France has achieved a milestone in the development of fusion energy having maintained a high-confinement plasma operation for 1,337 seconds – surpassing the recent Chinese record of 1,066 seconds.

The milestone was reached on 12 February 2025 at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). A plasma reaction was successfully sustained for over 22 minutes inside the WEST Tokamak reactor located at the CEA Cadarache facility in southern France.

This marks a 25% improvement on the record set just a few weeks prior at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak located at China’s Hefei Institutes of Physical Science.

Fusion is a potential source of almost limitless clean energy, which is seen as vital for energy security and the climate crisis. It uses the same process that powers the Sun by combining two forms of hydrogen and heating them at extreme temperatures.

There is currently a worldwide race towards commercialising fusion; however, given the infrastructure...