China's BEST “artificial sun” project reaches new construction milestone
Construction of the main complex for the Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak, or BEST, has been completed in Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province. The facility is often described as China's next-generation “artificial sun” and is designed to reproduce fusion reactions similar to those that occur inside the Sun, with the long-term goal of developing a nearly inexhaustible source of clean energy.
Key components have been arriving at the site since July, while more than half of the overall assembly work has now been completed.
With the outer complex finished, engineers have entered the most challenging stage of assembling the main unit. The work involves installing the vacuum vessel, cold shield, toroidal field magnets and other precision components layer by layer.
The vacuum vessel will serve as the chamber where fusion reactions take place, while the cold shield provides thermal insulation. Powerful magnetic fields generated by the toroidal magnets will confine the high-temperature plasma and prevent it from touching the vessel walls.
BEST is scheduled for completion by the end of 2027. It will conduct deuterium-tritium burning plasma experiments targeting between 20 and 200 megawatts of fusion power and is designed to achieve net energy gain.
According to CCTV+, BEST will become an important experimental platform for advancing China's “artificial sun” program and controlled nuclear fusion technologies. The project is expected to bring fusion research closer to practical energy applications.
