Breakthrough in China’s fusion energy: HL-3 tokamak achieves high ion temperature and fusion triple product

Controlled nuclear fusion represents the holy grail of clean energy, offering a nearly limitless power source with minimal environmental impact: China’s HL-3 tokamak, a key experimental device in the country’s fusion program.1,2 The deuterium-trillium (DT) fusion reaction depends on the plasma ion temperature. The reaction rate increases exponentially with increasing Ti. The fusion triple product (niTiτE) is a key metric for the fusion performance, where ni and τE are the plasma ion density and energy confinement time, respectively.