Yesterday, Carrie von Muench, co-founder and chief operating officer of Pacific Fusion, released Pacific Fusion’s framework for measuring the progress of their program towards achieving commercial fusion energy. This framework is in the mold of the one that Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) CEO Bob Mumgaard released in 2024, called “Building Trust in Fusion Energy”. The Fusion Report will provide a quick overview of this framework and what it means for commercial fusion’s progress.
Pacific Fusion’s Progress Framework Towards Commercialization
Pacific Fusion’s progress framework is defined in five steps, or milestones. The first three steps, which define the scientific requirements for achieving fusion, are based on Lawson criteria, first article in 1955 by physicist John D Lawson. The last two steps define what is required to achieve commercial fusion. These are shown below:
As noted in the framework above, only two of the five milestones have been completed to date. Milestone 1, Scientific Proof of Concept, has been proven for a number of approaches including tokamaks and accelerators, which are both magnetic confinement fusion (MCF) concepts, and laser-based pulser based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) concepts. This essentially means that all the major approaches to fusion are reasonably viable from a scientific perspective. Milestone 2, scientific gain of Qsci greater than 1 has been achieved once, in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF) in December 2022. Essentially, Qsci means that the input power for the fusion target is exceeded by the output power from the fusion target.
Milestone 3 is where we move from scientific possibility to engineering possibility; this is known as Net Facility Gain. That means that the power output of the candidate fusion machine exceeds the power put into it. Theoretical work done with Sandia Laboratories Z Machine predicts that ignition could be achieved with current as low as 40 MA to 50 MA, and with a power output achieving at least over 60 MA. The ratio between input power and output power is known as QF, or facility gain. Pacific Fusion expects to achieve Milestones 2 and 3 by 2030 using their ICF Pulser approach, with a facility Q (Qf) exceeding a factor of 1.
Moving to Commercial Power Production
Milestones 4 and 5 are where the rubber meets the road; in essence, they are the steps that show that you can create enough power to be interesting (Power Gain), and you can do so economically (Affordable Power). Specifically, they mean that you can produce enough electricity at a cost that is low enough to be worthwhile. This includes the power lost in the thermal conversion of heat produced by the fusion machine to electricity, a conversion that is usually 30% to 40% efficient using traditional heat engines. In addition, your plant design has to support maintenance costs and plant uptime requirements.
For an ICF system such as the Pacific Fusion ICF approach, that means: i) having first-wall surfaces that can survive plasmas; ii) the ability to make tritium economically; iii) reasonable approaches to radiation shielding; iv) affordable and manufacturable targets; and v) systems that fit in with the existing power grid infrastructure. Pacific Fusion’s modular approach simplifies meeting these requirements, and avoids the lessons learned in nuclear fission where massive one-off plants were built at an extremely high cost. This approach has been proven in numerous mega-projects; it enables systems to be rapidly built economically, and new technologies to be incorporated easily.
Conclusion. Is Pacific Fusion’s Approach Reasonable?
As one fusion expert once stated, “Fusion isn’t rocket science; it is harder. If it wasn’t, it would have been done 50 years ago.” And yet, a number of achieved milestones show that we are getting closer to fusion than we have ever been previously. The Pacific Fusions approach, like a number of others, has a lot of positives. That doesn’t mean that it’s easy, but it does indicate that it’s doable. At this point, and especially for Milestones 4 and 5, it does require an ecosystem that can support the production of fusion power plants and their components at reasonable costs, and with reasonable risks. While not all of these factors are in the control of even the best-financed companies like Pacific Fusion, the growing economic interest in fusion makes it more likely that these factors should be able to be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time. Given the growing power requirements of the US power grid (some estimates forecast a 60GW shortfall at the largest U.S. grid operator over the next decade), commercial fusion power likely won’t be too soon.
