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According to research company Pitchbook, last year venture investors spent USD 3.4 billion on nuclear start-ups - a record, and more than every year over the last decade combined together.

Fusion reactor technologies are well-positioned to contribute to our future power needs in a safe and sustainable manner. Numerical models can provide researchers with information on the behavior of the fusion plasma, as well as valuable insight on the effectiveness of reactor design and operation. However, to model the large number of plasma interactions requires a number of specialized models that are not fast enough to provide data on reactor design and operation.

In January 2020 India’s first Tokamak, the Aditya, completed 30 years of safe operation. Those thirty years saw India making steady if limited investments in nuclear fusion research. Apart from creating some tokamak ‘assets’ such as the Aditya and the Steady-State Superconducting Tokamak (SST-1), India’s fusion-related activities have been heavily focused on domestic sub-systems development, given the country’s history of being subject to abrupt technology denials. Domestic efforts in sub-systems development and basic research related to advanced tokamaks since the 1980s have positioned India to be a major partner in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, which is expected to yield the world’s largest tokamak-based reactor.

Both the U.S. and China are investing in nuclear fusion, and expecting results. Fusion’s unresolved engineering challenges (getting more power out than you have to put in) must be overcome first. If achieved, it offers the prospect of an almost inexhaustible source of energy. As Dan Yurman explains, this month the U.S. passed a bill that includes $2.8bn for fusion energy-related projects and research. The U.S. Fusion Industry Association said that figure still isn’t enough and will result in missed opportunities and the initiative shifting to other countries. Like China, where two tranches of $900m are supporting the development of an Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak. The device has achieved world records for maintaining plasma temperatures. Timescales are long, with 30 years from construction of the first plant to commercial operation. But the goal should be worth the wait.

Nuclear fusion is the process by which stars, including the Sun, generate their energy. In a fusion reaction, atomic nuclei ‘fuse’ together to form heavier nuclei. For this to happen, the nuclei need to have enough energy to overcome the repulsive force they experience because they are both positively charged. They also need a good chance of colliding with each other in the first place.

After achieving temperatures of 15m degrees celsius in 2018, Tokamak then broke through the 100m celsius fusion threshold in March. Meanwhile last month, Oxford-based First Light Fusion managed to achieve fusion by going down a non-magnetic route.

  Nuclear fusion is cited as a safe, clean and sustainable energy we all need, but alas to make this technology commercial has been quite a headache. Development has been slow - Iter nuclear fusion project started in 1985 is still only in it's infancy with an experimental plant that is only just being built…

Power generated from nuclear fusion is one of those alternative energy sources that companies have been eyeing for decades. Facilities in the US, Europe, Russia, and Japan are pushing forward toward a way to harness the immense energy generated by the fusing of atoms — fusion fuel produces 10 thousand times more energy than coal burning. But there are still hurdles to overcome before we get our hands on what is considered the "holy grail" of energy sources.

Why don’t we have nuclear fusion power yet? Because it involves taming plasmas at temperatures far hotter than the Sun’s core. But the good news is that physicists are slowly but surely figuring out how.

L’idée de déployer un mini-réacteur nucléaire pour produire l’énergie électrique nécessaire aux forces ne date pas d’hier aux Etats-Unis. Ainsi, le Pentagone avait lancé des le milieux des années 50 des études pour répondre à ce besoin spécifique, et les progrès techniques enregistrés ces dernières années ont permis de revigorer ce concept dès le début des années 2010. Il faudra toutefois attendre 2020 pour que la DARPA s’empare officiellement du projet, et finance une étude préalable pour la conception d’un réacteur nucléaire d’une puissance de 1 à 5 GW, capable d’être embarqué à bord d’un container 20 pieds aérotransportable.

There's no denying it.
Nuclear fusion has the potential to completely transform the U.S. energy industry, and become a primary source of zero-carbon energy. This is why, in a bid to "win the 21st-century economy," the United States is heavily investing in nuclear fusion technology. While scientific consensus is firm that we're still not ready to roll out fusion technology for commercial use, the early stages of renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and small modular reactors demand that we double down on reliable backups.

Tokamak Energy has demonstrated a world-first with its privately-funded ST40 spherical tokamak, achieving a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius, the threshold required for commercial fusion energy.
This is by far the highest temperature ever achieved in a spherical tokamak and by any privately funded tokamak. While several government laboratories have reported plasma temperatures above 100M degrees in conventional tokamaks, this milestone has been achieved in just five years, for a cost of less than £50m ($70m), in a much more compact fusion device. This achievement further substantiates spherical tokamaks as the optimal route to the delivery of clean, secure, low cost, scalable and globally deployable commercial fusion energy.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems closed on its latest $84 million in new funding two weeks ago. The U.S. was still very much in the lockdown phase and getting a deal done, especially a multimillion dollar investment in a new technology aiming to make commercial nuclear fusion a reality after decades of hype, was “an interesting thing” in the words of Commonwealth’s chief executive, Bob Mumgaard.

A lot of people resist electric cars because our power grid isn't green enough, with 60 percent of our electricity generated by fossil fuels. The remainder is roughly split between renewable energy (wind and hydro, primarily) and nuclear fission. The latter has been on a steady decline since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, but in February there was good news on the vastly more earth-friendly and renewable nuclear fusion energy front.

This approximation tool does not attempt to account for granular differences, details, and variables that will exist among reactor designs. Instead, this tool should be considered a back-of-the-envelope calculator to quickly and easily assess and compare potential fusion reactor outputs and gain values. If you provide values for the three fields in blue, the tool will auto-calculate. Alternatively, click on one of the reactor designs. Source references and notes for the reactor designs are at the bottom of the page.

A milestone has been reached in the quest to harness the power of the stars for cost-effective clean energy on Earth by scientists working to establish practical nuclear fusion.

Scientists at a laboratory in England have shattered the record for the amount of energy produced during a controlled, sustained fusion reaction. The production of 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds at the Joint European Torus (JET) experiment in England has been called “a breakthrough” by some news outlets and caused quite a lot of excitement among physicists.

This past year has been big for nuclear fusion. First there was the announcement from Lockheed Martin claiming they could have a fusion reactor that fits in a truck. Next there is an announcement from Germany that physicists are close to finishing another fusion reactor.

A new experiment appears to have triggered ignition for the first time, at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, recreating the extreme temperatures and pressures found at the heart of the Sun.

ITER a été lancé pour construire le plus gros "Tokamak" du monde pour essayer de reproduire l’énergie du soleil, énergie à profusion et gratuite, alternative rêvée aux énergies fossiles polluantes. Un défi relevé par l'alliance de 35 pays (l'Europe et les Etats-Unis, l'Inde, le Japon, la Chine, la Corée du Sud et la Russie). Budget estimé : 20 milliards d’euros.

A British fusion firm and University of Oxford spinoff First Light Fusion claims it achieved nuclear fusion with a technique inspired by the pistol shrimp.

C’est une première mondiale pour un tokamak sphérique : le ST-40 de Tokamak Energy a atteint une température de plasma de 100 millions de degrés Celsius, soit le seuil requis pour l’énergie de fusion commerciale. C’est aussi la température la plus élevée jamais atteinte par un tokamak financé par des fonds privés. Tokamak Energy prévoit de mettre en service la toute première usine de fusion au monde au début des années 2030.