This Tuesday, The Fusion Report held a webinar called Fusion 2035: The 10-Year Shot Clock. The multi-panel webinar included Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Xcimer Energy, Pacific Fusion, Thea Energy, Peak Nano, nT-Tao, Helical Fusion, and ITER. The goal of the webinar was to discuss the key factors in the race to achieve the first commercial fusion energy system.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) 

Ben Byboth, Director Business Development and Strategy

Today CFS is the most highly-funded of the various private fusion companies, with total funding to date of roughly $2.06B and 1,3300 employees. CFS sees fusion energy as the “long game” to address the planet’s insatiable desire for electricity. Given the projected growth in electricity consumption of 1.5X to 3X by 2050, we will need 3,700 additional power plants, generating $1.8 trillion per year in electricity. Fusion energy is the only technology that can satisfy this demand without significantly increasing the cost of electricity and/or exacerbating the environmental damage done by fossil fuels. Key to CFS’s growth has been the mastery of building high-temperature superconductor (HTS) magnets, which they now build not just for themselves but for other companies as well. The proof points for this work will be the SPARC prototype fusion (“break-even”) plant, followed by the ARC power plant in Virginia. But most important to them is their ability to execute and impart their vision to others – customers, partners, and other stakeholders.

Xcimer Energy Corporation 

Connor Galloway, Chief Executive Officer

Xcimer Energy is an inertial confinement fusion (ICF) company in Denver, CO that is essentially commercializing the technology utilized by the Lawrence Livermore National Ignition Facility. They are approaching this by utilizing a 10MJ gas excimer dual-beam laser system that directly compresses and heats the fusion deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel, utilizing beam-shaping to heat the target uniformly. By reducing the number of laser beams (NIF utilized 192 beams) and using gas instead of solid glass, Xcimer has significantly reduced the cost of the overall laser system while increasing its efficiency. The end products of these efforts will be Xcimer’s ‘Vulcan’ plant which will demonstrate fusion break-even, followed by its ‘Athena’ plant that will actually put 100-500 MWe onto the grid. The only thing that is required to get fusion power on the grid is capital – each laser power plant will cost in the range of $1B.

Peak Nano 

John Tomko, Principal Product Development Leader 

Peak is a supply chain company that specializes in the development of high-temperature films for high-power capacitors utilized in pulsed power systems. Peak’s capacitor films utilize a US-based supply chain, and are made from layered nano-materials to realize specific material attributes. These films can be built for higher temperature ratings, higher voltage breakdowns per unit of thickness, or other desired capabilities. For fusion energy, the primary advantages over biaxially-oriented polypropylene (BOPP; the incumbent material for high-energy applications today) films include higher operating temperatures (up to 135 degrees C) without impacting lifetime. This can have a lot of value in fusion machines by reducing periodic maintenance costs.

Thea Energy

Brian Berzin, Co-Founder and CEO 

Thea Energy is focused on building a stellarator based on the work done at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), which is where the Thea spun out of. Their goal is to build small, more compact fusion energy systems, and they see the stellarator as being a simpler approach to commercial fusion. One thing that Thea uniquely does is that they utilize what they call “magnet pixels” (lots of smaller “point” magnets) that are software-controlled, in a similar manner to how a phased-array radar works. This allows Thea to essentially “sculpt” the magnetic fields both arbitrarily and dynamically, and simplifies both the building of the machines and updating the field approach based on measured results; essentially a “software-defined stellarator”. They see their first integrated stellarator (“Eos”) in roughly the 2029 timeframe, followed by their “Helios” power plant in roughly the 2035 timeframe. Their primary market targets are datacenters, high-energy industrial uses, and “brownfield” utility grid applications needing roughly 100 MWe of net electricity.

Pacific Fusion

Will Regan, President and Co-FoundeR

Pacific Fusion is an inertial confinement fusion (ICF) company, but one that uses electrical pulses to compress, heat, and confine the plasma rather than lasers, in a similar approach to what Sandia’s “Z-machine” does. From Pacific’s perspective, this approach allows for simpler targets and eliminates the large costs of solid-state lasers that NIF experienced. Pacific Fusion, which was founded in 2023, has raised nearly $1 billion in funding and has a staff of over 110 people, including many global experts on fusion, power infrastructure, and materials. The system utilizes “pulsers”, which you can think of as big capacitor banks that can drive very high current pulses through transmission lines into the ignition chamber; this has all been designed to be mass-produced to support scaling to commercial deployment. Currently, Pacific is building a system to demonstrate net facility Q>1 (i.e., more power out of the facility than goes into it) by 2030. This system will lead to a system that incorporates a thermal blanket to capture the energy and breed tritium, as well as the required fuel handling systems, which Pacific believes will be ready to put electricity on the grid in 2035.

ITER Organization 

Alain Becoulet, Deputy Director General – Chief Scientist 

Alain is the chief scientist of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program. From ITER’s perspective, fusion energy is critical to providing the electricity that the planet needs, while reducing the impact on the environment caused by today’s power plant fuels. ITER, like the many national laboratory fusion systems developed and under development today, is not meant to be a prototype for a fusion power plant. Rather, it is made to identify solutions to the demanding conditions inherent in fusion energy systems such as next-generation materials, tritium generation, exhaust management, designs supporting remote maintenance, and heat extraction approaches (primarily thermal blanket designs). ITER is also exploring the tradeoffs of system physical size versus magnetic field strength versus cost. ITER itself has a goal of achieving a Q equal to or greater than ten (10) in the mid-late 2030s, as well as achieving steady-state operation of up to an hour at a time. ITER is also committed to sharing the know-how that they realize with other organizations through their yearly workshops, “design manuals”, and other open forums. Finally, ITER is looking at how they can utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital tools to improve both engineering and operation of fusion energy machines and systems.

nT-Tao

Oded Gour-Lavie, CEO and Co-Founder 

nT-Tao’s focus for fusion energy systems is on small, easy to deploy fusion power plants in the 20 MWe to 50 MWe power range, for use in off-grid and micro-grid applications. The heart of nT-Tao’s solution is known as a quasi-symmetric compact stellarator. As one of the younger companies in fusion, nT-Tao is approaching things a little more differently than other companies. By focusing on small testbeds, they have been capable of building prototypes quickly, with over seven prototypes built since the company was founded in 2019. One of the things that nT-Tao sees as critical is government leadership (and just not funding) on the creation of robust supply chains. They also see the fact that there are over fifty fusion startups will eventually enable more “shots on target”, which significantly increases the likelihood of success. Finally, nT-Tao would like to see a US-led “sandbox” created for sub-50 MW fusion systems (similar to those proposed for SMR nuclear fission reactors) that would enable fast-track, multi-country certification and deployment practices for these devices. They see this as the easiest way to avoid being stuck in “regulatory approval purgatory”, which would significantly slow down the development and deployment of these devices.

Helical Fusion

Helical Fusion provided a five-minute video describing their approach to fusion. Like some of the other companies, Helical is building a stellarator-based fusion machine. The uniqueness of their approach lies in the use of highly flexible HTS cables. This architecture allows Helical to build very complex geometries easily. They are using this approach, plus a liquid metal first wall, to build a fairly complex machine economically.

Panel Discussion Highlights

Following the presentations, we had a panel discussion focused on five questions related to the successful commercialization of fusion energy. I will attempt to synthesize a summary from the answers provided by the panelists for each of the questions:

1. It seems that many of the supply chain areas are developing nicely. What are the greatest remaining supply chain challenges that fusion energy needs to conquer to successfully reach commercialization?
   The big challenge a lot of the fusion companies saw was how to get their suppliers to be ready to “scale up” when fusion takes off, more than in the basic capabilities that are needed. The best way that they see to do this is share milestones with potential suppliers, along with helping these companies find investment capital to scale up. From supplier companies, the issue is getting adequate visibility into these milestones and needs.

2. A lot of companies are looking at smaller fusion systems for applications like off-grid power, seaborne vessel propulsion, and eventually spacecraft. What unique challenges do these applications pose for fusion systems?
   The challenge is not just “scaling down” these systems, but deploying and servicing these systems as well, and to do so on the (likely) smaller margins associated with these systems. On the scaling down, energy densities go up, making a number of things much more difficult. However at the same time, the larger a system is, the higher the risks are, so it is a balancing act for sure.

3. How can large “experimental” efforts like ITER benefit fusion commercialization over the long term?
   There are a lot of areas where ITER and programs like it can and have helped fusion commercialization. Some examples of this include plasma-facing materials, thermal blankets, the right types of concrete to use in building fusion plants, and fuel systems. While fusion is a race, it doesn’t mean that it all has to be done “in the dark” and without any cross-organization collaboration. The best ways to do this are open and public collaborations, making the work that these labs have done available to the organizations going after commercial fusion energy. Programs like ITER and the national labs have also helped to create the human capital and knowledge base that companies need to draw on for their talent pool today.

4. What would you tell someone entering college why they should get involved in fusion, whether in fusion physics, fusion engineering, or other areas?
   This question really applies not only to engineers and physicists, but also to the trades, such as welding, machining, pipefitters, and other capabilities needed for building complex systems. It is an area that all of the panelists agree is a challenge. While colleges and universities have recruiting programs that the fusion energy companies work with, this is much harder for the trades where the number of programs has significantly dwindled over time, and where fusion companies are competing with the large number of organizations needing the same skills. However, the panelists agreed that the “why” people should go into fusion is that it is involves the assembly of the single-most complex systems that man have built to date, and because it is very exciting and will change the future.

5. What is the right role for governments to play in the furthering of fusion energy towards commercialization?
   The analogy of past programs like this is the commercialization of space launch, where the government put significant amounts of funding into to get a handful of companies that now provide commercial space launch services. These programs in the early 2000s involved government investments of billions of dollars, where fusion’s milestone program has spent maybe $50M so far, and is missing help on the commercialization side. Here, one of the areas that governments can help with is regulations, but also with power plant construction loan guarantees. And remember that the Chinese government is spending billions on commercial fusion development to accelerate their drive towards leadership here. Government funding can really help enable “parallel” efforts to push fusion into a commercially deployable technology.

Summary - “Shot-Clock” or “White Flag”, Fusion is Proceeding Well! 

Whether the right analogy is a shot clock or a racing white flag, fusion is clearly a race, but one where everyone can benefit. Because the demand for electricity is continuing to increase (and is likely to continue to do so at least for the next few decades), fusion is the only likely source for baseline electricity that can help supply this demand. The good thing is that the commercialization of fusion is going well across a number of different companies and approaches, and the supply chain is developing. Can we do more to get fusion to the finish line? The answer has to be “of course”; the example of the US government helping in the commercialization of spaceflight certainly illustrates how government money can be valuable in making a highly technical market happen. The real question is “where to put the money”.

Watch the full Webcast here: