China’s BEST fusion device targets first electricity by 2030

In Hefei, Anhui, workers are assembling a giant donut-shaped fusion machine from eight orange-slice segments. Once joined, the parts will form the closed cavity where plasma burns and fusion reactions take place. The device is BEST, China’s compact fusion experiment, and its research plan aims to demonstrate the first kilowatt-hours of electricity generated from fusion by 2030.

That goal marks a shift in what China wants from its “artificial suns.” EAST, the older Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, has already sustained plasma at 100 million degrees Celsius for 1,066 seconds, a world record reported in January 2025. After a further dual-hundred-million-degree breakthrough in March 2025, BEST is intended to go beyond proving that fusion reactions can occur: it is being built to test a complete, cyclic engineering system that can stably output energy.

The Hefei machine is not China’s only route. In Chengdu, engineers are accelerating a stainless-steel cylinder more than 20 meters long, the country’s first fusion device using a linear field-reversed configuration. It is planned to begin operation at the end of 2026, with targets of tens of millions of degrees and commercially usable neutrons. Compared with the large toroidal tokamak design, the linear machine follows a more compact path.

The technology is also pulling an industrial network behind it. Fusion devices require superconducting materials and specialty metals, along with magnets, vacuum, cryogenic, heating and power systems. Components such as the first wall and divertor face the plasma directly. Some of that engineering is already crossing into medicine: in August 2026, a domestically developed superconducting proton therapy device treated its first clinical-trial subject, while safety, testing and electromagnetic-compatibility expertise from proton therapy is feeding back into BEST.

So what changes, concretely? If BEST reaches its 2030 target, China will have demonstrated fusion-generated electricity rather than only extreme plasma conditions. That would still fall short of a commercial power plant. Dozens of domestic fusion companies completed financings in the first half of 2026, totaling more than 7 billion yuan.