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Tokamak record time for plasma confinement is 403 seconds as of April 2023, see https://english.cas.cn/newsroom/mutimedia_news/202304/t20230...

403s is about 7 minutes, so less than Wendelstein 7-X.

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They could go longer. 7-8 mins is an arbitrary cut off out of fear that something might break (quench), knowing that enough data has been gathered for the time being.

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