Comparison between EAST and ITER tokamak

This paper provides an overview of nuclear fusion, which is considered as an ideal energy source for the future, with emphasis on its theoretical foundation and tokamak device. In nuclear fusion, the mass of products is always less than the mass of reactants, and this mass defect is converted into enormous released energy. Scientists have proposed several ideas to reach such extreme conditions for nuclear fusion. Among these concepts, the tokamak device which uses magnetic fields to generate heat and confine high temperature plasma is probably the most promising one. Over the last half century, with the unremitting endeavor of building and operation a series of international tokamak projects, magnetic confinement fusion has made a lot of satisfactory successes. In this paper, two representative tokamak devices are discussed, which are International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) and Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), about their major difference and similarities between them. ITER is constructed with the cooperation of many countries, and it is the largest tokamak project which targets to prove nuclear fusion is commercially feasible. EAST is another tokamak device which is located in China and made great achievements of magnetic confinement nuclear fusion, such as the record-breaking plasma temperature.