In February 2025, the French tokamak WEST achieved a world record by maintaining a hydrogen plasma for 1,337 seconds—over 22 minutes—at a temperature of 50 million degrees Celsius. This marks a 25% improvement over the previous record held by China's EAST tokamak, which had sustained a plasma for 17 minutes and 46 seconds. While this is a significant milestone, no tokamak has yet achieved energy breakeven, a point where the energy produced by fusion equals or exceeds the energy required to sustain the reaction. This threshold was recently crossed by the American laser-based National Ignition Facility (NIF), which achieved an amplification factor of 1.54—meaning it produced 1.54 times more energy than it consumed. Since the 1950s, scientists have been working to confine plasma at temperatures ten times hotter than the Sun's core in a laboratory. Tokamaks, which are ring-shaped devices that use magnetic fields to contain the plasma, have become the primary method for pursuing nuclear fusion. Despite decades of progress and increasingly advanced technology, none of these devices have yet been able to power a single light bulb or contribute to the electrical grid. The challenge lies in the extreme conditions required for fusion, where temperatures exceed 150 million degrees and matter exists in a state known as plasma—neither solid, liquid, nor gas, but a superheated mix of charged particles. To keep the plasma from touching the walls of the tokamak, which would instantly vaporize any material, scientists use powerful magnetic fields to levitate it. This is a highly delicate process, and even minor instabilities can cause the plasma to collapse within seconds. The French tokamak WEST, located at the CEA’s Cadarache facility, achieved its record using giant magnets and walls lined with tungsten, a material capable of withstanding extreme heat. This success highlights the progress being made, even as the path to practical fusion remains long and complex. Despite repeated breakthroughs, the promise of commercial nuclear fusion has always seemed just out of reach. A common joke among physicists is that fusion will always be 20 years away, no matter the decade. This reflects the reality that while each generation of researchers believes they are on the cusp of success, new challenges often emerge. The energy breakeven threshold remains unmet by all current tokamaks. The highest amplification factor achieved so far—1.54—was reached by the NIF using a different approach called inertial confinement, which relies on lasers instead of magnetic fields. The ITER project, a 25 billion euro international collaboration, aims to change this. Its goal is to achieve an amplification factor of ten, producing 500 megawatts of fusion power from just 50 megawatts of input energy. To do this, ITER has developed the largest pulsed superconducting electromagnet ever built—the central solenoid. This device must operate at minus 269 degrees Celsius, just 4 degrees above absolute zero, to maintain the superconducting properties of its niobium-tin material. South Korea's KSTAR tokamak has also made progress, testing systems that will be used in ITER on plasmas of similar scale and temperature. As fusion research continues, it raises questions about how society values long-term scientific efforts in an era of rapid technological change. Unlike digital innovations that often appear within months, fusion requires decades of patience and global cooperation. Yet, each breakthrough brings humanity closer to a future where energy is nearly limitless and free of long-lived radioactive waste. Whether this star-like flame will finally power our homes by the end of this century or continue to burn in laboratories for a few more decades remains to be seen.