Fusion Plants That Run for Years, Not Seconds: Washington Funds 28 Projects on the Hard Parts

The Energy Department gave $8.5 million to 28 lab and university projects with 22 fusion companies, on materials, sensors and modeling. The winners list was not checked, so the exact technologies are unconfirmed.

TL;DR

A fusion power plant is only useful if it can run for years, and that depends less on the dramatic plasma shots that make headlines than on the parts around them: walls that survive a constant hail of neutrons, sensors that can see inside a plasma hotter than the Sun's core, and computer models good enough to design a plant before it is built. On Nov. 2 the Department of Energy put $8.5 million into 28 small projects aimed at exactly those parts, pairing national labs and universities with 22 private fusion companies, and it opened next year's round with a new topic for early fusion pilot-plant designs. It is plumbing, not a physics breakthrough, and plumbing is what turns a lab record into a power station. Our odds that a fusion machine puts electricity on a U.S. grid: chance it works 75%, likely by 2031. For the full odds and the timeline of breakthroughs between today's grants and fusion power on the grid, subscribe.

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