Fusion energy R&D gets a boost from private finance
Fusion energy has never been in the news as frequently as it is now, and there’s good reason. Every published result from research and development (R&D) around the world pushes the science another step closer to harnessing the same energy as that of the Sun and stars.
As the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) puts it: “If nuclear fusion can be replicated on Earth at an industrial scale, it could provide virtually limitless clean, safe, and affordable energy to meet the world’s demand.”
That goal could become a commercial reality as early as the 2040s.
At WNE 2025, a high-level panel highlighted technological progress in fusion R&D while also charting the path toward a “truly global fusion industry”. Delivering on the promise of clean energy for all requires more than R&D success, panellists said. It demands the birth of an industrial sector that spans thousands of companies, mobilises billions of dollars in investment, and engages a global workforce.
More recently, fusion was a major theme at the annual conference of the American Nuclear Society (ANS), with reports on keynote speakers including ANS chief executive Craig Piercy highlighting its potential. Addressing what he called the “cultural friction between the fission and fusion communities”, Piercy said both should recognise they are “part of the same larger project” to meet burgeoning demand for clean energy.
The world as a whole is belatedly waking up to the importance of nuclear power in the overall energy mix. After more than two decades of stagnation, the capacity of the global nuclear fleet is expected to increase by one-third by 2035.
That’s the projection of the latest World Energy Outlook from the International Energy Agency (IEA) based on existing energy policies and the expectation of “a record high in nuclear power output” in 2025.
"Technology advances… are improving the outlook for nuclear power,” says the report. “As demand surges and the need for reliable, low-emission baseload electricity increases, nuclear is increasingly seen as a critical part of a secure, affordable and diverse electricity mix."
It’s a welcome reversal in fortune for the nuclear industry, which had “suffered some decline and stagnation” from the late 1970s to early 2000s, although its share of world electricity generation remained at 16-17 per cent.
Now, with the very public support for nuclear by the current US administration, the French government’s new multiyear energy programme (PPE) putting renewed focus on nuclear, and other countries looking into it, the nuclear industry appears to be gaining momentum. This point was not lost on the international visitors, delegates and exhibitors who attended the 2025 edition of the World Nuclear Exhibition (WNE) in record numbers and contributed to the buzz in the exhibition hall and conference rooms.
WNE 2023_© Collectif Favart
Increased interest from private investors
Fusion science is moving from the fringes closer to the mainstream, propelled by increased private investor interest. The Fusion Industry Association’s 2025 Global Industry Report said 53 private fusion companies had raised investments total of $9.8 billion, of which more than a quarter had been raised in the year ended July 2025 – the second-largest yearly increase since the report started.
The International Energy Forum (IEF) estimated there were about 20 fusion reactors in the world in 2022. Today, the IAEA counts about 130 experimental machines in operation, being built, or planned worldwide but cautions that exploitation of a fusion reactor for electricity generation likely won’t happen until the second half of the century.
ITER director general Pietro Barabaschi welcomed the explosion of private investment as evidence that the fusion field had finally found its competitive dynamic, a lack of which might be “one of the root causes of our delays”, he said. “Competition is healthy. What we need is a very healthy range of cooperation and competition.”
The ITER project’s latest development milestone, a successful test with its first magnet coil, puts it on track to starting research operation in 2034, achieving full magnetic energy in 2036, and starting deuterium-tritium operation in 2039. The organisation said other fusion researchers will be offered access to the test facility under the Private Sector Fusion Engagement (PSFE) project as part of ITER’s “knowledge-sharing and engagement initiatives
Investing in supply chain consortia
About 50 private fusion companies are exploring options in the US. “They can't all be right,” said Steven Cowley, director of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), “but they're all doing interesting things.”
It remains to be seen if they can keep pace with China, which is pouring as much as as $3 billion a year into fusion development projects, focusing on tokamak and laser-based fusion designs. Further, China is reported to be investing in supply chain consortia; by working across multiple industries, innovations can be transferred quickly to fusion R&D. How quickly? China’s burning plasma experimental superconducting tokamak (BEST) project is reportedly designed to achieve net fusion power gain and generate electricity by 2030. Once completed, says the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), it will demonstrate electricity generation by fusion “for the first time in history”.
CAS notes other countries, including the US, Japan and the UK, are “accelerating” work on demonstration projects or fusion power plants “with many targeting fusion electricity generation before 2040.”
One of these projects is the power plant in Virginia, USA, of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a company with roots in decades of fusion research at MIT. CFS has just applied to connect a 400-megawatt fusion power plant directly to PJM, one of the largest electricity grids in the US. It plans to supply fusion-generated electricity to the grid by the early 2030s – “a step that would have seemed like science fiction just five years ago.”
World’s largest operational tokamak
Meanwhile, in Japan, the JT-60SA, a joint Japan-Europe project described as the world’s largest operational tokamak, was about to resume operations after two years of upgrades. The Japanese Torus-60 Super Advanced device, to give it its full name, is located at the Naka Institute for Fusion Science and Technology of the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST) in Naka, near Tokyo.
The EU’s Fusion for Energy group says the goal of developing the JT-60SA is to offer the scientific community “an opportunity to explore advanced fusion technologies and plasma physics, providing valuable knowledge for ITER and future reactors.” The project team has planned six months of plasma heating experiments, starting at the end of the year, and is reviewing more than 150 proposals by scientists from Europe, Japan, and ITER.
At the WNE 2023 conference, Emilie Sauchay, HR Manager of Ineo Nucléaire, discussed their strategic workforce planning for 2022 and 2023. She noted the recruitment of skilled workers as a significant factor but emphasised the necessity of making training programs available for professionals outside of the industry.
“For me, the most important one is to be able to train people in our professions, to be able to attract employees who are not currently in the sector but who would like to join this dynamic sector,” Emilie Sauchay stated. She also added that to support the growth of their workforce, Ineo Nucléaire developed training academies and a network of training centres.
But while researchers are optimistic for the future of fusion power, other scientists are sounding a note of caution. Writing in Nature Energy journal, an energy and technology policy team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich suggests the current dominant fusion designs, magnetic and laser inertial, are “unlikely to become competitive” because the cost of the technology as its use increases – the so-called experience rate – is not projected to improve significantly.
“Current designs for fusion power will likely have low experience rates and high capital costs, preventing it from competing with alternative clean energy technologies, even in the long term,” they write. They conclude that R&D agencies should assess alternative fusion power concepts, and direct funding to those with “more promising technological characteristics” that can result in high experience rates.
It is a debate guaranteed to generate its own heat as demand for clean energy in ever-increasing amounts adds urgency to the scientific quest. Join the debate at WNE 2027, running from 7-9 December 2027 at Paris Villepinte exhibition park.