China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (East) in the eastern city of Hefei has produced and maintained “steady-state high-confinement long-plasma” for 403 seconds (about seven minutes), beating its own record.

The China Nuclear Energy Association said the experiment was conducted on 12 April and improved on a result from 2017 when the same type of plasma was produced and maintained for 103 seconds.

The East plant, which began operation in 2006 at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Hefei, is known in China as an “artificial sun”. It is used for research in nuclear fusion, a process which replicates the processes that occur naturally in the Sun and stars. The ultimate goal is to used controlled nuclear fusion to provide almost infinite clean energy.