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On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of China's Reform and Opening, President Xi Jinping visited the Exhibition of Achievements and explained ITER and fusion energy development in China to the other six members of the Political Bureau, the highest decision-making body in China.

Starting this week, politicians, scientists, strategists and non-governmental organizations meet in Katowice, Poland, for the 24th United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP24. ITER will present its quest for a new and clean source of energy on Thursday, 6 December, as physicist Greg de Temmerman steps into the ring to share the latest updates on the project.

Following his talk, starting at 11:00 a.m. in the Climate Action Hub amphitheatre, there will be a screening of the award-winning fusion documentary "Let there be Light."

You can see the entire talk on the COP24 website. Click on the respective agenda item on the right-hand side - the video will start after about one minute.

The stellarator fusion device Wendelstein 7-X achieved record results during its three-month experimental campaign in 2018, reports the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany.

In experiments run from July to October, operators were able to improve plasma temperatures and densities over the first campaign and achieve long discharge times of up to 100 seconds. A 30-second plasma at 6 MW was achieved with an input heating energy of 200 MJ, while at reduced power a 100-second plasma was achieved at 2 MW.

These results are "highly satisfying" and represent some of the best stellarator values to date, the press release reports. The team is now pursuing further engineering upgrades—notably the replacement of current plasma-facing components with actively water-cooled components—to enable even higher plasma energies and, ultimately, plasmas lasting 30 minutes.

Read the full report on IPP's website.