Nuclear Fusion: A Path to Limitless Clean Energy?
- Nathan Guan
- Sep 7
- 5 min read
Written by: Nathan Guan
Edited by: Sophia Eli
In February 2025, France's Tungsten Environment in Steady-state Tokamak, or WEST fusion reactor, set a new world record by sustaining a nuclear fusion reaction for 1,337 seconds (22 minutes and 17 seconds). This surpassed China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) record of 17 minutes and 46 seconds, achieved just weeks earlier. This achievement turned the spotlight on the accelerating pace of fusion energy development. As the world seeks clean, limitless energy sources to combat climate change and meet global energy demands, WEST's success represents a significant step forward towards a future of unlimited energy.
What is WEST?
WEST is a tokamak reactor located at the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) Cadarache research center in southern France. Like other tokamaks, it uses powerful conducting magnets to generate a toroidal, or donut-shaped, magnetic field to confine and heat plasma. This creates a superheated state of matter where atomic nuclei can fuse, releasing vast amounts of energy. Unlike the sun, which relies on immense gravitational pressure to sustain fusion, tokamaks must reach 150 million degrees Celsius to achieve the same reaction on Earth. WEST’s record-breaking experiment in February 2025 involved maintaining stable plasma for over 22 minutes with a heating power of 2 megawatts (Lea, 2025). In future, WEST will continue to experiment with increased power input, aiming to achieve an even longer sustained reaction.
Fusion Energy: Why should we care when we have fission reactors?
The reaction most people associate with nuclear energy is produced with nuclear fission, where the heavy atomic nucleus is split into smaller particles, releasing energy and neutrons to trigger a chain reaction. However, fusion energy offers several clear advantages over nuclear fission:
No Long-Lived Radioactive Waste: Unlike fission, fusion uses hydrogen isotopes, which decay quickly and do not require long-term storage (Smithsonian Magazine, 2022).
Abundant Fuel Supply: The hydrogen isotopes fusion relies on deuterium and tritium, which can be extracted from seawater and lithium, making fuel virtually unlimited (New Atlas, 2025).
Inherent Safety: In a fission reaction, a single neutron can trigger a chain reaction by splitting heavy atomic nuclei, such as in uranium and plutonium, which release more neutrons to continue the reaction. If not properly controlled, this reaction can cause overheating, hence the term meltdowns, examples of which include the well-known Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. Fusion reactors cannot experience meltdowns because it is not a chain reaction. Each fusion event is independent and requires a specific temperature and pressure. Any disruption causes the plasma reaction to stop automatically (Smithsonian Magazine, 2022).
Zero Carbon Emissions: Fusion reactions generate no greenhouse gases, making it a clean energy source for mitigating climate change (TRT World, 2023).
Sociopolitical Perspectives on Fusion Technology
International Competition and Collaboration
The race to achieve practical fusion energy has geopolitical implications. While projects like the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) foster international collaboration, competition among nations is intensifying. China has invested heavily in fusion research through initiatives like EAST and the upcoming China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR), challenging Western dominance in this field (New Atlas, 2025).
France has been a leader in fusion energy development, and the European Union (EU) has recognized fusion's potential to be a safe and efficient energy source. In line with this belief, the EU has created collaborative laboratories through EUROfusion–the European Consortium for the Development of Fusion Energy. This consortium operates in alignment with a long-term strategy on the realization of fusion energy. The EU also created Skills4Nuclear, where it gathers universities and research centres from 19 EU countries to address the shortage of skills in nuclear energy and fusion energy. These efforts demonstrated the EU’s ambition to expand its influence in fusion energy and accelerate its commercialization through funded research efforts.
To accelerate humanity’s progress, the ITER project was recently created to bring together China, the EU, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States, with the common goal of advancing this technology, paving the way for its commercial use as a large-scale and environmentally friendly energy source. The EU, as the host of the project, contributes around 45.6% of the construction cost, while other members, such as China and the US, contribute around 9.1%. Even so, all members share 100% of intellectual property and each member has its domestic agency to organize the budget, sharing Computer Aided Design (CAD) designs with ITER, video conferencing in English, etc. In total, ITER represents three continents, close to 40 languages, and half of the world’s population.
Challenges Ahead
Despite recent progress, significant challenges remain before fusion can become a practical energy source:
Energy Balance
Achieving net energy gain remains one of fusion's most fundamental hurdles, as current experimental reactors still consume more energy than they produce (CEA, 2025).
The challenge is compounded by energy losses through various mechanisms, including radiation, particle transport, and inefficiencies in heating systems.
Even when fusion reactions generate significant energy, a means of efficiently capturing and converting this energy into electricity has yet to be developed.
The nature of fusion reactions means that sustaining continuous power production is crucial to achieving net energy gain, where energy produced is directly proportional to reaction duration.
Plasma Confinement and Stability
Containing plasma at temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius without it colliding with the reactor walls presents extraordinary engineering difficulties.
Controlling plasma fusion requires ultra-fast computer systems that can adjust powerful magnetic fields within milliseconds to contain the unpredictably swirling, superheated gas before it becomes unstable and collapses.
Scaling up plasma confinement from experimental to commercial size introduces new physics challenges that cannot be fully predicted by current models or smaller experiments.
Materials Development
Developing materials that remain structurally sound and maintain low activation properties (to minimize radioactive waste) requires entirely new alloys and composites.
The operational lifetime of critical components remains uncertain, with potential requirements for frequent replacement that could significantly impact economic viability (Sustainability Directory, 2025).
Conclusion
WEST’s record-breaking plasma duration signals the barreling progress made toward turning fusion into a practical energy source. It offers clear benefits over fission, such as abundant fuel, no long-lived radioactive waste, and zero carbon emissions. However, challenges such as achieving net energy gain, plasma stability, and material durability remain.
Global collaboration through ITER, along with national projects like EAST and WEST, accelerates fusion research, but geopolitical competition also plays a role. Currently, overcoming technical challenges remains the most important milestone to be achieved. However, once it is surpassed, turning the vision of limitless clean energy into reality is only a matter of time.
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References:
Admin. (2025, February 21). ITER members. ITER. https://www.iter.org/about/iter-members
CEA. (2025, February 18). WEST achieves record-breaking plasma duration. Le CEA https://www.cea.fr/english/Pages/News/nuclear-fusion-west-beats-the-world-record-for-plasma-duration.aspx
Gamillo, Elizabeth. (2022, January 10). China’s artificial sun just broke a record for the longest sustained nuclear fusion. Smithsonian. Magazine.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chinas-artificial-sun-reactor-broke-record-for-nuclear-fusion-180979336/
Lea, Robert. (2025, February 18). French WEST reaction breaks record in nuclear fusion. Advanced Science News. https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/french-west-reactor-breaks-record-in-nuclear-fusion/
Sustainability Directory. (2025, March 16). What Are the Challenges of Plasma Confinement? Energy Sustainability Directory. https://energy.sustainability-directory.com/question/what-are-the-challenges-of-plasma-confinement/
Szondy, David. (2025, January 27). China sets new fusion endurance record of over a thousand seconds. New Atlas. https://newatlas.com/energy/china-east-fusion-endurance-record-1000-seconds/
Toper, Ezgi. (2023). Everything we know about China’s ‘artificial sun’. TRT World. https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/everything-we-know-about-china-s-artificial-sun-53586
Wikipedia contributors. (2023). ITER. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
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