The Korea Institute of Fusion Energy has set a new record by running its KSTAR tokamak fusion reactor at one million degrees and maintaining super-hot plasma for 30 seconds, beating its own previous record by 10 seconds.

Construction of the KSTAR, or superconducting tokamak advanced research reactor, was completed in 2007 and since then it has made important steps towards providing net fusion energy. Last December, it set a world record by maintaining plasma at about 100 million °C for 20 seconds. Now, the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy has extended that time to 30 seconds.

The 30-second barrier is short of the 101 seconds set by the Chinese Academy of Sciences earlier this year, but it remains a significant milestone on the road to what could be cleaner, near-limitless energy produced by replicating the reactions that power the Sun.