Michael Heumann

Editor-in-Chief, The Fusion Report

The US Congressional Election Results Are In, And Their Impacts on Fusion, Artificial Intelligence, And Energy

The US Congressional Election Results Are In, And Their Impacts on Fusion, Artificial Intelligence, And Energy

Nov 5, 2026 |

Democrats won control of both the U.S. House and Senate in the November 3, 2026 midterm elections, with NBC News projecting at least 258 House seats and CBS News projecting at least 54 Senate seats. Democrats also flipped five Republican-held governorships and secured a majority of governor’s offices for the first time in 16 years. Affordability was the central issue, and opposition to data center expansion over its impact on electricity and water prices became a significant factor in races in Texas, Georgia and Ohio, with CNBC reporting that voters sided against data centers in every resolved local measure except one. For fusion, Rep. Zoe Lofgren is positioned to chair the House Science Committee, and the bipartisan American Leadership in Fusion Act she introduced with Rep. Jay Obernolte would provide $10 billion for fusion research and development programs if enacted. The analysis also considers what the results signal for the 2028 presidential race.

Ballot box with a glowing lightning bolt ballot rising from the slot

The Potential Impact Of Energy Prices On The Economy and On The 2026 Midterm Elections

Nov 3, 2026 | , ,

As voters head to the polls in the November 3, 2026 midterm elections, energy prices are at the center of the economic debate. Headline CPI rose to 3.7% in September, and gasoline prices are up 34.2% on average since the beginning of President Trump’s second term. As of October 23, Cook Political Report projected Democratic gains of 12 to 22 House seats, while control of the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53 to 47 majority, remained more uncertain. Because President Trump would keep his veto through January 2029, a Democratic Congress would be more likely to block further rollbacks, strengthen oversight and gain leverage in spending negotiations than to reverse energy policy wholesale. For fusion, which already has bipartisan support through proposals such as the $10 billion American Leadership in Fusion Act, the analysis argues that the most important outcome is not the election but a demonstrated achievement of Qeng>1.

Orange microchip glowing inside a cracked bubble on a dark navy background

Is the AI Bubble Going to Burst, And If So When?

Oct 29, 2026 | ,

An AI bubble is the risk that enthusiasm and market forces push AI valuations and infrastructure spending beyond what future revenues and profits can justify, with exposure reaching the wider economy through capital markets and write-offs of AI-related corporate debt. Microsoft, Amazon, Google/Alphabet, Meta and Oracle have collectively added approximately $350B in debt obligations over the past five years to fund AI and data center infrastructure, and CoreWeave’s bonds have traded at yields of roughly 15% to 16%. Compared with the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, a comparable systemic crisis would depend less on how far AI shares fall than on whether losses impair major lenders and disrupt funding markets.

Stylized illustration of stacked impedance-matched Marx generator stages with an orange pulse running through the center

Fusion Support Tech Part 6: Pulsed Power Systems and Impedance-Matched Marx Generators (IMGs)

Oct 27, 2026 | ,

The Fusion Report’s series on the critical supporting technologies for commercial fusion energy continues with pulsed power systems and impedance-matched Marx generators (IMGs). Pulsed power stores energy slowly and releases it in extremely short, high-power bursts, and it plays a role in both inertial and magnetic fusion machines. At the National Ignition Facility, the power-conditioning system stores up to roughly 400 MJ and supplies more than 34 kJ to each of nearly 8,000 flashlamps. IMGs are designed so their internal impedance matches the load, and IMG architectures can reach roughly 90% efficiency, versus about half that for conventional Marx systems that rely on additional pulse-compression hardware. Pacific Fusion’s Demonstration System, under construction in Albuquerque, would combine multiple IMG modules to deliver more than 60 MA to a centimeter-scale MagLIF target in a roughly 100-nanosecond pulse, and commercial viability depends on scaling from thousands of demonstration shots to millions of reliable, low-cost pulses.

Natural gas pipelines with yellow flow-direction labels at a gas facility

If Man’s Best Friend Is The Dog, The Best Friend of Artificial Intelligence Is Clearly Natural Gas

Oct 22, 2026 | ,

Natural gas is the largest source of electricity for US data centers today, with recent estimates putting it above 40% of their supply, followed by renewables at about 24%, nuclear at about 20%, and coal at about 15%. By 2030, gas is expected to remain the largest incremental fuel source, and the International Energy Agency projects that roughly 15 to 27 GW of on-site natural gas capacity could be serving data centers globally, mostly in the United States. Behind-the-meter microgrids built around modular gas turbines and reciprocating engines could supply roughly 25 to 33% of incremental data center demand through 2030. Beyond 2035, renewables are poised to provide most of the incremental energy, backed by nuclear, hydro, storage, and flexible gas, with fusion a potential dark horse that is not likely to roll out before 2040.

Grid of Zenithon AI extreme physics simulation outputs

UK Startup Zenithon Launches Foundational Model for Extreme Physics

Oct 20, 2026 | , ,

UK AI startup Zenithon, which raised $10M last month, is building “world models for extreme physics”: machine-learning systems that act as fast surrogates for computationally expensive physics simulations. The company says its models can evaluate roughly one million design points in the time a conventional simulation takes to evaluate one. Its initial technical focus is fusion energy, building on its founders’ work on machine-learning surrogates for gyrokinetic transport calculations, with spacecraft, rockets, and semiconductor manufacturing also in scope. Zenithon says its models are trained on both simulation data and real-world experimental results and provide uncertainty estimates with predictions. The Fusion Report weighs what that could mean for fusion design cycles, along with the validation and hardware caveats that remain.

Fusion Support Tech Part 5: High Energy Plasma Heating/Diagnostics For MFE and HFE Systems

Fusion Support Tech Part 5: High Energy Plasma Heating/Diagnostics For MFE and HFE Systems

Oct 13, 2026 | ,

The Fusion Report’s series on the critical supporting technologies for commercial fusion energy continues with plasma heating and diagnostics. All fusion approaches rely on diagnostics to measure temperature, density, confinement, impurities, and fusion-neutron output, while MFE and hybrid systems must also supply heating energy externally. Tokamaks start with ohmic heating, which loses effectiveness as plasma resistivity declines with temperature, then add neutral beam injection and resonant RF and microwave heating; ITER’s two planned heating neutral beam injectors are designed to provide 16.5 MW each using 1 MeV deuterium beams. In hybrid concepts such as Sandia’s MagLIF, a laser preheats the magnetized fuel plasma to roughly 100 to 300 eV before a pulsed-power-driven metal liner compresses it. ITER is designed to use roughly 60 diagnostic instruments to measure 101 parameters, feeding real-time control of heating, fueling, magnetic fields, and protective actions.

The DIII-D Negative Triangularity Team

San Diego’s DIII-D National Fusion Facility Wins Plasma Physics Award for Negative Triangularity Work

Oct 8, 2026 | ,

A multi-institutional team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego has won the American Physical Society’s John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research for advancing negative triangularity, a reversed D-shape plasma configuration for tokamaks. Beginning in 2022, the team replaced the standard tile armor in DIII-D’s lower divertor with tiles designed for negative triangularity operation and ran a dedicated campaign. General Atomics staff scientist Kathreen Thome said the team produced high-performance plasmas for weeks without seeing a single edge-localized mode (ELM). The work also achieved detached divertor conditions during negative triangularity operation of a tokamak for the first time. DIII-D plans to install a negative triangularity-optimized divertor in the near future through a public-private partnership with Kyoto Fusioneering, which will manufacture the first wall tiles.

Type One Energy Raises $200M Series B Round, and Interview with CSEO John Canik

Type One Energy Raises $200M Series B Round, and Interview with CSEO John Canik

Oct 6, 2026 | ,

Type One Energy announced the close of a $200M Series B round co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Clutterbuck Capital, with new investors including Lowercarbon Capital, Siemens Energy Ventures and SiteGround Capital. The raise follows the company’s receipt of an initial fusion operating license from the State of Tennessee for Project Infinity at TVA’s Bull Run Energy Complex. Project Infinity pairs Infinity One, a 30% scale non-power-producing stellarator prototype scheduled for commissioning in 2029, with Infinity Two, a planned 400MWe commercial plant targeting full startup in 2034, subject to final approvals. In an interview with The Fusion Report, co-founder and Chief Science and Engineering Officer Dr. John Canik discusses why stellarators suit steady-state power generation and how modern computational tools ease magnet manufacturing tolerances. He also explains why Type One’s OEM business model, with utilities as the end customer, requires less capital than a vertically integrated approach.

A Deep Dive into Helion Energy’s Progress Towards Commercial Fusion Energy

A Deep Dive into Helion Energy’s Progress Towards Commercial Fusion Energy

Oct 1, 2026 | , ,

The Fusion Report interviewed Helion Energy founder and CEO Dr. David Kirtley about the company’s progress toward commercial fusion energy. Kirtley said Orion was never scheduled to reach full power on day one, and that commissioning and a ramp-up to full power were built into Helion’s agreements with Microsoft, which call for at least 50 MW after an initial ramp-up. He also discussed Helion’s path from D-D and D-T fusion on Polaris to deuterium-helium-3 testing, theoretical research pointing to up to 90% efficiency for direct electricity conversion, and why 50 MWe is probably the lower limit for an FRC machine. Helion has raised $1.5 billion in invested capital to date, including a Series G first announced in June at $465 million and a $15.5 billion post-money valuation, which closed oversubscribed at $500 million in September 2026.

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