Day 1 Highlights: 2025 Fusion Industry Association Policy Conference

The Fusion Industry Association (FIA) had their annual policy conference last week at Union Station in Washington DC. The conference encompassed seventeen (17) sessions over two days, with a number of notable speakers. In particular, the conference looked at current and future public policies and their impacts on the status and future of fusion, not only in the US, but also in other western countries such as the UK and Japan. Notably, the conference was upbeat and optimistic, and focused on how the perceptions of fusion energy have evolved within governments, lawmakers, private investors, and the public over the past 10 years. Finally, several panels within the conference focused on how we scale and commercialize fusion energy, and what is needed to put it on the grid. Because of the amount of material covered in this conference (and we will only be covering the highlights), our article will be in 2 parts across today and Wednesday.

The FIA Board Panel – How Do We Coordinate Efforts Across Countries?

In essence, the FIA Board of Directors panel acted as the “kickoff speaker” for the conference. One of the more interesting discussions on this topic was on how the term “nuclear fusion” is no longer something that has a negative context. For roughly the last decade, the fusion community has avoided the term “nuclear fusion” because it didn’t want the negative context implied by “nuclear” – radioactive waste, Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island being “negatives” that are often associated with the term “nuclear”. It has also always been thought that the fusion industry needed a different regulatory regime the nuclear fission has , and that “nuclear fusion” worked against achieving that goal, which was realized in 2024.

The two other big messages from the Board of Directors were how do we scale the industry and the FIA across multiple countries, and how do we help fusion companies continue to grow effectively as they become multinational. This is a big concern in that if companies have to face different regulatory regimes in different countries, it will be difficult to build a common set of technologies that can be utilized in multiple countriesIn that sense, the FIA sees that one of its key roles over the next decade is to help continue pushing common regulatory frameworks that enable such cooperation.

United States and United Kingdom Partnership Panel – A Blueprint for Multinational Coordination?

One of the most interesting panels of Day 1 was the panel on cooperation between the United States and the United Kingdom. The panel, which included Dr. Jean Paul Allain (Office of Fusion Sciences, US DoE), Saskia Mordijck (past president of the University Fusion Association), Michael Ginsburg (Tokomak Energy US), Oladipi Okusaga (Energy, Climate, and Programme Management, UK Embassy in Washington, DC), and Tristam Denton (UK Director, FIA).

The panel started their discussion by stating the importance of multi-national development of fusion technologies. From the panel’s perspective, to be effective these efforts need to include companies, national labs, universities, and government agencies. There were three areas that the panel discussed:

• Enabling multinationals to work across national borders;
• Growing the supply chain for critical fusion subsystems and technologies; and
• Training strong workforces to help with the commercialization of fusion.

One of the biggest examples of success in this area is the cooperation and regulatory “parallel paths” that are being taken between the US and the UK. It should be noted that this cooperation not only benefits multinational companies, but also research universities and government labs that are working in cooperative forums to jointly move fusion energy forward. Finally, they talked about the conscious efforts that regulators across the US and UK have put into providing a common set of regulatory rules that make it easier for companies to operate in both nations.

Chat with Senator Mark Warner and Bob Mumgaard (CEO, CFS)

Day 1 wrapped up with a “fireside chat” between Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and Bob Mumgaard (CEO and co-founder of Commonwealth Fusion System, or CFS); the discussion was moderated by Justin Worland (Sr. Correspondent, TIME). The timing of the discussion was particularly relevant given CFS’s recent announcement that they will be building “the world’s first commercial fusion power plant” in Chesterfield County, Virginia on a site currently owned by Dominion Energy. 

Sen. Warner, who was a prime mover in the cellular telecommunications market, was also previously the governor of Virginia, and had been intimately involved in both nuclear fission and fusion energy development as a US senator. Senator Warner started out about discussing the importance of fusion to the US’s national security in the future. He cited as an example the 1970s oil embargo, where our dependence on petroleum provided by OPEC countries made us vulnerable to a cut in our oil supply.

Bob Mumgaard added to this discussion by reminding the audience that being first with a technology is not enough – that you also have to build a robust supply chain to enable the commercialization of the new technology. As an example of this, Bob cited China’s approach to emerging markets, where they generally dominate these markets through an overwhelming ownership of the supply chain, followed by low/predatory pricing to shut out other competitors, followed by the domination of the new market which they use for political and military power. Examples of this Bob cited were the photovoltaic solar market, and the electric vehicle/energy storage battery market. He also cited the amount of money that China is currently investing (both privately and publicly) into fusion and into developing fusion experts, where China is beating us by 10-to-1 graduating PhDs focused on fusion.

Finally, the panel discussed the importance of changing the character of our discussions regarding what constitutes national security. While the intelligence organizations of our countries have historically looked at military power and weapons technologies as key indicators of national security, the availability of energy to fuel national growth has quickly become critical to the development of our economy, industrial base, and our security. This is also important when you consider the export market that will be created by fusion energy, and the value that market will have for the countries that lead the commercialization of fusion. Finally, the size of the supply chain needed for fusion energy will drive the need for groups of countries to work together to commercialize it. The US treats its allies as allies; China treats other countries as customers; this is one of the strengths that the West (including Japan and South Korea) has against countries like Russia and China.

Conclusions from Day 1 of the FIA Fusion Policy Conference

It was pretty clear from the various panel discussions during the day that as fusion energy matures, switching our sights from “achieving the first Q” to commercializing and “mass producing” fusion power plants is critical if the US/Europe/Japan/South Korea are to dominate fusion energy, rather than being simply “customers” of some other country. If we look at automobiles, the first car powered by an internal combustion engine was built in 1885 (a “first of a kind” example), but it was not until 1908 that the first truly mass-produced internal combustion automobile (the Ford Model T) was built and sold. The catalyst for this was not the new technologies in an automobile, but the conveyor belt which allowed cars to be built cheaply to a consistent level of quality. Similarly for fusion, market dominance will result for companies which learn to build (and permit and commission) hundreds of fusion power plants from a common design, rather than from a “first-of-a-kind” design. It is a competition whether we like it or not, and one that we western nations (including Japan and Korea) need to win.