Present State of Chinese Magnetic Fusion Development and Future Plans

Abstract

Chinese magnetic confinement fusion (MCF) development has made significant progress during the past decade. With successful construction and operation of the EAST superconducting tokamak, China is playing a key role in advanced steady-state operations towards the next step ITER. The Chinese Fusion Engineering Testing Reactor (CFETR) is the next device for the Chinese MCF program which aims to bridge the gaps between the fusion experiment ITER and the demonstration reactor DEMO. Fusion power of CFETR will be in the range of 200 MW to over 1 GW. It will be operated in two phases: Steady-state operation and tritium self-sustainment will be the two key issues for the first phase with a modest fusion power up to 200 MW. The second phase aims for DEMO validation with a fusion power over 1 GW. The Chinese government has approved to proceed with the CFETR engineering design, and the project started on December 2017. Roadmap of Chinese MCF, gaps for construction and operation of CFETR, efforts to fill these gaps and speedup the fusion energy application in China are presented.