Before launching into the news, I have a few explanatory bits, which can be easily skipped.
Fusion energy
There’s a lot of interest in fusion energy, a form of nuclear energy, that promises to be sustainable and ‘clean’. Adam Stein’s May 29, 2024 article “Nuclear fusion: the true, the false and the uncertain” for Polytechique insights (Institut polytechnique de Paris) tempers some of the enthusiasm/hype about fusion energy. In this excerpt, he examines claims about ‘clean’ energy, Note: A link has been removed,
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#2 Fusion will become a source of clean, limitless energy
TRUE — Fusion is generally seen as “clean” energy.
It produces substantially less radioactive “waste” than fission – though it is possible that with emerging technologies, waste from fusion and fission could be reused. Still, like other nuclear fission, fusion will require appropriate and comprehensive oversight. One concern is that the reaction could be used to generate fissile materials usable in weapons. Fusion machines and related reactions do not directly produce material useful for weapons. The reaction does, however, create an enormous amount of neutrons.
On the bright side, these neutrons could help generate more fuel for the fusion reaction — many designs plan to incorporate a “breeding blanket,” a layer of materials that acts as heat insulation, but is also lined with materials that can capture the neutrons to create more tritium. Uranium or thorium could also be placed in some breeding blanket designs. The concern is that these materials, once irradiated, could generate uranium-235 that can be used in nuclear weapons. Physical ways to deter this process exist, such as requiring the use of lithium‑6 in the blanket modules. The IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] will be important in ensuring non-proliferation safeguards and oversight.
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ITER
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is (from its Wikipedia entry), Note: Links have been removed,
ITER (initially the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, iter meaning “the way” or “the path” in Latin)[4][5][6] is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject aimed at creating energy through a fusion process similar to that of the Sun. It is being built next to the Cadarache facility in southern France.[7][8] Upon completion of the main reactor and first plasma, planned for 2033–2034,[9][10] ITER will be the largest of more than 100 fusion reactors built since the 1950s, with six times the plasma volume of JT-60SA in Japan, the largest tokamak operating today.[11][12][13]
The long-term goal of fusion research is to generate electricity; ITER’s stated purpose is scientific research, and technological demonstration of a large fusion reactor, without electricity generation.[14][11] ITER’s goals are to achieve enough fusion to produce 10 times as much thermal output power as thermal power absorbed by the plasma for short time periods; to demonstrate and test technologies that would be needed to operate a fusion power plant including cryogenics, heating, control and diagnostics systems, and remote maintenance; to achieve and learn from a burning plasma; to test tritium breeding; and to demonstrate the safety of a fusion plant.[12][8]
ITER is funded and operated by seven member parties: China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. In the immediate aftermath of Brexit, the United Kingdom continued to participate in ITER through the EU’s Fusion for Energy (F4E) program until September 2023.[15][1][2] Switzerland participated through Euratom and F4E until 2021,[16] though it is poised to rejoin in 2026 following subsequent negotiations with the EU.[17][18] ITER also has cooperation agreements with Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan and Thailand.[19]
Construction of the ITER complex in France started in 2013,[20] and assembly of the tokamak began in 2020.[21] The initial budget was close to €6 billion, but the total price of construction and operations is projected to be from €18 to €22 billion;[22][23] other estimates place the total cost between $45 billion and $65 billion, though these figures are disputed by ITER.[24][25] Regardless of the final cost, ITER has already been described as the most expensive science experiment of all time,[26] the most complicated engineering project in human history,[27] and one of the most ambitious human collaborations since the development of the International Space Station (€100 billion or $150 billion budget) and the Large Hadron Collider (€7.5 billion budget).[note 1][28][29]
ITER’s planned successor, the EUROfusion-led DEMO, is expected to be one of the first fusion reactors to produce electricity in an experimental environment.[30]
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Tokamak
As this comes up again in the next section, here’s more about the tokamak from its Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,
A tokamak (/ˈtoʊkəmæk/; Russian: токамáк) is a device which uses a powerful magnetic field generated by external magnets to confine plasma in the shape of an axially symmetrical torus.[1] The tokamak is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices being developed to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power. The tokamak concept is currently one of the leading candidates for a practical fusion reactor for providing minimally polluting electrical power.[2]
In a landmark achievement for fusion energy, ITER has completed all components for the world’s largest, most powerful pulsed superconducting electromagnet system.
ITER is an international collaboration of more than 30 countries to demonstrate the viability of fusion—the power of the sun and stars—as an abundant, safe, carbon-free energy source for the planet.
The final component was the sixth module of the Central Solenoid, built and tested in the United States. When it is assembled at the ITER site in Southern France, the Central Solenoid will be the system’s most powerful magnet, strong enough to lift an aircraft carrier.
The Central Solenoid will work in tandem with six ring-shaped Poloidal Field (PF) magnets, built and delivered by Russia, Europe, and China.
The fully assembled pulsed magnet system will weigh nearly 3,000 tons. It will function as the electromagnetic heart of ITER’s donut-shaped reactor, called a Tokamak.
How does this pulsed superconducting electromagnet system work?
Step 1. A few grams of hydrogen fuel—deuterium and tritium gas—are injected into ITER’s gigantic Tokamak chamber.
Step 2. The pulsed magnet system sends an electrical current to ionize the hydrogen gas, creating a plasma, a cloud of charged particles.
Step 3. The magnets create an “invisible cage” that confines and shapes the ionized plasma.
Step 4. External heating systems raise the plasma temperature to 150 million degrees Celsius, ten times hotter than the core of the sun.
Step 5. At this temperature, the atomic nuclei of plasma particles combine and fuse, releasing massive heat energy.
A tenfold energy gain
At full operation, ITER is expected to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power from only 50 megawatts of input heating power, a tenfold gain. At this level of efficiency, the fusion reaction largely self-heats, becoming a “burning plasma.”
By integrating all the systems needed for fusion at industrial scale, ITER is serving as a massive, complex research laboratory for its 30-plus member countries, providing the knowledge and data needed to optimize commercial fusion power.
A global model
ITER’s geopolitical achievement is also remarkable: the sustained collaboration of ITER’s seven members—China, Europe, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States. Thousands of scientists and engineers have contributed components from hundreds of factories on three continents to build a single machine.
Pietro Barabaschi, ITER Director-General, says, “What makes ITER unique is not only its technical complexity but the framework of international cooperation that has sustained it through changing political landscapes.”
“This achievement proves that when humanity faces existential challenges like climate change and energy security, we can overcome national differences to advance solutions.”
“The ITER Project is the embodiment of hope. With ITER, we show that a sustainable energy future and a peaceful path forward are possible.”
Major progress
In 2024, ITER reached 100 percent of its construction targets. With most of the major components delivered, the ITER Tokamak is now in assembly phase. In April 2025, the first vacuum vessel sector module was inserted into the Tokamak Pit, about 3 weeks ahead of schedule.
Extending collaboration to the private sector
The past five years have witnessed a surge in private sector investment in fusion energy R&D. In November 2023, the ITER Council recognized the value and opportunity represented by this trend.
They encouraged the ITER Organization and its Domestic Agencies to actively engage with the private sector, to transfer ITER’s accumulated knowledge to accelerate progress toward making fusion a reality.
In 2024, ITER launched a private sector fusion engagement project, with multiple channels for sharing knowledge, documentation, data, and expertise, as well as collaboration on R&D. This tech transfer initiative includes sharing information on ITER’s global fusion supply chain, another way to return value to Member governments and their companies.
In April 2025, ITER hosted a public-private workshop to collaborate on the best technological innovation to solve fusion’s remaining challenges.
The ITER experiment under construction in southern France. The tokamak building is the mirrored structure at center. Courtesy ITER Organization/EJF Riche.
How have ITER’s Members contributed to this achievement?
Under the ITER Agreement, Members contribute most of the cost of building ITER in the form of building and supplying components. This arrangement means that financing from each Member goes primarily to their own companies, to manufacture ITER’s challenging technology. In doing so, these companies also drive innovation and gain expertise, creating a global fusion supply chain.
Europe, as the Host Member, contributes 45 percent of the cost of the ITER Tokamak and its support systems. China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States each contribute 9 percent, but all Members get access to 100 percent of the intellectual property.
United States
The United States has built the Central Solenoid, made of six modules, plus a spare.
The U.S. has also delivered to ITER the “exoskeleton” support structure that will enable the Central Solenoid to withstand the extreme forces it will generate. The exoskeleton is comprised of more than 9,000 individual parts, manufactured by eight U.S. suppliers. Additionally, the U.S. has fabricated about 8 percent of the Niobium-Tin (Nb3Sn) superconductors used in ITER’s Toroidal Field magnets.
Russia
Russia has delivered the 9-meter-diameter ring-shaped Poloidal Field magnet that will crown the top of the ITER Tokamak.
Working closely with Europe, Russia has also produced approximately 120 tonnes of Niobium-Titanium (NbTi) superconductors, comprising about 40 percent of the total required for ITER’s Poloidal Field magnets.
Additionally, Russia has produced about 20 percent of the Niobium-Tin (Nb3Sn) superconductors for ITER’s Toroidal Field magnets.
And Russia has manufactured the giant busbars that will deliver power to the magnets at the required voltage and amperage, as well as the upper port plugs for ITER’s vacuum vessel sectors.
Europe
Europe has manufactured four of the ring-shaped Poloidal Field magnets onsite in France, ranging from 17 to 24 meters in diameter.
Europe has worked closely with Russia to manufacture the Niobium-Titanium (NbTi) superconductors used in PF magnets 1 and 6.
Europe has also delivered 10 of ITER’s Toroidal Field magnets and has produced a substantial portion of the Niobium-Tin (Nb3Sn) superconductors used in these TF magnets.
And Europe is creating five of the nine sectors of the Tokamak vacuum vessel, the donut-shaped chamber where fusion will take place.
China
China, under an arrangement with Europe, has manufactured a 10-metre Poloidal Field magnet. It has already been installed at the bottom of the partially assembled ITER Tokamak.
China has also contributed the Niobium-Titanium (NbTi) superconductors for PF magnets 2, 3, 4, and 5, about 65 percent of the PF magnet total—plus about 8 percent of the Toroidal Field magnet superconductors.
Additionally, China is contributing 18 superconducting Correction Coil magnets, positioned around the Tokamak to fine-tune the plasma reactions.
China has delivered the 31 magnet feeders, the multi-lane thruways that will deliver the electricity to power ITER’s electromagnets as well as the liquid helium to cool the magnets to -269 degrees Celsius, the temperature needed for superconductivity.
Japan
Japan has produced and sent to the United States the 43 kilometers of Niobium-Tin (Nb3Sn) superconductor strand that was used to create the Central Solenoid modules.
Japan has also produced 8 of the 18 Toroidal Field (TF) magnets, plus a spare—as well as all the casing structures for the TF magnets.
Japan also produced 25 percent of the Niobium-Tin (Nb3Sn) superconductors that went into the Toroidal Field magnets.
Korea
Korea has produced the tooling used to pre-assemble ITER’s largest components, enabling ITER to fit the Toroidal Field coils and thermal shields to the vacuum vessel sectors with millimetric precision.
Korea has also manufactured 20 percent of the Niobium-Tin (Nb3Sn) superconductors for the Toroidal Field magnets.
Additionally, Korea has manufactured the thermal shields that provide a physical barrier between the ultra-hot fusion plasma and the ultra-cold magnets.
And Korea has delivered four of the nine sectors of the Tokamak vacuum vessel.
India
India has fabricated the ITER Cryostat, the 30-metre high, 30-metre diameter thermos that houses the entire ITER Tokamak.
India has also provided the cryolines that distribute the liquid helium to cool ITER’s magnets.
Additionally, India has been responsible for delivering ITER’s cooling water system, the in-wall shielding of the Tokamak, and multiple parts of the external plasma heating systems.
In total, ITER’s magnet systems will comprise 10,000 tons of superconducting magnets, with a combined stored magnetic energy of 51 Gigajoules. The raw material to fabricate these magnets consisted of more than 100,000 kilometers of superconducting strand, fabricated in 9 factories in six countries.
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What are the technical specifications for each of ITER’s magnet systems?
Central Solenoid (cylindrical magnet)
Height: 18 meters (59 feet) Diameter: 4.25 meters (14 feet) Weight: ~1,000 tonnes Magnetic field strength: 13 Tesla (280,000 times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field) Stored magnetic energy: 6.4 Gigajoules Will initiate and sustain a plasma current of 15 MA for 300-500 second pulses Fabricated in the United States Material: Niobium-tin (Nb₃Sn) superconducting strand produced in Japan Cooling: operated at 4.5 Kelvin (-269°C) using liquid helium cryogenics to maintain superconductivity Structure (exoskeleton): built to withstand 100 MN (meganewtons) of force—equivalent to twice the thrust of a space shuttle launch.
Poloidal Field Magnets (ring-shaped magnets)
Diameters: varying in range from 9 meters (PF1) to 10 meters (PF6) to 17 meters (PF2, PF5) to 25 meters (PF3, PF4) Weight: from 160 to 400 tonnes Fabricated in Russia, Europe (France) and China Material: niobium-titanium (NbTi) superconducting strand produced in Europe, China, and Russia Cooling: operated at 4.5 Kelvin (-269°C) using liquid helium cryogenics to maintain superconductivity
Toroidal Field Coils (D-shaped magnets, completed in late 2023)
Each coil: 17 meters high × 9 meters wide Weight: ~360 tonnes each Fabricated in Europe (Italy) and Japan Material: niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) superconducting strand produced in Europe, Korea, Russia, and the United States Cooling: operated at 4.5 Kelvin (-269°C) using liquid helium to maintain superconductivity
Correction Coils and Magnet Feeders
Correction Coils: manufactured by China; critical for fine plasma stability adjustments. Magnet Feeders: deliver cryogenics, electrical power, and instrumentation signals to the magnets; also produced by China
Vancouver’s (Canada) General Fusion news
Recently, there have been some big ups and downs for General Fusion as this May 5, 2025 General Fusion news release written as an open letter from the company’s Chief Executive Office (CEO), Greg Twinney
General Fusion has been at the forefront of fusion technology development for more than 20 years. Today, we stand as a world leader on the cusp of our most exciting technical milestone yet—and one of the most challenging financial moments in our history. We are closer than ever to delivering practical fusion, but success depends on securing the right financing partners to carry this breakthrough forward.
On April 29th [2025], we achieved a transformative milestone at our Vancouver, B.C., headquarters in Canada—we successfully compressed a large-scale magnetized plasma with lithium using our world-first LM26 fusion demonstration machine. The full, integrated system and diagnostics operated safely and as designed, and an early review of the data indicates we saw ion temperature and density increase, and our lithium liner successfully trapped the magnetic field. This was an incredible success for our first shot! What does this mean? From a technology perspective, we’re one step closer to bringing zero-carbon fusion energy to the electricity grid using our unique, home-grown Canadian technology that global industry leaders recognize as one of the most practical for commercialization.
Our incredible, innovative, and nimble team achieved these results about a year and a half after we launched the LM26 fusion demonstration program—designing, building, commissioning, optimizing, and operating on a rapid timeline with constrained capital. LM26 is the only machine of its kind in the world, designed and built to achieve the technical results required to scale a fusion technology to a practical power plant. It is backed by peer-reviewed scientific results published in 2024 and 2025 issues of Nuclear Fusion, making us one of only four private fusion companies in the world to have achieved and published meaningful fusion results on the path to scientific breakeven. We are also the only one with the machine already built to get there. Truly, there has never been a more promising time to be at—or invest in—General Fusion.
General Fusion has been around the block. We’ve proven a lot with a lean budget. We’re not a shiny new start-up with a drawing and a dream; we are experienced fusioneers with a clear view of the path to success and the machine to prove it. We’ve built a global network of partners and early adopters focused on a fusion technology—Magnetized Target Fusion—that is durable, cost-effective, fuel-sustainable, and practical. We are ready to execute our plan but are caught in an economic and geopolitical environment that is forcing us to wait.
Keeping a fusion company funded in today’s world requires more than just meaningful capital. It takes ambition, steadfast patience, a bold national vision aligned with the opportunity, and constant refreshing of the investor base as timelines stretch beyond typical fund horizons. Our mission has historically been supported financially by a mix of strong private investors and the Canadian federal government. We have been competing against aggressive nationally funded fusion programs around the world. We have risen to global leadership by charting a distinct course—founded on entrepreneurship and commercial focus—while others follow government-led or academic pathways. However, today’s funding landscape is more challenging than ever as investors and governments navigate a rapidly shifting and uncertain political and market climate.
This rapidly shifting environment has directly and immediately impacted our funding. Therefore, as a result of unexpected and urgent financing constraints, we are taking action now to protect our future with our game-changing technology and IP—including reducing both the size of our team and LM26 operations—while we navigate this difficult environment. We’re doing what resilient teams do and what we have done before: refocus, protect what matters, and keep building.
While this is a challenging time for General Fusion, it is also an attractive opportunity for those with the financial means to transform the world. Everything is in place—the technology, science, LM26, and the know-how and passion. All we need now is the capital to finish the job. We are opening our doors and actively seeking strategic options with investors, buyers, governments, and others who share our vision. Reach out now and become part of the future of energy.
Greg Twinney
Chief Executive Officer General Fusion, Inc.
Twinney also gave a May 8, 2025 radio interview(approximately 7 mins.) to Stephen Quinn of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) Early Edition.
May 8, 2025
General Fusion CEO, Greg Twinney tells Stephen Quinn how his company has made big breakthroughs in fusion energy – and how market chaos caused by President Trump has made it hard to find investors.
The interview provides an introduction to fusion energy and the company while this May 5, 2025 article by John Fingas for Betakit fills in some details, Note: Links have been removed,
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In a statement, General Fusion told BetaKit it was looking for $125 million USD (about $172.7 million CAD) to fulfill its goals. While the company didn’t share the scope of the layoffs, The Globe and Mail reported that the company let go of a quarter of staff.
General Fusion created its first magnetized plasma, which is needed for its fusion reactions, at its LM26 demonstration facility in March [2025], and conducted a large-scale test on April 29. It still plans to create plasma at a hotter 10 million C within months, and eventually to reach the 100-million-degree mark needed to achieve a “scientific breakeven equivalent” where LM26 could generate more energy than required for the reaction.
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The company ultimately hopes to deploy reactors based on its Magnetized Target Fusion technology, which creates fusion conditions in short pulses, by the mid-2030s. The technique theoretically costs less than the lasers or superconducting magnets used in designs like Tokamak reactors, and could be used in facilities close to the cities they serve. One 300-megawatt electrical plant powered by fusion could provide enough continuous power for 150,000 Canadian homes, the company claims.
The company has raised about $440 million CAD so far, including $69 million from the Government of Canada. Some of its private investors include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Shopify founder Tobi Lütke, and engineering consultancy Hatch. Bob Smith, the former CEO of Bezos’s spaceflight company Blue Origin, became a strategic advisor for General Fusion in early April [2025].
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“We’re not a shiny new startup with a drawing and a dream; we are experienced fusioneers with a clear view of the path to success and the machine to prove it,” he [Greg Twinney, General Fusion CEO] said.
It seems logical to follow with this:
Business investments and fusion energy
First, here’s more about the agency, which released a 2025 report on investments in fusion energy. The European Union (EU) has created an organization known as Fusion for Energy (F4E), from its Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,
Fusion for Energy(F4E) is a joint undertaking of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) that is responsible for the EU’s contribution to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the world’s largest scientific partnership aiming to demonstrate fusion as a viable and sustainable source of energy. The organisation is officially named European Joint Undertaking for ITER and the Development of Fusion Energy and was created under article 45 of the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community by the decision of the Council of the European Union on 27 March 2007 for a period of 35 years.[1]
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F4E recently released a report “Global investment in fusion private sector, 1st edition, Cutoff: 10 June 2025,” from the June 12, 2025 F4E press release,
The F4E Fusion Observatory has published its first-ever report, an analysis of global investment in the fusion private sector. Based on a collection of all available data, the analysis provides a picture of who is investing and where, showing rapid growth and significant geographical differences.
The figures reveal a sharp increase in investments in fusion start-ups in recent years. The total amount has grown from just over 1.5 billion EUR in 2020 to an estimated 9.9 billion EUR at present (June 2025), doubling in the last two years alone [emphasis mine]. The investment remains concentrated in the US, host of most private companies (38 out of 67), absorbing 60% of global funding. China comes second at 25%, with fewer projects (6) backed by large public funds [emphasis mine].
Meanwhile, Europe takes a smaller share of investment (5%) [emphasis mine], with Germany leading the continent at 460 M EUR million, just above the UK, at 416 M EUR. Among the EU’s seven private companies, the largest sums are received by Marvel Fusion and Focused Energy. F4E can support these emerging players by leveraging on its experience in large projects and knowledge of the market. For this purpose, F4E has an ongoing call inviting EU-based private fusion initiatives to collaborate.
The analysis goes on to present the origin and profile of the investors. While US funding is largely led by venture capital firms or big tech, those in the EU show a more even distribution between public and private investors.
As for the kinds of fusion concepts, magnetic confinement takes the lion’s share of global investment, at €6,1 billion, predominantly for Tokamaks (doughnut-shaped devices, similar to ITER). However, in Europe, inertial confinement technologies are the most funded in the private sector.
By contrast, when considering the public funding used for the in-kind contributions to ITER, the geographic distribution is rebalanced. The €6.8 billion invested by F4E in the EU supply chain is larger than other regions due to the EU’s larger share of the ITER project. This contribution has shaped a strong European industry, capable of delivering complex technologies for fusion. That said, investment in the supply chain, while substantial, has a different impact than equity in a fast-scaling fusion company.
The findings of the report will be discussed at the F4E Roundtable, a key stakeholder forum hosted this week by F4E in Barcelona. With these data-based insights, the F4E Observatory aims to support the policy conversation and help steer it towards the future EU fusion strategy.
It seems that Canadian fusion efforts are not on the EU’s radar.
Wrapping up
To state the obvious, it’s an exciting and volatile time. In addition to this latest breakthrough at ITER, my April 11, 2025 posting “The nuclear fusion energy race” covers some of what were then the latest international technical breakthroughs along with some coverage of how President Donald Trump’s tariffs were creating uncertainty for investors and, also, Bob Smith’s, former CEO of Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company Blue Origin, recent appointment as a strategic advisor for General Fusion.
I wish General Fusion good luck in finding new investors and, while it’s not a perfect energy solution, I wish all the researchers the best as they race to find ways to produce energy more sustainably.
One last comment, it’s easy to forget in a time when Russia is conducting a war with Ukraine and Israel is conducting an ever evolving action against Palestine, Iran, and more that cooperation amongst ‘enemies’ is possible. The list of ITER full members (United States, Russia, Europe, China, Japan, Korea, India, Note: There are other member categories) is a reminder that even countries that often work at cross purposes can work together.
In addition to the competition to develop commercial quantum computing, there’s the competition to develop commercial nuclear fusion energy. I have four stories about nuclear fusion, one from Spain, one from Chine, one from the US, and one from Vancouver. There are also a couple of segues into history and the recently (April 2, 2025) announced US tariffs (chaos has since ensued as these have become ‘on again/off again’ tariffs) but the bulk of this posting is focused on the latest (January – early April 2025) in fusion energy.
Fission nuclear energy, where atoms are split, is better known; fusion nuclear energy is released when a star is formed. For anyone unfamiliar with the word tokamak as applied to nuclear fusion (which is mentioned in all the stories), you can find out more in the Tokamak Wikipedia entry.
In a pioneering approach to achieve fusion energy, the SMART device has successfully generated its first tokamak plasma. This step brings the international fusion community closer to achieving sustainable, clean, and virtually limitless energy through controlled fusion reactions.
The SMART tokamak, a state-of-the-art experimental fusion device designed, constructed and operated by the Plasma Science and Fusion Technology Laboratory of the University of Seville, is a worldwide unique spherical tokamak due to its flexible shaping capabilities. SMART has been designed to demonstrate the unique physics and engineering properties of Negative Triangularity shaped plasmas towards compact fusion power plants based on Spherical Tokamaks.
Prof. Manuel García Muñoz, Principal Investigator of the SMART tokamak, stated: “This is an important achievement for the entire team as we are now entering the operational phase of SMART. The SMART approach is a potential game changer with attractive fusion performance and power handling for future compact fusion reactors. We have exciting times ahead! Prof. Eleonora Viezzer, co-PI of the SMART project, adds: “We were all very excited to see the first magnetically confined plasma and are looking forward to exploiting the capabilities of the SMART device together with the international scientific community. SMART has awoken great interest worldwide.
When negative becomes positive and compact
The triangularity describes the shape of the plasma. Most tokamaks operate with positive triangularity, meaning that the plasma shape looks like a D. When the D is mirrored (as shown in the figure on the right), the plasma has negative triangularity.
Negative triangularity plasma shapes feature enhanced performance as it suppresses instabilities that expel particles and energy from the plasma, preventing severe damage to the tokamak wall. Besides offering high fusion performance, negative triangularity also feature attractive power handling solutions, given that it covers a larger divertor area for distributing the heat exhaust. This also facilitates the engineering design for future compact fusion power plants.
Fusion2Grid aimed at developing the foundation for the most compact fusion power plant
SMART is the first step in the Fusion2Grid strategy led by the PSFT team and, in collaboration with the international fusion community, is aimed at the most compact and most efficient magnetically confined fusion power plant based on Negative Triangularity shaped Spherical Tokamaks.
SMART will be the first compact spherical tokamak operating at fusion temperatures with negative triangularity shaped plasmas.
The objective of SMART is to provide the physics and engineering basis for the most compact design of a fusion power plant based on high-field Spherical Tokamaks combined with Negative Triangularity. The solenoid-driven plasma represents a major achievement in the timeline of getting SMART online and advancing towards the most compact fusion device.
The Plasma Science and Fusion Technology Lab of the University of Seville hosts the SMall Aspect Ratio Tokamak (SMART) and leads several worldwide efforts on energetic particles and plasma transport and stability towards the development of magnetically confined fusion energy.
Caption: The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak achieved a remarkable scientific milestone by maintaining steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for an impressive 1,066 seconds. Credit: Image by HFIPS ( Hefei Institutes of Physical Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences)
China has made a business announcement and there is no academic paper mentioned in their January 21, 2025 press release on EurekAlert (also available on phys.org as a January 21, 2025 news item), Note: A link has been removed,
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), commonly known as China’s “artificial sun,” has achieved a remarkable scientific milestone by maintaining steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for an impressive 1,066 seconds. This accomplishment, reached on Monday, sets a new world record and marks a significant breakthrough in the pursuit of fusion power generation.
The duration of 1,066 seconds is a critical advancement in fusion research. This milestone, achieved by the Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) at Hefei Institutes of Physical Scienece [sic] (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, far surpasses the previous world record of 403 seconds, also set by EAST in 2023.
The ultimate goal of developing an artificial sun is to replicate the nuclear fusion processes that occurr [sci] in the sun, providing humanity with a limitless and clean energy source, and enabling exploration beyond our solar system.
Scientists worldwide have dedicated over 70 years to this ambitious goal. However, generating electricity from a nuclear fusion device involves overcoming key challenges, including reaching temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius, maintaining stable long-term operation, and ensuring precise control of the fusion process.
“A fusion device must achieve stable operation at high efficiency for thousands of seconds to enable the self-sustaining circulation of plasma, which is essential for the continuous power generation of future fusion plants,” said SONG Yuntao, ASIPP director and also vice president of HFIPS. He said that the recent record is monumental, marking a critical step toward realizing a functional fusion reactor.
According to GONG Xianzu, head of the EAST Physics and Experimental Operations division, several systems of the EAST device have been upgraded since the last round of experiments. For example, the heating system, which previously operated at the equivalent power of nearly 70,000 household microwave ovens, has now doubled its power output while maintaining stability and continuity.
Since its inception in 2006, EAST has served as an open testing platform for both Chinese and international scientists to conduct fusion-related experiments and research.
China officially joined the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program in 2006 as its seventh member. Under the agreement, China is responsible for approximately 9 percent of the project’s construction and operation, with ASIPP serving as the primary institution for the Chinese mission.
ITER, currently under construction in southern France, is set to become the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment and the largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor upon completion.
In recent years, EAST has consistently achieved groundbreaking advancements in high-confinement mode, a fundamental operational mode for experimental fusion reactors like ITER and the future China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR). These accomplishments provide invaluable insights and references for the global development of fusion reactors.
“We hope to expand international collaboration via EAST and bring fusion energy into practical use for humanity,” said SONG.
In Hefei, Anhui Province, China, where EAST is loacated [sic], a new generation of experimental fusion research facilities is currently under construction. These facilities aim to further accelerate the development and application of fusion energy.
I always feel a little less confident about the information when there are mistakes. Three typos in the same press release? Maybe someone forgot to give it a final once over?
Successfully harnessing the power of fusion energy could lead to cleaner and safer energy for all – and contribute substantially to combatting [UK spelling] the climate crisis. Towards this goal, Type One Energy has published a comprehensive, self-consistent, and robust physics basis for a practical fusion pilot power plant.
This groundbreaking research is presented in a series of six peer-reviewed scientific papers in a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Plasma Physics (JPP), published by Cambridge University Press.
The articles serve as the foundation for the company’s first fusion power plant project, which Type One Energy is developing with the Tennessee Valley Authority utility in the United States.
Alex Schekochihin, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford and Editor of the JPP, spoke with enthusiasm about this development:
“JPP is very proud to provide a platform for rigorous peer review and publication of the papers presenting the physics basis of the Infinity Two stellarator — an innovative and ground-breaking addition to the expanding family of proposed fusion power plant designs.
“Fusion science and technology are experiencing a period of very rapid development, driven by both public and private enthusiasm for fusion power. In this environment of creative and entrepreneurial ferment, it is crucial that new ideas and designs are both publicly shared and thoroughly scrutinised by the scientific community — Type One Energy and JPP are setting the gold standard for how this is done (as we did with Commonwealth Fusion Systems 5 years ago for their SPARC physics basis).”
The new physics design basis for the pilot power plant is a robust effort to consider realistically the complex relationship between challenging, competing requirements that all need to function together for fusion energy to be possible.
This new physics solution also builds on the operating characteristics of high-performing stellarator fusion technology – a stellarator being a machine that uses complex, helical magnetic fields to confine the plasma, thereby enabling scientists to control it and create suitable conditions for fusion. This technology is already being used with success on the world’s largest research stellarator, the Wendelstein 7-X, located in Germany, but the challenge embraced by Type One Energy’s new design is how to scale it up to a pilot plant.
Building the future of energy
Functional fusion technology could offer limitless clean energy. As global energy demands increase and energy security is front of mind, too, this new physics design basis comes at an excellent time.
Christofer Mowry, CEO of Type One Energy, is cognisant of the landmark nature of his company’s achievement and proud of its strong, real-world foundations.
“The physics basis for our new fusion power plant is grounded in Type One Energy’s expert knowledge about reliable, economic, electrical generation for the power grid. We have an organisation that understands this isn’t only about designing a science project.”
This research was developed collaboratively between Type One Energy and a broad coalition of scientists from national laboratories and universities around the world. Collaborating organisations included the US Department of Energy, for using their supercomputers, such as the exascale Frontier machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to perform its physics simulations.
While commercial fusion energy has yet to move from theory into practice, this new research marks an important and promising milestone. Clean and abundant energy may yet become reality.
This is not directly related to fusion energy, so, you might want to skip this section.
Caption: Type One Energy employees at the Bull Run [emphasis mine] Fossil Plant, soon to be home to the prototype Infinity One. Credit: Type One Energy
I wonder if anyone argued for a change of name given how charged the US history associated with ‘Bull Run’ is, from the the First Battle of Bull Run Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,
The First Battle of Bull Run, called the Battle of First Manassas[1] by Confederate forces, was the first major battle of the American Civil War. The battle was fought on July 21, 1861, in Prince William County, Virginia, just north of what is now the city of Manassas and about thirty miles west-southwest of Washington, D.C. The Union Army was slow in positioning themselves, allowing Confederate reinforcements time to arrive by rail. Each side had about 18,000 poorly trained and poorly led troops. The battle was a Confederate victory and was followed by a disorganized post-battle retreat of the Union forces.
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A Confederate victory the first time and the second time (Second Battle of Bull Run Wikipedia entry)? For anyone unfamiliar with the history, the US Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865 between Union and Confederate forces. The Confederate states had seceded from the union (US) and were fighting to retain their slavery-based economy and they lost the war.
Had anyone consulted me I would have advised changing the name from Bull Run to some thing less charged (pun noted) to host your prototype fusion energy pilot plant.
Back to the usual programme.
Type One Energy
Type One Energy issued a March 27, 2025 news release about the special issue of the Journal of Plasma Physics (JPP), Note 1: Some of this redundant; Note 2: Links have been removed,
Type One Energy announced today publication of the world’s first comprehensive, self-consistent, and robust physics basis, with conservative design margins, for a practical fusion pilot power plant. This physics basis is presented in a series of seven peer-reviewed scientific papers in a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Plasma Physics (JPP). They serve as the foundation for the company’s first Infinity Two stellarator fusion power plant project, which Type One Energy is developing for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) utility in the U.S.
The Infinity Two fusion pilot power plant physics design basis realistically considers, for the first time, the complex relationship between competing requirements for plasma performance, power plant startup, construction logistics, reliability, and economics utilizing actual power plant operating experience. This Infinity Two baseline physics solution makes use of the inherently favorable operating characteristics of highly optimized stellarator fusion technology using modular superconducting magnets, as was so successfully proven on the W7-X science machine in Germany.
“Why are we the first private fusion company with an agreement to develop a potential fusion power plant project for an energy utility? Because we have a design anchored in reality,” said Christofer Mowry, CEO of Type One Energy. “The physics basis for Infinity Two is grounded in the knowledge of what is required for application to, and performance in, the demanding environment of reliable electrical generation for the power grid. We have an organization that understands this isn’t about designing a science project.”
Led by Chris Hegna, widely recognized as a leading theorist in modern stellarators, Type One Energy performed high-fidelity computational plasma physics analyses to substantially reduce the risk of meeting Infinity Two power plant functional and performance requirements. This unique and transformational achievement is the result of a global development program led by the Type One Energy plasma physics and stellarator engineering organization, with significant contributions from a broad coalition of scientists from national laboratories and universities around the world. The company made use of a spectrum of high-performance computing facilities, including access to the highest-performance U.S. Department of Energy supercomputers such as the exascale Frontier machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), to perform its stellarator physics simulations.
“We committed to this ambitious fusion commercialization milestone two years ago and today we delivered,” said John Canik, Chief Science and Engineering Officer for Type One Energy. “The team was able to efficiently develop deep plasma physics insights to inform the design of our Infinity Two stellarator, by taking advantage of our access to high performance computing resources. This enabled the Type One Energy team to demonstrate a realistic, integrated stellarator design that moves far beyond conventional thinking and concepts derived from more limited modeling capabilities.”
The consistent and robust physics solution for Infinity Two results in a deuterium-tritium (D-T) fueled, burning plasma stellarator with 800 MW of fusion power and delivers a nominal 350 MWe to the power grid. It is characterized by fusion plasma with resilient and stable behavior across a broad range of operating conditions, very low heat loss due to turbulent transport, as well as tolerable direct energy losses to the stellarator first wall. The Infinity Two stellarator has sufficient room for both adequately sized island divertors to exhaust helium ash and a blanket which provides appropriate shielding and tritium breeding. Type One Energy has high confidence that this essential physics solution provides a good baseline stellarator configuration for the Infinity Two fusion pilot power plant.
“The articles in this issue [of JPP] represent an important step towards a fusion reactor based on the stellarator concept. Thanks to decades of experiments and theoretical research, much of the latter published in JPP, it has become possible to lay out the physics basis for a stellarator power plant in considerable detail,” said Per Helander, head of Stellarator Theory Division at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. “JPP is very happy to publish this series of papers from Type One Energy, where this has been accomplished in a way that sets new standards for the fidelity and confidence level in this context.”
Important to successful fusion power plant commercialization, this stellarator configuration has enabled Type One Energy to architect a maintenance solution which supports good power plant Capacity Factors (CF) and associated Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE). It also supports favorable regulatory requirements for component manufacturing and power plant construction methods essential to achieving a reasonable Over-Night Cost (ONC) for Infinity Two.
About Type One Energy
Type One Energy Group is mission-driven to provide sustainable, affordable fusion power to the world. Established in 2019 and venture-backed in 2023, the company is led by a team of globally recognized fusion scientists with a strong track record of building state-of-the-art stellarator fusion machines, together with veteran business leaders experienced in scaling companies and commercializing energy technologies. Type One Energy applies proven advanced manufacturing methods, modern computational physics and high-field superconducting magnets to develop its optimized stellarator fusion energy system. Its FusionDirect development program pursues the lowest-risk, shortest-schedule path to a fusion power plant over the coming decade, using a partner-intensive and capital-efficient strategy. Type One Energy is committed to community engagement in the development and deployment of its clean energy technology. For more information, visit www.typeoneenergy.com or follow us on LinkedIn.
While the company is currently headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, it was originally a spinoff company from the University of Wisconsin-Madison according to a March 30, 2023 posting on the university’s College of Engineering website,
Type One Energy, a Middleton, Wisconsin-based fusion energy company with roots in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Engineering, recently announced its first round of seed funding, raising $29 million from investors. The company has also onboarded a new, highly experienced CEO [Christofer Mowry].
Type One, founded in 2019 by a team of globally recognized fusion scientists and business leaders, is hoping to commercialize stellarator technology over the next decade. Stellarators are a type of fusion reactor that uses powerful magnets to confine ultra-hot streams of plasma in order to create the conditions for fusion reactions. Energy from fusion promises to be clean, safe, renewable power. The company is using advanced manufacturing methods, modern computational physics and high-field superconducting magnets to develop its stellarator through an initiative called FusionDirect.
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According to the Type One Energy’s About page, there are four offices with the headquarters in Tennessee,
Madison 316 W Washington Ave. Suite 300 Madison, WI 53703
Boston 299 Washington St. Suites C & E Woburn, MA 01801
Vancouver 1140 West Pender St. Vancouver, BC V6E 4G1
The mention of an office in Vancouver, Canada piqued my curiosity but before getting to that, I’m going to include some informative excerpts about nuclear energy (both fission and fusion) from this August 31, 2023 article written by Tina Tosukhowong on behalf of TDK Ventures, which was posted on Medium,
Fusion power is the key to the energy transformation that humanity needs to drive decarbonization, clean, and baseload energy production that is inherently fail-safe, with no risk of long-lived radioactive waste, while also delivering on ever-growing energy-consumption demands at the global scale. Fusion is hard and requires exceptional conditions for sustained reaction (which is part of what makes it so safe), which has long served as a deterrent for technical maturation and industrial viability. …
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The current reality of our world is monumental fossil-fuel dependence. This, coupled with unprecedented levels of energy demand has resulted in the over 136,700 TWh (that’s 10¹²) of energy consumed via fossil fuels annually [1]. Chief repercussion among the many consequences of this dependence is the now very looming threat of climate catastrophe, which will soon be irreversible if global temperature rise is not abated and held to within 1.5 °C of pre-industrial levels. To do so, the nearly 40 gigatons of CO2 emissions generated each year must be steadily reduced and eventually mitigated entirely [2]. A fundamental shift in how power is generated globally is the only way forward. Humanity needs an energy transformation — the right energy transformation.
Alternative energy-generation techniques, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric approaches have all made excellent strides, and indeed in just the United States electricity generated by renewable methods doubled from 10 to 20% of total between 2010 and 2020 [3–4]. These numbers are incredibly encouraging and give significant credence in the journey to net-zero emission energy generation. However, while these standard renewable approaches should be championed, wind and solar are intermittent and require a large amount of land to deploy, while geothermal and hydroelectric are not available in every geography.
By far the most viable candidates for continuous clean energy generation to replace coal-fired power plants are nuclear-driven technologies, i.e. nuclear fission or nuclear fusion. Nuclear fission has been a proven effective method ever since it was first demonstrated almost 80 years ago underneath the University of Chicago football Stadium by Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi [5]. Heavier atomic elements, in most cases Uranium-235, are exposed to and bombarded by neutrons. This causes the Uranium to split resulting in two slightly less-heavy elements (like Barium and Krypton). This in turn causes energy to be released and more neutrons to be ejected and bombard other nearby Uranium-235, at which point the process cascades into a chain reaction. The released energy (heat) is utilized in the same way coal is burned in a traditional power plant, being subsequently used to generate electricity usually via the creation of steam to drive a turbine [6]. While already having reached viable commercial maturity, fission carries inherent and nontrivial safety concerns. An unhampered chain reaction can quickly lead to meltdown with disastrous consequences, and, even when properly managed, the end reaction does generate radioactive waste whose half-life can last hundreds of thousands of years.
Figure 1. Breakdown of a nuclear fission reaction [6]. Incident neutron bombards a fissile heavy element, splitting it and release energy and more nuclei setting off a chain reaction.
Especially given modernization efforts and meteoric gains in safety (thanks to advents in material science like ceramic coatings), fission will continue to be a critical piece to better, greener energy transformation. However, in extending our vision to an even brighter future with no such concerns — carbon emissions or safety — nuclear fusion is humanity’s silver bullet. Instead of breaking down atoms leading to a chain reaction, fusion is the combining of atoms (usually isotopes of Hydrogen) into heavier elements which also results in energy release / heat generation [7]. Like fission, fusion can be designed to be a continuous energy source that can serve as a permanent backbone to the power grid. It is extremely energy dense, with 1 kg of fusion fuel producing the same amount of energy as 1,000,000 kg of coal, and it is inherently fail-safe with no long-term radioactive waste.
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As a concept, if fusion is a silver bullet to answer humanity’s energy transformation needs, then why haven’t we done so already? The appeal seems so obvious, what’s the hold up? Simply put, nuclear fusion is hard for the very same reason the process is inherently safe. Atoms in the process must have enough energy to overcome electrostatic repulsive forces between the two positive charges of their nuclei to fuse. The key figure of merit to evaluate fusion is the so-called “Lawson Triple Product.” Essentially, this means in order to generate energy by fusion more than the rate of energy oss to the environment, the nuclei must be very close together (as represented by n — the plasma density), kept at a high enough temperature (as represented by T — temperature), and for long enough time to sustain fusion (as represented by τ — the confinement time). The triple product required to achieve fusion “ignition” (the state where the rate of energy production is higher than the rate of loss) depends on the fuel type and occurs within a plasma state. A deuterium and tritium (D-T) system has the lowest Lawson Triple product requirement, where fusion can achieve a viable threshold for ignition when the density of the fuel atoms, n, multiplied by the fuel temperature, T, multiplied by the confinement time, τ, is greater than 5×10²¹ (nTτ > 5×10²¹ keV-s/m³) [8–9]. For context, the temperature alone in this scenario must be higher than 100-million degrees Celsius.
Figure 2. (Left) Conceptual illustration of a fusion reaction with Deuterium (²H) and Tritium (³H) forming an Alpha particle (⁴He) and free neutron along with energy released as heat (Right). To initiate fusion, repelling electrostatic charge must be overcome via conditions meeting the minimum Lawson Triple Product threshold
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Tosukhowong’s August 31, 2023 article provides a good overview keeping in mind that it is slanted to justify TDK’s investment in Type One Energy.
Why a Vancouver, Canada office?
As for Type One Energy’s Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada) connection, I was reminded of General Fusion, a local fusion energy company while speculating about the connection. First speculative question: could Type One Energy’s presence in Canada allow it to access Canadian government funds for its research? Second speculative question: do they want to have access to people who might hesitate to move to the US or might want to move out of the US but would move to Canada?
The US is currently in an unstable state as suggested in this April 3, 2025 opinion piece by Les Leyne for vancouverisawsome.com
Les Leyne: Trump’s incoherence makes responding to tariff wall tricky
Trump’s announcement was so incoherent that much of the rest of the world had to scramble to grasp even the basic details
B.C. officials were guarded Wednesday [April 2, 2025] about the impact on Canada of the tariff wall U.S. President Donald Trump erected around the U.S., but it appears it could have been worse.
Trump’s announcement was so incoherent that much of the rest of the world had to scramble to grasp even the basic details. So cabinet ministers begged for more time to check the impacts.
“It’s still very uncertain,” said Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon, who chairs the “war room” committee responsible for countering tariff threats. “It’s hard to make sense from President Trump’s speech.” [emphasis mine]
Kahlon said the challenge is that tariff policies change hour by hour, “and anything can happen.”
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On April 2, 2025 US President Donald Trump announced tariffs (then paused some of the tariffs on April 9, 2025) and some of the targets seemed a bit odd, from an April 2, 2025 article by Alex Galbraith for salon.com, Note: Links have been removed,
“Trade war with penguins”: Trump places 10% tariff on uninhabited Antarctic islands
Planned tariffs shared by the White House included a 10% duty on imports from the barren Heard and McDonald Islands
For once in his life, Donald Trump underpromised and over-delivered.
The president announced a 10% duty on all imports on Wednesday [April 2, 2025], along with a raft of reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners. An extensive graphic released by the White House showed how far Trump was willing to take his tit-for-tat trade war, including a shocking levy of 10% on all imports from the Heard and McDonald Islands.
If you haven’t heard of this powerhouse of global trade and territory of Australia, you aren’t alone. Few have outside of Antarctic researchers and seals. These extremely remote islands about 1,000 miles north of Antarctica consist mostly of barren tundra. They’re also entirely uninhabited.
The news that we were starting a trade war with penguins spread quickly after Trump’s announcement. …
U.S. stock futures crumbled following the news of Trump’s widespread tariffs. Dow futures fell by nearly 1,000 points while NASDAQ and S&P futures fell by 3 to 4%. American companies’ stock values rapidly tumbled after the announcement, with large retail importers seeing significant losses. …
No word from the penguins about the ‘pause’. I’m assuming Donald Trump’s next book will be titled, “The art of negotiating trade deals with penguins.” Can’t wait to read it.
(Perhaps someone should tell him there are no penguins in the Arctic so he can’t bypass Canadians or Greenlanders to make a deal.)
Now for the local story.
General Fusion
There’ve been two recent developments at General Fusion. Most recently, an April 2, 2025 General Fusion news release announces a new hire, Note: Links have been removed,
Bob Smith is joining General Fusion as a strategic advisor. Smith brings more than 35 years of experience developing, scaling, and launching world-changing technologies, including spearheading new products and innovation in the aerospace industry at United Space Alliance, Sandia Labs, and Honeywell before serving as CEO of Blue Origin. He joins General Fusion as the company’s Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) fusion demonstration begins operations and progresses toward transformative technical milestones on the path to commercialization.
“I’ve been watching the fusion energy industry closely for my entire career. Fusion is the last energy source humanity will ever need, and I believe its impact as a zero-carbon energy source will transform the global energy supply at the time needed to fight the worst consequences of climate change,” said Smith. “I am thrilled to work with General Fusion. Their novel approach has inherent and distinctive benefits for the generation of commercially competitive fusion power. It’s exciting to join at a time when the team is about to demonstrate the fundamental physics behind their system and move to scaling up to a pilot plant.”
The LM26 program marks a significant step towards commercialization, as the company’s unique Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) approach makes the path to powering the grid with fusion energy more straightforward than other technologies—because it practically addresses barriers to fusion commercialization, such as neutron material degradation, sustainable fuel production, and efficient energy extraction. As a strategic advisor, Smith will leverage his experience advancing game-changing technologies to help guide General Fusion’s technology development and strategic growth.
“Bob’s insights and experience will be invaluable as we execute the LM26 program and look beyond it to propel our practical technology to powering the grid by the mid-2030s,” said Greg Twinney, CEO, General Fusion. “We are grateful for his commitment of his in-demand time and expertise to our mission and look forward to working together to make fusion power a reality!”
About Bob Smith:
Bob is an experienced business leader in the aerospace and defense industry with extensive technical and operational expertise across the sector. He worked at and managed federal labs, led developments at a large government contractor, grew businesses at a Fortune 100 multinational, and scaled up a launch and space systems startup. Bob also has extensive international experience and has worked with suppliers and OEMs in all the major aerospace regions, including establishing new sites and factories in Europe, India, China, and Puerto Rico.
Bob’s prior leadership roles include Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Blue Origin, President of Mechanical Systems & Components at Honeywell Aerospace, Chief Technology Officer at Honeywell Aerospace, Chairman of NTESS (Sandia Labs), and Executive Director of Space Shuttle Upgrades at United Space Alliance.
Bob holds a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from Texas A&M, a Master of Science degree in engineering/applied mathematics from Brown University, a doctorate from the University of Texas in aerospace engineering, and a business degree from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Bob is also a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and an Academician in the International Academy of Astronautics.
Quick Facts:
Fusion energy is the ultimate clean energy solution—it is the energy source that powers the sun and stars. Fusion is the process by which two light nuclei merge to form a heavier one, producing a massive amount of energy.
General Fusion’s Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) technology is designed to scale for cost-efficient power plants. It uses mechanical compression to create fusion conditions in short pulses, eliminating the need for expensive lasers or superconducting magnets. An MTF power plant is designed to produce its own fuel and inherently includes a method to extract the energy and put it to work.
Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) is a world-first Magnetized Target Fusion demonstration. Launched, designed, and assembled in just 16 months, the machine is now forming magnetized plasmas regularly at 50 per cent commercial scale. It is advancing towards a series of results that will demonstrate MTF in a commercially relevant way: 10 million degrees Celsius (1 keV), 100 million degrees Celsius (10 keV), and scientific breakeven equivalent (100% Lawson).
About General Fusion General Fusion is pursuing a fast and practical approach to commercial fusion energy and is headquartered in Richmond, Canada. The company was established in 2002 and is funded by a global syndicate of leading energy venture capital firms, industry leaders, and technology pioneers. Learn more at www.generalfusion.com.
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Bob Smith and Blue Origin: things did not go well
Sometimes you end up in a job and things do not work out well and that seems to have been the case at Blue Origin according to a September 25, 2023 article by Eric Berger for Ars Tecnica,
After six years of running Blue Origin, Bob Smith announced in a company-wide email on Monday that he will be “stepping aside” as chief executive of the space company founded by Jeff Bezos.
“It has been my privilege to be part of this great team, and I am confident that Blue Origin’s greatest achievements are still ahead of us,” Smith wrote in an email. “We’ve rapidly scaled this company from its prototyping and research roots to a large, prominent space business.”
Shortly after Smith’s email, a Blue Origin spokesperson said the company’s new chief executive will be Dave Limp, who stepped down as Amazon’s vice president of devices and services last month.
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To put things politely, Smith has had a rocky tenure as Blue Origin’s chief executive. After being personally vetted and hired by Bezos, Smith took over from Rob Meyerson in 2017. The Honeywell engineer was given a mandate to transform Blue Origin into a large and profitable space business.
He did succeed in growing Blue Origin. The company had about 1,500 employees when Smith arrived, and the company now employs nearly 11,000 people. But he has been significantly late on a number of key programs, including the BE-4 rocket engine and the New Glenn rocket.
As a space reporter, I have spoken with dozens of current and former Blue Origin employees, and virtually none of them have had anything positive to say about Smith’s tenure as chief executive. I asked one current employee about the hiring of Limp on Monday afternoon, and their response was, “Anything is better than Bob.”
Although it is very far from an exact barometer, Smith has received consistently low ratings on Glassdoor for his performance as chief executive of Blue Origin. And two years ago, a group of current and former Blue Origin employees wrote a blistering letter about the company under Smith. “In our experience, Blue Origin’s culture sits on a foundation that ignores the plight of our planet, turns a blind eye to sexism, is not sufficiently attuned to safety concerns, and silences those who seek to correct wrongs,” the essay authors wrote.
With any corporate culture, there will be growing pains, of course. But Smith brought a traditional aerospace mindset into a company that had hitherto been guided by a new space vision, leading to a high turnover rate. And Blue Origin remains significantly underwater, financially. It is likely that Bezos is still providing about $2 billion a year to support the company’s cash needs.
Crucially, as Blue Origin meandered under Smith’s tenure, SpaceX soared, launching hundreds of rockets and thousands of satellites. Smith, clearly, was not the leader Blue Origin needed to make the company more competitive with SpaceX in launch and other spaceflight activities. It became something of a parlor game in the space industry to guess when Bezos would finally get around to firing Smith.
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On the technical front, a March 27, 2025 General Fusion news release announces “Peer-reviewed publication confirms General Fusion achieved plasma energy confinement time required for its LM26 large-scale fusion machine,” Note: Links have been removed,
New results published in Nuclear Fusionconfirm General Fusion successfully created magnetized plasmas that achieved energy confinement times exceeding 10 milliseconds. The published energy confinement time results were achieved on General Fusion’s PI3 plasma injector — the world’s largest and most powerful plasma injector of its kind. Commissioned in 2017, PI3 formed approximately 20,000 plasmas in a machine of 50 per cent commercial scale. The plasma injector is now integrated into General Fusion’s Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) — a world-first Magnetized Target Fusion demonstration tracking toward game-changing technical milestones that will advance the company’s ultimate mission: generating zero-carbon fusion energy for the grid in the next decade.
The 10-millisecond energy confinement time is the duration required to compress plasmas in LM26 to achieve key temperature thresholds of 1 keV, 10 keV, and, ultimately, scientific breakeven equivalent (100% Lawson). These results were imperative to de-risking LM26. The demonstration machine is now forming plasmas regularly, and the company is optimizing its plasma performance in preparation for compressing plasmas to create fusion and heating from compression.
Key Findings:
The plasma injector now integrated into General Fusion’s LM26 achieved energy confinement times exceeding 10 milliseconds, the pre-compression confinement time required for LM26’s targeted technical milestones. These results were achieved without requiring active magnetic stabilization or auxiliary heating. This means the results were achieved without superconducting magnets, demonstrating the company’s cost-effective approach.
The plasma’s energy confinement time improved when the plasma injector vessel was coated with natural lithium. A key differentiator in General Fusion’s commercial approach is its use of a liquid lithium wall to compress plasmas during compression. In addition to the confinement time advantages shown in this paper, the liquid lithium wall will also protect a commercial MTF machine from neutron damage, enable the machine to breed its own fuel, and provide an efficient method for extracting energy from the machine.
The maximum energy confinement time achieved by PI3 was approximately 12 milliseconds. The machine’s maximum plasma density was approximately 6×1019 m-3, and maximum plasma temperatures exceeded 400 eV. These strong pre-compression results support LM26’s transformative targets.
Quotes:
“LM26 is designed to achieve a series of results that will demonstrate MTF in a commercially relevant way. Following LM26’s results, our unique approach makes the path to powering the grid with fusion energy more straightforward than other technologies because we have front-loaded the work to address the barriers to commercialization.”
Dr. Michel Laberge Founder and Chief Science Officer
“For over 16 years, I have worked hand in hand with Michel to advance General Fusion’s practical technology. This company is entrepreneurial at its core. We pride ourselves on building real machines that get results that matter, and I’m thrilled to have the achievements recognized in Nuclear Fusion.”
Mike Donaldson Senior Vice President, Technology Development
For anyone curious about General Fusion, I have a brief overview and history of the company and their particular approach to fusion energy in my February 6, 2024 posting (scroll down to ‘The Canadians’).
Andrew Paul’s December 4, 2023 article for Popular Science attempts to give readers a sense of the scale and this is one of those times when words are better than pictures, Note: Links have been removed,
Japan and the European Union have officially inaugurated testing at the world’s largest experimental nuclear fusion plant. Located roughly 85 miles north of Tokyo, the six-story, JT-60SA “tokamak” facility heats plasma to 200 million degrees Celsius (around 360 million Fahrenheit) within its circular, magnetically insulated reactor. Although JT-60SA first powered up during a test run back in October [2023], the partner governments’ December 1 announcement marks the official start of operations at the world’s biggest fusion center, reaffirming a “long-standing cooperation in the field of fusion energy.”
The tokamak—an acronym of the Russian-language designation of “toroidal chamber with magnetic coils”—has led researchers’ push towards achieving the “Holy Grail” of sustainable green energy production for decades. …
Speaking at the inauguration event, EU energy commissioner Kadri Simson referred to the JT-60SA as “the most advanced tokamak in the world,” representing “a milestone for fusion history.”
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But even if such a revolutionary milestone is crossed, it likely won’t be at JT-60SA. Along with its still-in-construction sibling, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in Europe, the projects are intended solely to demonstrate scalable fusion’s feasibility. Current hopes estimate ITER’s operational start for sometime in 2025, although the undertaking has been fraught with financial, logistical, and construction issues since its groundbreaking back in 2011.
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See what I mean about a picture not really conveying the scale,
Until ITER turns on, Japan’s JT-60SA fusion reactor will be the largest in the world.National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology
Dennis Normile’s October 31, 2023 article for Science magazine describes the facility’s (Japan’s JT-60SA fusion reactor) test run and future implications for the EU’s ITER project,
The long trek toward practical fusion energy passed a milestone last week when the world’s newest and largest fusion reactor fired up. Japan’s JT-60SA uses magnetic fields from superconducting coils to contain a blazingly hot cloud of ionized gas, or plasma, within a doughnut-shaped vacuum vessel, in hope of coaxing hydrogen nuclei to fuse and release energy. The four-story-high machine is designed to hold a plasma heated to 200 million degrees Celsius for about 100 seconds, far longer than previous large tokamaks.
Last week’s achievement “proves to the world that the machine fulfills its basic function,” says Sam Davis, a project manager at Fusion for Energy, an EU organization working with Japan’s National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST) on JT-60SA and related programs. It will take another 2 years before JT-60SA produces the long-lasting plasmas needed for meaningful physics experiments, says Hiroshi Shirai, leader of the project for QST.
JT-60SA will also help ITER, the mammoth international fusion reactor under construction in France that’s intended to demonstrate how fusion can generate more energy than goes into producing it. ITER will rely on technologies and operating know-how that JT-60SA will test.
Japan got to host JT-60SA and two other small fusion research facilities as a consolation prize for agreeing to let ITER go to France. …
As Normile notes, the ITER project has had a long and rocky road so far.
The Canadians
As it turns out, there’s a company in British Columbia, Canada that is also on the road to fusion energy. Not so imaginatively, it’s called General Fusion but it has a different approach to developing this ‘clean energy’. (See my October 28, 2022 posting, “Overview of fusion energy scene,” which includes information about the international scene and some of the approaches, including General Fusion’s, to developing the technology and my October 11, 2023 posting offers an update to the General Fusion situation.) Since my October 2023 posting, there have been a few developments at General Fusion.
This December 4, 2023 General Fusion news release celebrates a new infusion of cash from the Canadian government and take special note of the first item in the ‘Quick Facts’ of the advantage this technology offers,
Today [December 4, 2023], General Fusion announced that Canada’s Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) has awarded CA$5 million to support research and development to advance the company’s Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) demonstration at its Richmond headquarters. Called LM26, this ground-breaking machine will progress major technical milestones required to commercialize zero-carbon fusion power by the early to mid-2030s. The funds are an addition to the existing contribution agreement with SIF, to support the development of General Fusion’s transformational technology.
Fusion energy is the ultimate clean energy solution. It is what powers the sun and stars. It’s the process by which two light nuclei merge to form a heavier one, emitting a massive amount of energy. By 2100, the production and export of the Canadian industry’s fusion energy technology could provide up to $1.26 trillion in economic benefits to Canada. Additionally, fusion could completely offset 600 MT CO2-e emissions, the equivalent of over 160 coal-fired power plants for a single year. When commercialized, a single General Fusion power plant will be designed to provide zero-carbon power to approximately 150,000 Canadian homes, with the ability to be placed close to energy demand at a cost competitive with other energy sources such as coal and natural gas.1
Quotes:
“For more than 20 years, General Fusion has advanced its uniquely practical Magnetized Target Fusion technology and IP at its Canadian headquarters. LM26 will significantly de-risk our commercialization program and puts us on track to bring our game-changing, zero-emissions energy solution to Canada, and the world, in the next decade,” said Greg Twinney, CEO, General Fusion.
“Fusion technology has the potential to completely revolutionize the energy sector by giving us access to an affordable unlimited renewable power source. Since General Fusion is at the forefront of this technology, our decision to keep supporting the company will give us the tools we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reach our climate goals. Our government is proud to invest in this innovative project to drive the creation of hundreds of middle-class jobs and position Canada as a world leader in fusion energy technology,” said The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry.
“British Columbia has a thriving innovation economy. In August, the B.C. Government announced CA$5 million in provincial support for General Fusion’s homegrown technology, and we’re pleased to see the Federal government has now provided funds to support General Fusion. These investments will help General Fusion as they continue to develop their core technology right here in B.C.,” said Brenda Bailey, B.C. Minister of Jobs, Economic Development and Innovation.
Quick Facts:
*Magnetized Target Fusion uniquely sidesteps challenges to commercialization that other technologies face. The game-changer is a proprietary liquid metal liner in the commercial fusion machine that is mechanically compressed by high-powered pistons. This enables fusion conditions to be created in short pulses rather than creating a sustained reaction. General Fusion’s design does not require large superconducting magnets or an expensive array of lasers.
*LM26 aims to achieve two of the most significant technical milestones required to commercialize fusion energy, targeting fusion conditions of over 100 million degrees Celsius by 2025, and progressing toward scientific breakeven equivalent by 2026.
*LM26’s plasmas will be approximately 50 per cent scale of a commercial fusion machine. It aims to achieve deuterium-tritium breakeven equivalent using deuterium fuel.
*The Canadian government is investing an additional CA$5 million for a total of CA$54.3 million to support the development of General Fusion’s energy technology through the Strategic Innovation Fund program.
*As a result of the government’s ongoing support, General Fusion has advanced its technology, building more than 24 plasma prototypes, filing over 170 patents, and conducting more than 200,000 experiments at its Canadian labs.
General Fusion has published new, peer-reviewed scientific results that validate the company has achieved the smooth, rapid, and symmetric compression of a liquid cavity that is key to the design of a commercial Magnetized Target Fusion power plant. The results, published in one of the foremost scientific journals in fusion, Fusion Engineering and Design [open access paper], validate the performance of General Fusion’s proprietary liquid compression technology for Magnetized Target Fusion and are scalable to a commercial machine.
General Fusion’s Magnetized Target Fusion technology uses mechanical compression of a plasma to achieve fusion conditions. High-speed drivers rapidly power a precisely shaped, symmetrical collapse of a liquid metal cavity that envelopes the plasma. In three years, General Fusion commissioned a prototype of its liquid compression system and completed over 1,000 shots, validating the compression technology. In addition, this scale model of General Fusion’s commercial compression system verified the company’s open-source computational fluid dynamics simulation. The paper confirms General Fusion’s concept for the compression system of a commercial machine.
“General Fusion has proven success scaling individual technologies, creating the pathway to integrate, deploy, and commercialize practical fusion energy,” said Greg Twinney, CEO, General Fusion. “The publication of these results demonstrates General Fusion has the science and engineering capabilities to progress the design of our proprietary liquid compression system to commercialization.”
General Fusion’s approach to compressing plasma to create fusion energy is unique. Its Magnetized Target Fusion technology is designed to address the barriers to commercialization that other fusion technologies still face. The game-changer is the proprietary liquid metal liner in the fusion vessel that is mechanically compressed by high-powered pistons. This allows General Fusion to create fusion conditions in short pulses, rather than creating a sustained reaction, while protecting the machine’s vessel, extracting heat, and re-breeding fuel.
Today [January 11, 2024] at its Canadian labs, General Fusion is building a ground-breaking Magnetized Target Fusion demonstration called Lawson Machine 26 (LM26). Designed to reach fusion conditions of over 100 million degrees Celsius by 2025 and progress towards scientific breakeven equivalent by 2026, LM26 fast-tracks General Fusion’s technical progress to provide commercial fusion energy to the grid by the early to mid-2030s.
Exciting times for us all and I wish good luck to all of the clean energy efforts wherever they are being pursued.
I very rarely get a chance to feature science from Latin America and the Caribbean, largely due to my lack of Spanish, Portuguese, or Dutch language skills. So, you might say I’m desperate to find something, which explains, at least in part, why I’m posting about the 12th World Conference (WCSJ).
The opening day [March 27, 2023] of the World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) 2023 in Medellín, Colombia saw hundreds of journalists from 62 countries come together in the stunning setting of the city’s Jardin Botanico.
Over 500 attendees will gather over three days to discuss science journalism, to challenge ideas and to reinforce their professional networks and friendships.
The day began with a keynote on biodiversity delivered by Brigitte Baptiste, a Colombian biologist and expert in biodiversity issues. And it closed with an opening ceremony and vibrant social event for attendees.
Both took place under open skies in the Jardin’s orquideorama, an open air meshwork of flower-tree structures surrounded by trees, butterflies and with a backdrop of birdsong.
Two other plenaries focused on scientific advice and news from Amazonia. The morning’s parallel panels covered Latin American and international collaboration, with discussions from Latin American women researchers, reporting on science, health and the environment in the region and what the world can learn from Latin American and the Caribbean early warning alerts systems. The afternoon saw discussions on COVID-19, popular science writing and astronomy.
The conference continues until Friday when there are scientific tours and excursions that provide the opportunity to visit local research teams and find out more about science in the region.
According to WWF, Colombia is the most biodiverse country per square kilometre in the world. It is also the country with the largest number of bird species — over 1,900 — and the greatest number of butterfly species — over 3,600 or 20% butterfly species.
Milica Momcilovic, President of the World Federation of Science Journalists said: “Independent journalism is the lifeblood of democracy and our focus at the Federation is, and will continue to be, supporting independent science journalism around the world. I have seen first hand how talented science journalists can change the world for the better and during this conference they will tell us these stories in person.”
Ximena Serrano Gil, Director of the Medellín conference said: “Colombia and Medellin are a biodiversity hotspot, an unrivalled laboratory for helping other nations adapt to climate change, a model for how to feed populations in rapidly changing tropical environments, and a cultural repository where thousands of years of indigenous peoples’ knowledge can make a lasting contribution to the wisdom of future generations.”
She continued: “The opportunity to share ideas and collaborate with others is invaluable and we must continue to create platforms that facilitate these interactions. I hope that other places in the global south will have the opportunity to host the WCSJ.”
Over the past two decades, the World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ) has mounted the WCSJ every other year. The event has been held in cities across the globe, and the current edition in Medellín, Colombia, was postponed from 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each gathering lasts about a week and attracts hundreds of participants from the WFSJ membership, including some 10,000 science writers in 51 countries.
This conference has been put together with a specific focus on the global south and on amplifying new voices from science journalist communities.
The programme has something that interests me, a talk on brain organoids according to a March 17, 2023 WCSJ press release, Note: Links have been removed,
Food security, organoid intelligence, local tours and scientific excursions
Plenary: Challenges to food security in the face of global catastrophe risks
In times of crisis and global risks, very few issues have as many factors feeding into them as food security. The integrative measures envisaged by various global players link the actions that are needed to meet the challenges we face. These should be considered in terms of technology, economics and security to ensure the future of food security, but also how science validates the environmental the environmental impact and guarantees the viability of the processes.
Jennifer Wiegel is the Sub Regional Manager for Central America and a scientist in the Food Environment and Consumer Behavior research area of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT [International Center for Tropical Agriculture]. Her research includes work on agri-food systems, food markets and value chains for inclusion and sustainability and public procurement. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master’s in Rural Sociology from the same University.
Juan Fernando Zuluaga is the National Territorial Coordinator for Antioquia. He has a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Antioquia and a Master in RuralEconomics from the Federal University of Ceará-Brazil. Juan is a specialist in finance from the Latin American Autonomous University and Agricultural Engineer from the National University of Medellín.
Thomas Hartung, MD, PhD. Professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Whiting School of Engineering and Professor for Pharmacology and Toxicology at University of Konstanz, Germany. He is leading the revolution in toxicology to move away from 50+ year old animal testing to organoid cultures and the use of artificial intelligence.
New keynote
Climate change: How to embroider the risks that put the stability of the most vulnerable at risk
Paola Andrea Arias Gómez is Professor of the Environmental School of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Antioquia. In 2021 she was El Espectador’s Person of the Year and received the Medellin Council’s Orchid Award for Scientific Merit.
Paola completed her undergraduate studies in Civil Engineering and a Master’s degree in Water Resources Development at the National University of Colombia, Medellin. She was Head of the Environmental School of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Antioquia and is now a member of the First Working Group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is also a member of the GEWEX Hydroclimatology Panel (GHP), the Amazon Regional Hydrogeomorphology Working Group (UNESCO) and the WCRP Science Plan Development Team (WCRP) Lighthouse Activities – My Climate Risk.
Parallel session:
In conversation: “Organoid intelligence”: the future of modern computing from human brain cells. [sic]
Biocomputing is a huge effort to compact computational power and increase its efficiency to overcome current technological limits. Researchers at Johns Hopkins delve into this technology that may one day produce computers that are faster, more efficient and more powerful than silicon-based computing and AI.
Thomas Hartung, MD, PhD. will present the team’s latest research and discuss its context, implications and what his hopes are for the field.
Thomas Hartung is the Director of Centers for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT, http://caat.jhsph.edu) of both universities. CAAT hosts the secretariat of the Evidence-based Toxicology Collaboration (http://www.ebtox.org) and manages collaborative programs on Good Read-Across Practice, Good Cell Culture Practice, Green Toxicology, Developmental Neurotoxicity, Developmental Immunotoxicity, Microphysiological Systems and Refinement.
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I found another intriguing session (Story Corner: “Fusion Energy and Climate Change – The Conversation begins” by ITER) which was held on Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 9:30 – 10:00 am during the coffee break. (For more about fusion energy, see my October 28, 2022 posting “Overview of fusion energy scene“.)
While it’s too late to sign up for the conference, you might find perusing the programme schedule provides some insight into issues being faced my science journalists outside the Canada/US bubble.
Nuclear energy is not usually of much interest to me but there is a Canadian company doing some interesting work in that area. So, before getting to the news about the company’s move, here’s a general description of fusion energy and how General Fusion (the company) is approaching the clean energy problem, from a June 18, 2021 posting by Bob McDonald on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) Quirks and Quarks blog (Note: Links have been removed),
Vancouver-based fusion energy company General Fusion has entered an agreement with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority to build a nuclear fusion demonstration plant to be operational in 2025. It will take a unique approach to generating clean energy.
There is an industry joke that fusion energy has been 20 years away for 50 years. The quest to produce clean energy by duplicating the processes happening at the centre of the sun has been a difficult and expensive challenge.
It has yet to be accomplished on anything like a commercial scale. That is partly because on Earth the fusion process involves handling materials at extreme pressures and temperatures many times hotter than the surface of the sun.
The nuclear technology that has provided electricity for decades around the world relies on fission, which splits heavy atoms such as uranium into lighter elements, releasing energy. However, this produces hazardous and durable radioactive waste that must be stored, and more catastrophically has led to major accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Fusion is the opposite of fission. Lighter elements such as hydrogen are heated and compressed to fuse into heavier ones. This releases energy, but with a much smaller legacy of radioactive waste, and no risk of meltdown.
The world’s largest fusion reactor experiment, ITER (Latin for “the way”) [International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor] is currently under construction in southern France. It’s a massive international collaboration developing on fusion technology that’s been been explored since it was invented in the Soviet Union in the 1950s. It involves a doughnut-shaped metallic chamber called a tokamak that is surrounded by incredibly powerful superconducting magnets.
An electrically charged gas, or plasma, will be injected into the chamber where the magnets hold it, compressed and suspended, so it does not touch the walls and burn through them. The plasma will be heated to the unbelievable temperature of 150 million C, when fusion begins to take place.
And therein lies the problem. So far, experimental fusion reactors have required more energy to heat the plasma to start the fusion reaction than can be harvested from the reaction itself. Size is part of the problem. Demonstration reactors are small and meant to test equipment and materials, not produce power. ITER is supposed to be large enough to produce 10 times as much power as is required to heat up its plasma.
And that’s the holy grail of fusion: to produce enough power that the nuclear fusion reaction can become self-sustaining.
General Fusion takes a completely different approach by using mechanical pressure to contain and heat the plasma, rather than gigantic electromagnets. A series of powerful pistons surround a container of liquid metal with the hydrogen plasma in the centre. The pistons mechanically squeeze the liquid on all sides at once, heating the fuel by compression the way fuel in a diesel engine is compressed and heated in a cylinder until it ignites.
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Exciting, eh? If you have time, you may want to read McDonald’s June 18, 2021 posting for a few more details about General Fusion’s technology and for some embedded images.
At one point I was under the impression that General Fusion was involved with ITER but that seems to have been a misunderstanding on my part.
I first wrote about General Fusion in a December 2, 2011 posting titled: Burnaby-based company (Canada) challenges fossil fuel consumption with nuclear fusion. (For those unfamiliar with the Vancouver area, there’s the city of Vancouver and there’s Vancouver Metro, which includes the city of Vancouver and others in the region. Burnaby is part of Metro Vancouver; General Fusion is moving to Sea Island (near Vancouver Airport), in Richmond, which is also in Metro Vancouver.) Kenneth Chan’s October 20, 2021 article for the Daily Hive gives more detail about General Fusion’s new facilities (Note: A link has been removed),
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The new facility will span two buildings at 6020 and 6082 Russ Baker Way, near YVR’s [Vancouver Airport] South Terminal. This includes a larger building previously used for aircraft engine maintenance and repair.
The relocation process could start before the end of 2021, allowing the company to more than quadruple its workforce over the coming years. Currently, it employs about 140 people.
The Sea Island [in Richmond] facility will house its corporate offices, primary fusion technology development division, and many of its engineering laboratories. This new facility provides General Fusion with the ability to build a new demonstration prototype to support the commercialization of its magnetized target fusion technology.
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The company’s research and development into practical fusion technology as a zero-carbon power solution to address the world’s growing energy needs, while fighting climate change, is supported by the federal governments of Canada, US, and UK.
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General Fusion is backed by dozens of large global private investors, including Bezos Expeditions, which is the personal investment entity for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. It has raised a total of about USD$200 million in financing to date.
“British Columbia is at the centre of a thriving, world-class technology innovation ecosystem, just the right place for us to continue investing in our growing workforce and the future of our company,” said Christofer Mowry, CEO of General Fusion, in a statement.
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Earlier this year, YVR also indicated it is considering allowing commercial and industrial developments on several hundred acres of under-utilized parcels of land next to the north and south runways, for uses that complement airport activities. This would also provide the airport with a new source of revenue, after major financial losses from the years-long impact of COVID-19.
Over 30 years in the dreaming, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is now said to be 1/2 way to completing construction. A December 6, 2017 ITER press release (received via email) makes the joyful announcement,
WORLD’S MOST COMPLEX MACHINE IS 50 PERCENT COMPLETED
ITER is proving that fusion is the future source of clean, abundant, safe and economic energy_
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a project to prove that fusion power can be produced on a commercial scale and is sustainable, is now 50 percent built to initial operation. Fusion is the same energy source from the Sun that gives the Earth its light and warmth.
ITER will use hydrogen fusion, controlled by superconducting magnets, to produce massive heat energy. In the commercial machines that will follow, this heat will drive turbines to produce electricity with these positive benefits:
* Fusion energy is carbon-free and environmentally sustainable, yet much more powerful than fossil fuels. A pineapple-sized amount of hydrogen offers as much fusion energy as 10,000 tons of coal.
* ITER uses two forms of hydrogen fuel: deuterium, which is easily extracted from seawater; and tritium, which is bred from lithium inside the fusion reactor. The supply of fusion fuel for industry and megacities is abundant, enough for millions of years.
* When the fusion reaction is disrupted, the reactor simply shuts down-safely and without external assistance. Tiny amounts of fuel are used, about 2-3 grams at a time; so there is no physical possibility of a meltdown accident.
* Building and operating a fusion power plant is targeted to be comparable to the cost of a fossil fuel or nuclear fission plant. But unlike today’s nuclear plants, a fusion plant will not have the costs of high-level radioactive waste disposal. And unlike fossil fuel plants,
fusion will not have the environmental cost of releasing CO2 and other pollutants.
ITER is the most complex science project in human history. The hydrogen plasma will be heated to 150 million degrees Celsius, ten times hotter than the core of the Sun, to enable the fusion reaction. The process happens in a donut-shaped reactor, called a tokamak(*), which is surrounded by giant magnets that confine and circulate the superheated, ionized plasma, away from the metal walls. The superconducting magnets must be cooled to minus 269°C, as cold as interstellar space.
The ITER facility is being built in Southern France by a scientific partnership of 35 countries. ITER’s specialized components, roughly 10 million parts in total, are being manufactured in industrial facilities all over the world. They are subsequently shipped to the ITER worksite, where they must be assembled, piece-by-piece, into the final machine.
Each of the seven ITER members-the European Union, China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States-is fabricating a significant portion of the machine. This adds to ITER’s complexity.
In a message dispatched on December 1 [2017] to top-level officials in ITER member governments, the ITER project reported that it had completed 50 percent of the “total construction work scope through First Plasma” (**). First Plasma, scheduled for December 2025, will be the first stage of operation for ITER as a functional machine.
“The stakes are very high for ITER,” writes Bernard Bigot, Ph.D., Director-General of ITER. “When we prove that fusion is a viable energy source, it will eventually replace burning fossil fuels, which are non-renewable and non-sustainable. Fusion will be complementary with wind, solar, and other renewable energies.
“ITER’s success has demanded extraordinary project management, systems engineering, and almost perfect integration of our work.
“Our design has taken advantage of the best expertise of every member’s scientific and industrial base. No country could do this alone. We are all learning from each other, for the world’s mutual benefit.”
The ITER 50 percent milestone is getting significant attention.
“We are fortunate that ITER and fusion has had the support of world leaders, historically and currently,” says Director-General Bigot. “The concept of the ITER project was conceived at the 1985 Geneva Summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. When the ITER Agreement was signed in 2006, it was strongly supported by leaders such as French President Jacques Chirac, U.S. President George W. Bush, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
“More recently, President Macron and U.S. President Donald Trump exchanged letters about ITER after their meeting this past July. One month earlier, President Xi Jinping of China hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders in a showcase featuring ITER and fusion power at the World EXPO in Astana, Kazakhstan.
“We know that other leaders have been similarly involved behind the scenes. It is clear that each ITER member understands the value and importance of this project.”
Why use this complex manufacturing arrangement?
More than 80 percent of the cost of ITER, about $22 billion or EUR18 billion, is contributed in the form of components manufactured by the partners. Many of these massive components of the ITER machine must be precisely fitted-for example, 17-meter-high magnets with less than a millimeter of tolerance. Each component must be ready on time to fit into the Master Schedule for machine assembly.
Members asked for this deal for three reasons. First, it means that most of the ITER costs paid by any member are actually paid to that member’s companies; the funding stays in-country. Second, the companies working on ITER build new industrial expertise in major fields-such as electromagnetics, cryogenics, robotics, and materials science. Third, this new expertise leads to innovation and spin-offs in other fields.
For example, expertise gained working on ITER’s superconducting magnets is now being used to map the human brain more precisely than ever before.
The European Union is paying 45 percent of the cost; China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States each contribute 9 percent equally. All members share in ITER’s technology; they receive equal access to the intellectual property and innovation that comes from building ITER.
When will commercial fusion plants be ready?
ITER scientists predict that fusion plants will start to come on line as soon as 2040. The exact timing, according to fusion experts, will depend on the level of public urgency and political will that translates to financial investment.
How much power will they provide?
The ITER tokamak will produce 500 megawatts of thermal power. This size is suitable for studying a “burning” or largely self-heating plasma, a state of matter that has never been produced in a controlled environment on Earth. In a burning plasma, most of the plasma heating comes from the fusion reaction itself. Studying the fusion science and technology at ITER’s scale will enable optimization of the plants that follow.
A commercial fusion plant will be designed with a slightly larger plasma chamber, for 10-15 times more electrical power. A 2,000-megawatt fusion electricity plant, for example, would supply 2 million homes.
How much would a fusion plant cost and how many will be needed?
The initial capital cost of a 2,000-megawatt fusion plant will be in the range of $10 billion. These capital costs will be offset by extremely low operating costs, negligible fuel costs, and infrequent component replacement costs over the 60-year-plus life of the plant. Capital costs will decrease with large-scale deployment of fusion plants.
At current electricity usage rates, one fusion plant would be more than enough to power a city the size of Washington, D.C. The entire D.C. metropolitan area could be powered with four fusion plants, with zero carbon emissions.
“If fusion power becomes universal, the use of electricity could be expanded greatly, to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, buildings and industry,” predicts Dr. Bigot. “Providing clean, abundant, safe, economic energy will be a miracle for our planet.”
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FOOTNOTES:
* “Tokamak” is a word of Russian origin meaning a toroidal or donut-shaped magnetic chamber. Tokamaks have been built and operated for the past six decades. They are today’s most advanced fusion device design.
** “Total construction work scope,” as used in ITER’s project performance metrics, includes design, component manufacturing, building construction, shipping and delivery, assembly, and installation.
It is an extraordinary project on many levels as Henry Fountain notes in a March 27, 2017 article for the New York Times (Note: Links have been removed),
At a dusty construction site here amid the limestone ridges of Provence, workers scurry around immense slabs of concrete arranged in a ring like a modern-day Stonehenge.
It looks like the beginnings of a large commercial power plant, but it is not. The project, called ITER, is an enormous, and enormously complex and costly, physics experiment. But if it succeeds, it could determine the power plants of the future and make an invaluable contribution to reducing planet-warming emissions.
ITER, short for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (and pronounced EAT-er), is being built to test a long-held dream: that nuclear fusion, the atomic reaction that takes place in the sun and in hydrogen bombs, can be controlled to generate power.
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ITER will produce heat, not electricity. But if it works — if it produces more energy than it consumes, which smaller fusion experiments so far have not been able to do — it could lead to plants that generate electricity without the climate-affecting carbon emissions of fossil-fuel plants or most of the hazards of existing nuclear reactors that split atoms rather than join them.
Success, however, has always seemed just a few decades away for ITER. The project has progressed in fits and starts for years, plagued by design and management problems that have led to long delays and ballooning costs.
ITER is moving ahead now, with a director-general, Bernard Bigot, who took over two years ago after an independent analysis that was highly critical of the project. Dr. Bigot, who previously ran France’s atomic energy agency, has earned high marks for resolving management problems and developing a realistic schedule based more on physics and engineering and less on politics.
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The site here is now studded with tower cranes as crews work on the concrete structures that will support and surround the heart of the experiment, a doughnut-shaped chamber called a tokamak. This is where the fusion reactions will take place, within a plasma, a roiling cloud of ionized atoms so hot that it can be contained only by extremely strong magnetic fields.
Here’s a rendering of the proposed reactor,
Source: ITER Organization
It seems the folks at the New York Times decided to remove the notes which help make sense of this image. However, it does get the idea across.
If I read the article rightly, the official cost in March 2017 was around 22 B Euros and more will likely be needed. You can read Fountain’s article for more information about fusion and ITER or go to the ITER website.
I could have sworn a local (Vancouver area) company called General Fusion was involved in the ITER project but I can’t track down any sources for confirmation. The sole connection I could find is in a documentary about fusion technology,
A new documentary featuring General Fusion has captured the exciting progress in fusion across the public and private sectors.
Let There Be Light made its international premiere at the South By Southwest (SXSW) music and film festival in March [2017] to critical acclaim. The film was quickly purchased by Amazon Video, where it will be available for more than 70 million users to stream.
Let There Be Light follows scientists at General Fusion, ITER and Lawrenceville Plasma Physics in their pursuit of a clean, safe and abundant source of energy to power the world.
The feature length documentary has screened internationally across Europe and North America. Most recently it was shown at the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto, where General Fusion founder and Chief Scientist Dr. Michel Laberge joined fellow fusion physicist Dr. Mark Henderson from ITER at a series of Q&A panels with the filmmakers.
Laberge and Henderson were also interviewed by the popular CBC radio science show Quirks and Quarks, discussing different approaches to fusion, its potential benefits, and the challenges it faces.
It is yet to be confirmed when the film will be release for streaming, check Amazon Video for details.
ITER is a breathtaking effort but if you’ve read about other large scale projects such as building a railway across the Canadian Rocky Mountains, establishing telecommunications in an astonishing number of countries around the world, getting someone to the moon, eliminating small pox, building the pyramids, etc., it seems standard operating procedure both for the successes I’ve described and for the failures we’ve forgotten. Where ITER will finally rest on the continuum between success and failure is yet to be determined but the problems experienced so far are not necessarily a predictor.
I wish the engineers, scientists, visionaries, and others great success with finding better ways to produce energy.
