Author: Michael Heumann - Page 4

Commonwealth Fusion Systems and the UK Atomic Energy Authority Team Up on Tritium Production

Jul 1, 2026 | Fusion Energy, News

Commonwealth Fusion Systems has become the first international partner in the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s LIBRTI program, a £220 million effort to demonstrate net tritium production for fusion power plants. The two organizations will jointly design the experimental setup and run investigations at a new facility being built at UKAEA’s Culham Campus, which will draw on a high-flux neutron source from Shine Technologies. CFS, which describes itself as the best-funded fusion company with more than $3 billion raised, will build the test articles used to validate the tritium breeding blanket design for its ARC power plant planned for Virginia. Tritium breeding blankets are a shared engineering challenge across fusion approaches, and cross-company collaboration on the technology is becoming more common as the industry moves toward first-of-a-kind machines.

Realta Demonstrates Direct Energy Conversion In a Fusion Energy Setting

Jun 30, 2026 | Fusion Energy, News

Realta Fusion demonstrated direct energy conversion (DEC) of plasma kinetic energy into electricity at the WHAM fusion machine at UW-Madison, drawing current at about 100 volts to light several bulbs. The company describes it as the first such demonstration by a commercial fusion company and points to DEC as a way to raise efficiency and lower cost in its planned mid-2030s plants.

The Impact of AI and the Data Center Goldrush on Non-Data Center Construction Costs

Jun 25, 2026 | AI, Analysis, Data Center Power, Data Centers

The AI data center buildout is pushing up costs well beyond electricity and water. A recent study finds it is also raising the price of construction materials and skilled labor while absorbing capital that non-data-center projects, including commercial fusion, are competing for. The Fusion Report looks at who pays, who benefits, and what the $6.7 trillion data center forecast means for fusion’s race for investment.

E&P Technologies: Putting the Lightning into Capacitors for Fusion and Aerospace

Jun 23, 2026 | Analysis, Fusion Supply Chain, Power Electronics & Components

As fusion energy moves closer to commercial deployment, The Fusion Report is expanding its coverage of the fusion supply chain. This piece profiles E&P Technologies, a Melbourne, Florida startup building high voltage pulsed power capacitors for fusion and aerospace, and includes an interview with co-founder and CEO Caroline Sorrick on US manufacturing and how rapidly evolving fusion requirements affect suppliers.

China EAST Gets Set for Ignition in 2027

Jun 18, 2026 | China, Fusion Energy, News

China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), the record-setting “Artificial Sun” in Hefei, is now scheduled to attempt fusion ignition in 2027, a milestone reached only once before, by Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility in 2022. If successful, EAST would be the first to achieve ignition in a steady-state magnetic confinement device, though Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ SPARC is racing toward the same goal on the same timeline. The Fusion Report breaks down what ignition actually requires (the Lawson Criteria of temperature, density, and confinement time) and assesses how close each machine really is. EAST leads on pathfinding plasma physics while SPARC targets Q > 1, but neither has yet crossed into a self-heating burning plasma. The bigger question: would a 2027 ignition milestone finally ignite broad investor interest across the fusion sector?

Putting Data Centers Into Space: Is That Really The Best Idea Elon Musk Has For SpaceX?

Jun 16, 2026 | Analysis, Data Center Power, Data Centers

With SpaceX freshly public and its stock up 28% over the IPO price, talk of putting AI data centers in orbit is back in the headlines. The Fusion Report looks past the one obvious upside, nearly unlimited solar power in a sun-synchronous orbit, and tallies the costs that doom the idea: $160M to $280M per megawatt just to launch, two-year hardware refresh cycles, dense low-earth-orbit debris, space weather, and the near-impossibility of radiating away server heat in a vacuum. Against a ship-borne data center that fits in a shipping container and cools itself for a fraction of the price, orbital compute simply doesn’t pencil out. The verdict: outside of analyzing data that originates in space, orbital data centers are not a great idea.

Thea Energy Births a “Digital Twin” For its Planned Helios Fusion Power Plant

Jun 11, 2026 | Fusion Companies, Fusion Energy, News

Thea Energy has announced collaborations with NVIDIA, Synopsys, Argonne National Laboratory, and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory to develop a digital twin of its planned Helios stellarator fusion power plant. The effort will combine NVIDIA Omniverse libraries and AI infrastructure, Synopsys multiphysics simulation, ANL neutronics and blanket-design data, and PPPL high-fidelity plasma modeling codes into a single virtual model of the plant. The project aligns with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission to accelerate fusion development with AI, and Thea says the approach will build the Helios digital twin faster and with orders of magnitude less capital than traditional models. It will be the first digital twin of a stellarator fusion power plant, with Helios targeted for operation in the 2030s following the company’s Eos demonstration system.

Realta Fusion’s Hammir-DT Hits Fusion Big-Time!

Jun 9, 2026 | Fusion Companies, Fusion Energy, News

Realta Fusion has revealed Hammir-DT, a preconceptual design for an asymmetric tandem magnetic mirror fusion power plant targeting roughly 500 MW of fusion power and about 200 MWe of net electricity via direct energy conversion. In an interview with The Fusion Report, VP of R&D Derek Sutherland walked through the continuous (non-pulsed) design, the three enabling technologies behind its mirrors, and a roadmap that derisks the physics with D-D fusion before moving to D-T. Realta projects CapEx of $1B to $2B per plant and a levelized cost of electricity below $50/MWh. Having raised about $54 million to date, the company will need a substantially larger round to build its first plant.

Helion Raises $465 million in Latest Funding Round

Jun 5, 2026 | Funding & Deals, Fusion Energy, Fusion Funding

Helion Energy closed a $465 million Series G led by Thrive Capital at a $15.5 billion post-money valuation, the largest fusion VC round of 2026. The raise brings Helion’s lifetime private funding to $1.5 billion and makes it the second most funded fusion company after Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The capital will expand U.S. manufacturing capacity and support deployment of Orion, the company’s first power plant, now under construction in Malaga, Washington.

Is ITER Even Relevant Anymore?

Jun 4, 2026 | Analysis, Fusion Energy

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is the largest and most expensive fusion machine ever built, with a projected cost of between $20B and $24B and final-stage completion now pushed out to 2039. Meanwhile, commercial machines like Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ ARC are expected to deliver 400 MW of electricity in the early 2030s at a fraction of ITER’s price. The Fusion Report traces ITER’s four decades of international cooperation and schedule slips, compares its progress against NIF’s ignition milestones and EAST’s long-pulse records, and weighs what ITER can still uniquely deliver. The verdict: ITER’s value may now rest on being an insurance policy, one that only pays off if commercial fusion slips.

Michael Heumann