was always the joke of '5 more years and we will have fusion' but this is measurable progress right?

When will they be able to start ITER though?

The tricky bit isn't to get atoms to fuse. That's a fairly simple lab bench experiment. The problem is creating the right conditions where the fusion reaction is self-sustaining, with a net energy output. That means reaching temperatures of between 100 – 150 million °C (180 – 270 million °F), a pressure of five to 10 atmospheres at the point of reaction, and keeping a high-energy plasma stable for at least 10 seconds.

Nowhere in the article is said that they actually achieved these temperatures. This is poor journalism at its worst