Compared to the stellerator, tokamak is an older design. Germans have sucessfully built and tested the second generation stellerator, Wendelstein 7-X[1]. Now it

Compared to the stellerator, tokamak is an older design. Germans have sucessfully built and tested the second generation stellerator, Wendelstein 7-X[1]. Now it will run for 32 minutes, where the Tokamak design is targeted for 1000 seconds, or 16 minutes. (Yes, a stellerator is much harder to build, but it's easier to control the plasma with; building one became feasible only after doing finite element analysis optimizations.) That they got the tokamak design to work is a testament to "when in doubt, use brute force" maxim by Ken Thompson. It shows what can be done when banging on something until it works, but I don't think it's the best way forward, because the stellerator design already works, is easier to control plasma with, and is now in its third revision. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X