Accelerating fusion through a strategic partnership; utilizing spin polarized fuels for fusion.
The Fusion Report has two stories to report on today. In the first story, Inertia Enterprises signs a landmark public private partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to commercialize fusion energy, with the execution of two strategic partnerships and a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to accelerate inertial fusion energy (IFE). At the same time, U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility received its second grant to continue the study of spin-polarized fusion (SPF) fuel, which is believed to increase the likelihood of fusion by 50%.
Inertia and LLNL Strategic Partnership
Today, Inertia announced one of the largest private sector-led collaborations in the history of the U.S. national lab system with Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL). It includes two Strategic Partnership Projects (SPPs), a new CRADA, and a licensing agreement for a broad portfolio of nearly 200 patents. The partnership builds on twenty years of research, including contributions from one of Inertia’s co-founders, Annie Kritcher, who led the design for the fusion breakthrough at LLNL in 2022 and remains a researcher at the facility. The agreement follows Inertia’s recently closed $450 million Series A funding round, the largest so far this year for a fusion company, and allows Inertia and LLNL to collaborate for research and development.
“Decades of public investment in fusion science have created a foundation that only America’s national labs could have built. Inertia exists to take that foundation and do what the private sector does best: build at scale and deliver commercial impact,” said Jeff Lawson, CEO and co-founder of Inertia. “This partnership with LLNL ensures we’re doing that with the full weight of their scientific expertise behind us.”
Inertia’s CRADA agreement with LLNL covers the R&D and prototyping of advanced optical materials and semiconductor laser diodes, the development of new manufacturing techniques for high-cost or long-lead components, and design options and experimental validation for a potential beamline architecture to drive Inertia’s planned high-power laser system. Through its two SPPs with LLNL, Inertia is scaling the performance and production of the fusion fuel targets that are at the heart of the breakthrough demonstrated at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Under this contract, LLNL staff will apply the same ICF design codes used to achieve ignition to help Inertia design its high-gain fusion target with greater confidence. A large team of LLNL scientists working with Inertia’s team of experts are both developing the target physics design as well as the techniques for rapid target manufacturing capable of meeting the design specifications necessary for grid-scale fusion power plant operation.
“Fusion is one of the greatest scientific and technological challenges of our time, and it is one we simply cannot afford to lose. What makes this moment different is that we are no longer pursuing it in isolation,” said Jean Paul Allain, Director of the DOE Office of Fusion. “Through partnerships like this one, we are bringing together the full strength of our National Labs, private industry, and the broader innovation ecosystems to move from breakthrough to deployment.”
“These agreements catalyze progress toward building the world’s first fusion power plant by combining unique expertise and resources across government and industry,” said Mike Dunne, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Inertia. “Our work with LLNL speeds up timelines for the multiple innovations vital for commercial fusion energy, bolstering Inertia’s work with other industry and research partners as we develop the processes and supply chains that future fusion power plants will depend.”
Jefferson Labs: Putting a New Spin on Fusion
The multiyear, spin-polarized fusion (SPF) project just received its second round of funding from DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program following its 2023 launch. The interdisciplinary team includes researchers from the University of Virginia; DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory; the University of California, Irvine; and the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, a DOE Office of Science user facility hosted by General Atomics. The work centers on the DIII-D tokamak, a research device that uses magnetic fields to confine plasma within its donut-shaped volume, and which is a proving ground for technologies critical to future magnetic confinement reactors, such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project.
“The SPF initiative supported by FES is a targeted investment to advance aspects of the DOE’s Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap,” said Matthew Lanctot, Acting Director of the Fusion Energy Research Division in the DOE Office of Science. “The activity aims to leverage the expertise in spin-polarized materials developed by the Nuclear Physics program to influence relevant aspects of the nuclear fusion reaction itself. If successful, theory predicts significant implications for fusion pilot plants.”
Like a whirling gyroscope, subatomic particles exhibit a behavior called spin. It can be manipulated when particles are exposed to a powerful magnet and temperatures colder than deep space. In these conditions, the particles tend to line up their spin parallel to the magnetic field. When most of the particles spin in the same direction, they are said to be polarized. The SPF project will test whether the isotopes’ polarization can survive long enough, as theory predicts, in a magnetically confined, 100-million-degree plasma. If so, it promises to increase the likelihood of a fusion reaction by 50%, boosting the energy output of the system by 70-80%. Phase I of the SPF project involved acquiring the isotopes and designing equipment that can polarize, store and inject them into the DIII-D tokamak. Phase II, which takes place over the next two years, provides funding for the procurement, prototyping and construction of the devices. The final phase, slated to begin in 2027, will deploy the system on DIII-D and measure the fusion byproducts to see if the polarization survives.
“When the idea for polarized fuel first came about, the technology was not quite ready,” Wei said. “But in the past few decades, nuclear physicists have been optimizing polarized targets. Now, we’re able to start applying that technology to a different field.”
The helium-3 will be prepared at UVA under the leadership of Associate Professor G. Wilson Miller. To polarize the isotope, the team is building a device inspired by technology originally developed for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). UVA also will build a permeator for filling polymer capsules with the polarized gas. To prepare deuterium, Jefferson Lab is building off its expertise in developing polarized targets for nuclear physics. Wei has a deep background in this field, dating back to some of his earliest research on polarized targets for inertial confinement fusion experiments in the early 1990s.
A waveguide helps carry radiofrequency waves created by the microwave generator to the lithium-deuteride pellets that will be used in the spin-polarized fusion project. Jefferson Lab Photo, Newport News, Va., April 8, 2026. (Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
The polarized LiD pellets will be transferred to a pellet injector, which uses compressed gas to send the pellets to the DIII-D tokamak at high speeds. Cryogenics and magnetic coils will maintain the particles’ polarized spin during the milliseconds-long transport. The device is being built at Oak Ridge under the leadership of Staff Scientist Larry Baylor. “If successful, this experiment could set off a surge of attempts to make it commercially available,” said Phillip Dobrenz, a Jefferson Lab staff engineer working on the SPF project. “The project’s success would sprout a research field within the fusion industry.”
