FUSION ENERGY NEWS

Thea Energy operated its first full-scale stellarator shaping coil, and The Fusion Report dug into whether $50/MWh is really the bar for commercial fusion in the US. Fusion lands on China’s 15th Five-Year Plan as a frontier priority, ITER explains how fusion is pushing AI to evolve, Xcimer Energy keeps stacking senior hires, and Stellarex Energy and TAE Technologies both add new joint work with UKAEA.

Thea Energy has successfully operated its first full-size, full-current, full-field stellarator planar shaping coil at over 6 T and 20 K, hitting Eos-spec performance. The milestone validates the company’s software-controlled magnet approach and its in-house build in Kearny, NJ, where a second facility is planned for 2026 to scale shaping coil production.

Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, said fusion needs to hit $50/MWh to succeed. But US wholesale prices swing from $24 to $260/MWh by region, Europe and Japan run $95 to $100/MWh. AI data centers paying behind the meter face $150 to $300/MWh. $50/MWh is a goal, not a requirement. The real bar is facility Q>10.

Type One Energy, Tokamak Energy, and AECOM have formed the UK Infinity Fusion Consortium, a private-sector-led effort to build a 400 MWe stellarator-based fusion power plant in the United Kingdom by 2034. The plant is the second to use Type One Energy’s stellarator design and the second fusion plant announced for the UK, after the STEP tokamak.

Zap Energy is becoming an integrated nuclear platform, pairing its sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch fusion machine with a 10 to 15 MW sodium-cooled microreactor on the fission side. The company also named Zabrina Johal as CEO. The Fusion Report sat down with Zap’s Ryan Umstattd to unpack the strategy, the funding picture, and the technology overlap.

This week’s fusion briefing covers Zap Energy’s new CEO and pivot to integrated fission-fusion, Commonwealth Fusion’s first-ever PJM interconnection filing, a joint CEO letter pressing Brussels for a coordinated fusion strategy, a new commentary on the $50/MWh cost bar, and nT-Tao’s MoU with Israel’s national water company to explore fusion-powered desalination.