BEST, the Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak is under construction in Hefei, China. A new, nearly 200-page joint research plan from ASIPP and EUROfusion spells out exactly what the facility aims to deliver.

It’s a China – Europe joint articulation of a concrete, phased mission for a fusion machine that sits directly between the present era of superconducting non-tritium machines (e.g., EAST) and a future pilot plant (CFEDR). The image below from the report clearly shows the strategic location that BEST is intended to play.

BEST is centrally positioned on the path to CFEDR (a pilot plant designed to generate electricity) and then to large-scale gigawatt-level power plants. CRAFT is the technology development platform and ITER is intended as a technology and physics knowledge transfer platform.