China's planned next-step fusion device after EAST — designed to bridge the gap between ITER and a commercial power plant with tritium self-sufficiency and steady-state operation.
CFETR — the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor — is the centerpiece of China’s long-term fusion energy strategy. Conceived as the machine that will take Chinese fusion science from ITER-era physics experiments to power-plant-relevant engineering, CFETR is designed to demonstrate two capabilities that ITER explicitly does not address: sustained tritium self-sufficiency and steady-state plasma operation at reactor-relevant power levels. If built as currently envisioned, it would be among the largest and most ambitious fusion devices ever constructed outside the ITER project itself.[1]
CFETR’s design has undergone significant evolution since its first conceptual studies around 2012–2014. Early proposals described a device with a major radius of approximately 5.7 m and fusion power around 200 MW — a machine roughly comparable in scale to ITER but focused on different objectives. By the late 2010s, the design had grown substantially. Current published parameters describe a device with a major radius of 7.2 m, a toroidal field of 6.5 T, and a two-phase operating plan: Phase I targeting 200 MW of fusion power to validate tritium breeding, and Phase II targeting 1 GW or more to demonstrate electricity production.[2]
CFETR’s primary technical goals distinguish it from both ITER and the various national DEMO concepts. First, it must demonstrate a tritium breeding ratio (TBR) greater than 1.0 in an integrated reactor environment — not in a test blanket module as ITER plans, but in a full breeding blanket system covering the entire first wall. Second, it must operate in steady state or very long pulses (hours to days), validating the plasma control, heating, and current-drive systems needed for a power plant. Third, it must test structural materials under fusion-relevant neutron fluence, generating the irradiation data that no existing facility can provide.[3]
The plasma scenario baseline is a fully non-inductive H-mode with a safety factor q95 around 6–7, sustained by a combination of neutral beam injection, electron cyclotron heating, and lower hybrid current drive. Bootstrap current fractions above 50% are targeted to minimize recirculating power requirements.
CFETR builds on the extensive operational experience accumulated on EAST (the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science. EAST — which set multiple world records for long-pulse H-mode operation — has served as a testbed for the plasma control and wall-conditioning techniques CFETR will require. China is also a full partner in the ITER project and expects to apply lessons from ITER operations directly to CFETR’s design and commissioning.[4]
As of mid-2026, CFETR remains in its engineering design phase. Detailed engineering of the magnet systems, breeding blanket, and divertor is under way at multiple Chinese institutions including the Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP), the Southwestern Institute of Physics (SWIP), and several universities. China has not announced a formal construction start date or confirmed a site, though Hefei has been discussed as a candidate. The project’s scale — comparable to ITER in ambition if not international complexity — means construction would require a national-level funding commitment that has not yet been publicly formalized.[5]