[_b8r0]

From TFA:

"No other fusion power plant in the world has managed to run for more than ten seconds"

WEST[1] (Formerly Tore Supra) holds the continuous operation of a fusion reactor record time at 6 minutes 30 seconds.

It's always frustrating where teams build fantastic projects but then make false claims that are propagated across the Internet. Don't get me wrong, 20 seconds for a new reactor is good, they'll do longer. After all, the French did in 2003.

[1] https://www.iter.org/proj/itermilestones#18

[ClumsyPilot]

Perhaps the modes of operation were not comparable? Unless you really understand whats going on, i would not be calling it false claims.

However i do agree it is unclear

[amckenna]

I believe the difference here is the temperature. If you look at KSTAR's operating tests you can see that they have run for 72 seconds in the past, so they must be implying 20 seconds at > 100M, or their statement about the 20s runtime would be invalidated by their own operating history.

What's more - the scientific article about the Tore Supra 2003 test is paywalled, but based on the abstract it looks like it was a test of: "simultaneously heat removal capability and particle exhaust in steady-state fully non-inductive current drive discharges" and not a test of maximum sustained temperatures.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KSTAR [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09203...

[whatshisface]

Maybe it's the specific word, "power plant," that qualifies the claim.