The Race for Fusion: understanding the changing global picture in the development of commercial fusion

Over the past few years, headlines about breakthroughs in nuclear fusion technology have started to become more frequent, highlight in gits potential to provide ‘clean and limitless’ energy. In fact, nuclear fusion already provides 25% of our renewable energy - via solar power. Sunlight is the by product of a continuous fusion reaction happening in the solar core, where hydrogen nuclei (protons) are fused together into helium (p-p chain), releasing a cascade of photons of light as a result. Whilst only a miniscule fraction of this energy can be collected by solar panels, a controlled fusion reaction on Earth could produce vast quantities of energy from tiny amounts of hydrogen fuel (predominantly the isotopes deuterium and tritium). This is the aim of many organisations across the world. Our progress towards a commercial fusion reactor has been a long journey, always appearing to be “30 years away”. However, with a huge projected rise in energy demand, and the development of new enabling technologies, this is changing.

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To successfully fuse atoms together, a triple product of temperature, density, and confinement time (the reciprocal of the rate of energy loss) must exceed some threshold value. Thus, a fusion device seeks to maximise these terms, with magnetically confined plasma (MCF) optimising temperature over longer times, and inertial reactions (ICF) creating rapid bursts of high temperature and pressure. The development of these fusion devices draws many parallels with the story of nuclear fission, which I described in an article in the March issue: ‘From Meltdown to Slowdown: how global policy has defined our current nuclear energy landscape’. Just as with fission and the atom bomb, in 1952 an ICF device realised the first man-made fusion reaction –the hydrogen bomb.

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It was only in 1958 (at the UN conference on atomic energy)that controlled fusion research was finally revealed, initiating international collaboration, and leading to the first fusion reactors like the Z-pinch, Stellarator, and finally the Tokamak. Given its promising initial tests, the tokamak (in which fusing plasma is confined into a ring-shape by magnets) was widely adopted as the primary focus of the global fusion research effort. In the1970s and 80s, various energy crises incentivised government investment into both domestic and international projects, with the Joint European Torus (JET) andInternational Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) seeking to unite their efforts.The annual US budget allocated to fusion research (which is itself indicative of global trends) increased by a factor of 7 during this period, as shown in Figure 2. However, as the energy crisis subsided, so did federal funding. The Department of Energy struggled to secure the finances for new domestic project sat national labs or universities, as the government’s preference was to share the financial burden with other counties on global projects such as ITER. As a result, the budget for non-ITER fusion research has remained flat since the mid-90s.

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This marked the beginning of a period with fewer constructions or major developments, and a shift in focus to emphasise science rather than the creation of a demonstration reactor. The only area to see a funding increase was ICF, specifically in building the National IgnitionFacility (completed in 2009), which uses lasers to compress and fuse tiny fuel capsules. This is great for generating ideal fusion conditions, but also for indirectly collecting relevant information for thermonuclear weapons. It was during this shift to scientific research that a solicitation for new Innovative Confinement Concept (ICC) designs in 1998 prompted labs to set up smaller scale experiments that would sow the seeds for a more diverse reactor design environment.

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This brings us to the present, where those large government run projects have achieved many major successes. JET (UK) and EAST (China) have continually set and broken many records, culminating in the US’s NationalIgnition Facility (NIF) finally reaching breakeven in 2022, in which the energy input to the fuel is equal to the energy released by the fusion reaction(omitting laser losses). A finishing line for an electricity producing reactor is also in sight, with ITER expecting full (D-T) plasma operation in 2039, and the STEP spherical tokamak announced in 2019 hoping to supply electricity to the UK grid by 2040. So, not quite 30 years away. However, others are aiming to roll out fusion even sooner: the private sector and China.

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Since 2000, the number of private companies developing fusion systems has grown rapidly, doubling since 2018 to over 60 companies (as shown on Figure 3). Many are spin-outs from the fusion programmes of leading universities or national labs, including those set up to create ICCs, providing a diverse range of both traditional and radically new reactor designs in development. The largest of these have seen major investment in the last few years, as shown in Figure 4, with the likes of Google, Microsoft, Jeff Bezos, andOpenAI seeding Commonwealth Fusion, TAE Technologies, and Helion Energy. TheSPARC reactor from Commonwealth expects to reach breakeven in 2027, over a decade before the planned completion of ITER and STEP, with both Common wealth and TAE also aiming for commercial energy production in the early 2030s. Even more ambitiously, Helion has agreed with Microsoft to deliver fusion power by 2028.

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To hit these targets and create demonstration reactors, these private companies need one thing - funding. Whilst private investments have propelled them thus far, failure to meet deadlines or produce a return on investment could discourage further support and significantly hinder the industry before it has begun. This is why the government providing support and choosing to develop fusion as a strategic national investment (without requiring short-term returns) is still vital. This is something that China has been addressing. Current Department of Energy predictions estimate that China is spending twice as much as the US on fusion, and more than all other countries combined. This includes large infrastructure projects such as a 100-acre fusion campus (CRAFT), a new tokamak by 2027 (BEST), and a near-term fission-fusion hybrid plant (Xinghuo). They are also training a large fusion workforce, awarding10 times the number of related PhDs than the US. Another major benefit is China’s access to advanced materials, capacitors, semiconductors, and other fusion components, which it has the capability to construct on site (such as at CRAFT near EAST), thus keeping its supply chain national. Overall, this putsChina at a similar footing to other major players in fusion development, despite launching its fusion programmes only 25 years ago.

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And so, with competition heating up between both private companies and governments, the race is now on to decide not just on where commercial fusion will first be realised, but the future of its global distribution. Fusion brings with it the promise of an abundant, safe, and crucially equitable energy resource, that surely benefits all of humanity. Thus, it is up to the governments of the world’s largest economies to invest, support, and collaborate with public and private projects nationally and internationally, so that fusion will become a shared global resource and finally end our reliance on fossil fuels.

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I would like to thank the team at Fusion Advisory Services for their advice and proofing of this article, and Jack Moore from the CleanAir Task Force for his insights surrounding current fusion energy policies.