Did it produce more energy than it consumed?
And you still have RAS (Reliabilty, Availabilty, Servicabilty) issues before it can become a reliable source of large-scale power.
You only need a 50 percent electrons to plasma ratio for fusion fission hybrid breeders to work and work well. The plasma generates 14MEV neutrons by the billions, those cross the vacuum and magnetic fields at a bit small fraction of C when they hit the uranium blanket suroinding said plasma they start a fast fission cascade that multiplies the energy by 80 to 200 times while also breeding huge amounts of plutonium via neutron capture. This Chinese reactor is well over Q=0.5 they could put a breed blanket around it today and make net power with that while also making 2500+ KG of plutonium a year just pulsing it for 1000 seconds and let it cascade down, pulse cascade ,pulse ...that’s tech available today. The question then becomes what’s do you do with all that PU , you need fast spectrum reactors to burn it all down to fission ash with no major or minor actinides , if you use PWR you only get one burn cycle and slew of actinides all of which are radioactive for 100K to 1MM plus years. China has a growing fast reactor program and fully reprocessing spent fuel tech something the USA completely abandoned. Fusion is the long term goal, fusion fission hybrid is tech available today provided you have reprocessing facilities and fast reactors to put PU fuel in. One fusion fission hybrid feeds 10 to 20 daughter reactors of a gigawatt each.
"Did it produce more energy than it consumed?" No.
WEST Tokamak fusion reactor, Cadarache, southern France:
The biggest competitor to China's EAST is the smaller WEST at the Cadarache facility in southern France.
WEST is an international effort, including the US, and in May 2024 achieved 6 minutes at 50 million degrees.
One advantage of WEST is that it uses tungsten lining -- considered more suitable for commercial-scale fusion machines compared to graphite used by EAST.
WEST will eventually be superseded by a massive new fusion reactor, ITER, also internationally funded, and collocated with WEST in Cadarache, France.
ITER is about 100 times larger than WEST and 10 times larger than EAST.
ITER is intended to incorporate all of the lessons learned about nuclear fusion so far.
Construction began on ITER in 2010 and it's currently planned to be operational in 2039.
ITER will probably not generate more energy than it consumes.
For as long as I can remember, practical nuclear fusion was said to be possible within 20 years.
Now, some 50 years later, 20 years seems only 14 years away!
EAST fusion reactor, China:
