The Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences operates EAST, the first fully superconducting tokamak, and has set world records for sustained high-temperature plasma operation.
The Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences — known internationally as ASIPP — is headquartered on Science Island in Hefei, Anhui Province. Founded in 1978, ASIPP has grown from a modest plasma research group into one of the world's most productive fusion laboratories, operating major experimental facilities while contributing substantially to the ITER project and leading the engineering design of China's planned fusion power demonstration reactor.1
ASIPP's flagship device is EAST (originally designated HT-7U), which achieved first plasma in 2006 as the world's first tokamak with a fully superconducting magnet system — both toroidal and poloidal coils wound from niobium-titanium superconductor. This engineering choice was deliberate: a future fusion power plant must operate in steady state, and superconducting magnets are the only practical technology for the continuous magnetic fields that steady-state operation demands.
EAST features a D-shaped cross-section with major radius 1.88 m, minor radius 0.45 m, and toroidal field up to 3.5 T. It is equipped with lower-hybrid current drive, electron cyclotron resonance heating, ion cyclotron resonance heating, and neutral beam injection — a versatile suite that allows researchers to explore multiple operational scenarios relevant to ITER and beyond.2
EAST's defining scientific contribution has been its systematic extension of plasma pulse duration at reactor-relevant parameters. While many tokamaks produce high-performance plasmas lasting seconds, EAST has demonstrated discharges sustained for hundreds of seconds in high-confinement mode. These long-pulse experiments are uniquely valuable because they expose physics and engineering challenges — wall conditioning, particle recycling, impurity accumulation, heat exhaust, and current profile evolution — that are invisible in short pulses but will dominate reactor operation.3
ASIPP is a major contributor to ITER through China's Domestic Agency, delivering components including superconducting conductor, correction coils, power supply systems, and diagnostic instruments. This participation has built industrial capacity across Chinese manufacturing and strengthened ASIPP's engineering teams in preparation for China's next step: CFETR, the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor.
CFETR is designed as a bridge between ITER and a commercial power plant, with a mission to demonstrate tritium self-sufficiency and electricity generation. Current design studies envision a superconducting tokamak with major radius approximately 7.2 m and fusion power in the range of 200 MW to 1.5 GW depending on the operational phase, with first plasma targeted in the 2030s. ASIPP leads the CFETR engineering design effort, leveraging its experience with EAST and ITER to address the integration challenges of a burning plasma device.4
Beyond tokamak physics, ASIPP maintains active programs in plasma-material interactions, fusion neutronics, tritium technology, and superconducting magnet development. The institute's workforce exceeds 1,000 researchers and engineers, making it one of the largest single-site fusion organizations in the world.5