Fusion Energy Needs Continued U.S. Leadership to Secure Our Energy Future
The U.S. leads the world in fusion energy research. It can’t squander that lead like it did with microchips
A technician bonding Thermal Mechanical Packages (TMP), fill lines, and diagnostic band windows using adhesive placed on a human hair at the National Ignition Facility in 2010.
Fusion energy stands as a beacon of hope in a world beset by rising energy demands, extreme weather and energy security challenges. The same process that powers the sun, fusion would provide abundant, safe, clean and reliable energy. The winner of the fusion race will win a secure energy future for humanity.
In fusion, two light nuclei combine to form a single larger one, while converting excess mass into a tremendous amount of energy. The U.S. has led the way in fusion research and development since World War II, when amid a cold war weapons race, scientists first pursued safely harnessing this energy. In 2022 scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) became the first to demonstrate fusion “ignition” in a laboratory—generating more energy out of a fusion reaction than the laser energy fired onto the experiment.
This monumental result established the fundamental scientific feasibility of fusion as an energy source. As the only country in the “ignition club,” the U.S. must build on this success to assure its leadership in fusion to lead the world’s energy economy into the 22nd century.
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Why? Because advances getting us closer to fusion power are now coming, rewarding us for our long investment. The fusion ignition breakthrough relied on the inertial confinement approach to fusion, in which powerful lasers heat and compress small pellets of fusion fuel to extreme temperatures and densities exceeding the center of the sun. Ignition has now been repeated several times since on the NIF, with recent results producing about four times as much energy out than energy in.
Another approach to fusion, called magnetic confinement, uses magnetic fields to confine fusion plasmas. Those magnets have recently undergone a quantum leap. In 2021 Commonwealth Fusion Systems built a large, high-temperature superconducting electromagnet that could be ramped up to a field strength of 20 tesla. That’s over 400,000 times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field, the most powerful ever created for this kind of magnet.
These advances have prompted significant venture capital interest, leading to a vibrant fusion start-up culture. With more than $7 billion in global private investment coming in the past 30 years to 45 fusion companies, nearly $1 billion has come in the past year. They are pursuing diverse early-stage fusion approaches including magnets, lasers and a range of combinations in between. True to the nation’s entrepreneurial disposition, most of these companies and investments are U.S.-based.
For all the excitement, considerable work remains before fusion energy can plug into the grid. That includes building walls of a power plant that can withstand tens of millions of degrees Celsius; understanding how to extract and recycle tritium for a “closed loop” of fusion fuel; and designing power plants that are cost-effective at scale. On a fundamental level, to succeed economically, whatever fusion power plant proves out must produce much more energy than it takes to run.
These challenges may seem daunting, but innovative solutions are being pursued across the spectrum to the absolute limit that current funding allows. The payoff—complete and permanent energy independence—is too great to ignore. Funding for fusion at today’s levels—approximately $800 million per year of federal funding—is simply not up to the task. A new report from the Special Competitive Studies Project is now calling for $10 billion by 2030 in federal funding to accelerate fusion research and development. That would represent a serious investment and could bring us meaningfully closer to a fusion energy future.
Make no mistake, this is a race: China, Japan, the U.K. and European Union member states including Germany are aggressively ramping up investments. The burgeoning fusion sector’s economic impacts will be significant, with the global fusion energy market potentially valued at $1 trillion by 2050. It is an economic imperative for the U.S. to not only keep pace but lead the world in developing this transformative energy source.
In reviewing recent history of technology, the development of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography serves as a compelling analogy—and in some ways, a cautionary tale—for where fusion might be headed.
EUV lithography engraves intricate, nanoscopic patterns on silicon wafers with extremely short wavelengths of light. It has been pivotal to extending Moore’s Law, allowing for the doubling of transistors on microchips at a pace of about every two years. That has enabled production of smaller, more powerful and more energy-efficient chips, which impact everything from smartphones to supercomputers to the ongoing AI revolution.
EUV lithography grew out of laser-plasma experiments in the inertial fusion program at LLNL in the late 1980s. Its development remains a testament to the collaborative efforts of U.S. scientists, engineers and industry leaders. It also highlights the essential role of sustained public investments in R & D and the ambitious multidisciplinary team science pursued at the national labs in bringing forward truly revolutionary technological changes. Then, alongside national labs and government agencies, major American companies like Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM and AMD also made critical early technology development investments and even stood up a consortium to pool resources.
Despite establishing the field and most technologies that enable microchips, the U.S. squandered its hard-won lead by failing to foster the overall ecosystem and invest in domestic production capacity. Leadership was ceded to other nations. A Dutch company ended up with a monopoly on the process, and manufacturers in Asia now dominate global production.
The U.S. is now grappling with the national and economic security ramifications of that failure to act at a critical juncture. We are trying to course-correct with legislation to reshore domestic semiconductor manufacturing and rebuild workforce expertise—but it may be too little too late.
With fusion, we need to get it right the first time.
The fabrication and miniaturization of semiconductors has been called “the greatest engineering challenge of our time.” Likewise, fusion energy, the last known energy source yet to be harnessed, is a grand scientific and engineering challenge.
Both EUV and fusion have benefited from decades of U.S. foresight to mature the science and technology, and both are strategic technologies with revolutionary implications for society and the way we live. As we now face an opportunity to make fusion energy a reality, the U.S. has a chance to apply the lessons of EUV lithography and affirm the formidable—albeit tentative—lead it has established in fusion. Taking that lesson to heart means sustaining U.S. dedication and public sector funding to develop foundational technologies; spurring collaboration between government, academia and industry; and coordinating research to promote American energy innovation and drive down costs.
By securing an enduring leadership position in fusion technology and exploiting this revolutionary energy source to the fullest, the U.S. can control its energy future while creating high-paying jobs, stimulating economic growth and achieving a singular geopolitical advantage. Funding fusion research will affirm and build on the U.S.’s position as the global leader in energy technology. It held and then lost that role in the semiconductor industry; we cannot afford to make the same mistake twice.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.