Michael Heumann

Editor-in-Chief, The Fusion Report

Pacific Fusion Breaks Ground on Their State-of-the-Art Fusion Facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico

Pacific Fusion Breaks Ground on Their State-of-the-Art Fusion Facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico

Aug 25, 2026 | ,

Pacific Fusion has broken ground on a $1 billion Research & Manufacturing Campus at Mesa del Sol in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The campus will house the company’s Demonstration System, designed to achieve net facility gain by 2030 and to produce high-yield fusion bursts expected to exceed 100 megajoules, which the company says would make it the only high-yield fusion facility under construction in the United States. The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration executed a Memorandum of Understanding with Pacific Fusion to identify collaboration opportunities in high-yield fusion, high-energy-density science, and pulsed-power technologies. The company says the campus will support approximately 200 permanent jobs plus hundreds of construction and regional jobs, and it is expanding manufacturing in Los Lunas. The Fusion Report explains why a dated net facility gain commitment and the NNSA partnership matter.

The Very Important Role of Nuclear Deterrence in the Development of Commercial Fusion Energy

The Very Important Role of Nuclear Deterrence in the Development of Commercial Fusion Energy

Aug 20, 2026 | ,

The Fusion Report examines how US nuclear deterrence work has shaped commercial fusion energy. After performing 1,054 nuclear weapons tests between 1945 and 1992, the United States shifted to validating its stockpile through modeling, simulation, and high energy density experiments under the Stockpile Stewardship Program. That mission funds the facilities inertial fusion knows best: the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore, the Z machine at Sandia, and the Omega Laser Facility at the University of Rochester. All three are decades old, and a recent Hudson Institute paper outlines plans and milestones for a joint program between the NNSA and commercial inertial confinement fusion companies. The article argues that a well designed partnership could accelerate both commercial fusion and nuclear weapons stewardship as the US competes with China on both fronts.

Fusion Support Tech Part 1: Creating First-Wall Materials That Can Resist High-Energy Neutron Damage

Fusion Support Tech Part 1: Creating First-Wall Materials That Can Resist High-Energy Neutron Damage

Aug 18, 2026 | ,

The first wall is the innermost boundary facing a fusion plasma, and no material yet does everything asked of it. Tungsten leads on heat handling but can embrittle under neutron damage, while steels, vanadium alloys, silicon-carbide composites, and ultra-high-temperature ceramics each trade one strength for another. A newer approach abandons the solid surface entirely in favor of flowing liquid metal. ITER has switched from beryllium to tungsten in its revised baseline, European suppliers have opened series-production lines, and Germany’s DINERWA project is developing next-generation alloys for high-heat-flux testing. Yet no fusion first wall has established a commercial operating record, and that gap, between industrialization and a bankable power plant, is where the real question sits.

US Automakers Drop The EV Ball – Again

US Automakers Drop The EV Ball – Again

Aug 13, 2026 | , ,

China produced nearly 75% of the world’s electric vehicles in 2025 and more than 80% of EV battery cells, while US manufacturers concentrated on large, expensive EVs. Tesla lost its status as the world’s leading EV maker to China’s BYD and is ending Model S and Model X production to repurpose Fremont manufacturing capacity for Optimus humanoid robots. Ford expects its EV business not to become profitable until 2029, while GM reduced planned EV capacity and recorded EV-related charges. Consumers want affordability and dependable charging: Edmunds data shows nearly half of US consumers want a car priced under $40,000, and a Harvard Business School analysis found public US charging equipment successfully worked only about 78% of the time. The Fusion Report examines whether US auto manufacturers can still compete effectively in the EV market, or whether lower-cost global rivals will gain a lasting advantage.

What Is The Right “Need” In The United States For Commercial Fusion Energy?

What Is The Right “Need” In The United States For Commercial Fusion Energy?

Aug 11, 2026 | ,

The Fusion Report examines what will actually drive US demand for commercial fusion energy when it is expected to start coming online in the mid-2030s. The author argues that counting on AI is a mistake: most optimistic forecasts show electricity demand growth from AI starting to level off in the mid- to late-2030s, and the IEA cites a headwinds case in which data-center energy demand plateaus beyond 2030, reaching about 700 TWh by 2035. Nearer-term answers for decarbonizing electricity already exist, including solar plus battery storage, which the US EIA’s conservative baseline projects will account for at least 14% of total US electricity by 2035, and advanced nuclear fission. The author suggests stronger framing for fusion’s US case: roughly 100 GW of generation capacity is projected to retire by 2035, including 40% of the remaining US coal power plants, and if US EV adoption reached 50%, charging would increase total annual electricity consumption by roughly 13%-15% (500 TWh-600 TWh). The conclusion: fusion’s business strategy needs to start focusing on real opportunities instead of illusory ones.

What Is Going On With The DRAM Shortage?

What Is Going On With The DRAM Shortage?

Aug 6, 2026 | , ,

We examine why DRAM prices are so high. Big surprise, the culprit is AI. Memory manufacturers can make more money from HBM3E, the vertically stacked DRAM used in AI accelerators like NVIDIA’s H200, so they have prioritized it over the DDR5 modules that go into PCs, cell phones, graphics cards, and game consoles. The author reports that DRAM modules for a recent roughly $1,000 PC build cost about $450, while the same models would have cost at most half the price three years ago, and device prices have also increased significantly over the past 12 to 24 months. The article traces ten years of cyclical DRAM pricing and argues the current spike is amplified by the speculative US data center build-out, with roughly 45% of the build-out and half of the known global hyperscale pipeline located in the US. It closes with a warning: a massive demand boom that the author expects will almost certainly be followed by a similarly sized demand bust.

What Does Andy Burnham Becoming the UK Prime Minister Mean for Their (and Our) Fusion Energy Programs?

What Does Andy Burnham Becoming the UK Prime Minister Mean for Their (and Our) Fusion Energy Programs?

Aug 4, 2026 | , ,

Andy Burnham is the UK’s new Prime Minister, and The Fusion Report examines what the change could mean for the UK’s fusion energy programs. The UK currently runs one of the largest publicly funded fusion commercialization programs, an investment of $3.3B US (£2.5B UK) between 2026 and 2030. That includes £1.3 billion for the STEP prototype power plant at the former West Burton coal power station in Nottinghamshire, the National Fusion Laboratory at Culham, a £125 million AI growth zone with the ‘Sunrise’ supercomputer expected to deliver up to 6.76 exaflops, and £50 million in skills training aiming to prepare 2,000 experts for the fusion industry by 2030. A Burnham government is not expected to retrench the UK’s stated fusion commercialization goals, but it could pursue them through a lens of devolution, public control, and industrial renewal, potentially reshaping where fusion facilities, supply chains, and research clusters are located.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems Raises $1 Billion, But It’s Really Just A Down Payment For Their ARC Machine

Commonwealth Fusion Systems Raises $1 Billion, But It’s Really Just A Down Payment For Their ARC Machine

Jul 30, 2026 | , ,

Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced on July 30, 2026 that it raised $1 billion of additional equity financing, which the company says is the largest single funding round among fusion energy companies since its own $1.8 billion Series B round in 2021. With this capital and the $863 million raised last year, CFS says its total stands at $4 billion, or about 30 percent of all capital raised by the fusion industry to date. The round drew institutional investors including pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, infrastructure investors, and industrial corporate partners rather than traditional venture capital. CFS also hired former Moderna chief financial officer Lorence Kim as its new CFO, a signal that more fundraising for its ARC power plant is still ahead. The company says it remains on track to put power on the grid in the early 2030s from the Fall Line Fusion Power Station in Chesterfield County, Virginia.

Quantum Computing Helps Breeding of Tritium; Thea Expands Manufacturing of “Smart HTS Magnets”

Quantum Computing Helps Breeding of Tritium; Thea Expands Manufacturing of “Smart HTS Magnets”

Jul 28, 2026 | , ,

Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, and Michigan State University have used quantum supercomputing to investigate the molecular configurations of FLiBe, a leading candidate material for tritium breeding blankets in fusion reactors. The work aims to identify which of at least nine FLiBe configurations performs best under fusion conditions, a problem quantum computing may be better suited to solve than AI. In parallel, Thea Energy announced that the DOE’s ARPA-E has selected it for a $20 million SCALEUP award to build the first domestic production line of modular high-temperature superconducting magnets. Thea plans to use approximately 300 planar shaping coils in its first large-scale integrated stellarator system, ‘Eos’, and the award follows the company’s $100 million Series B raise. Together, the developments position quantum computing and advanced magnet manufacturing as growing forces in commercial fusion.

Barclays Joins UK IFC, Plans Funding Fusion Efforts; Inertia Announces Commercialization Roadmap

Barclays Joins UK IFC, Plans Funding Fusion Efforts; Inertia Announces Commercialization Roadmap

Jul 23, 2026 | ,

Barclays has announced it is supporting the UK Infinity Fusion Consortium, a private, sector-led collaboration formed in May 2026 by Type One Energy, Tokamak Energy, and AECOM to advance a commercial fusion power plant in the UK. The move puts one of Europe’s top five banks, with total assets of £1.54T, behind commercial fusion deployment and complements the UK Government’s Fusion Strategy and STEP program. Alongside the Barclays news, Inertia published its Phase 1 commercialization roadmap. Inertia’s ten Phase 1 goals include scaling target yield to more than 25x, which the company says is enough for a plant to deliver 250MW to the grid, and cutting high-power laser diode costs by roughly 50x. The Fusion Report weighs what a reliable capital source and a concrete engineering roadmap mean for the path to commercial fusion.

Free newsletter

Get The Fusion Report in your inbox

News and analysis every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

Subscribe

Watch on demandFusion 2035, from the companies building itPast Forum speakersCommonwealth Fusion SystemsPacific FusionXcimer EnergyITERThea EnergyType One EnergynT-Tao, Inertia, Realta Fusion and moreNext forum: Thursday, February 11, 2027. Free to attend.Watch the replays