Nuclear Fusion 

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Latest news on nuclear fusion, covering fusion power, fusion energy, fusion research, fusion reactors, fusion reactions, tokamaks, stellarators, ITER, inertial confinement fusion, magnetic confinement fusion, the National Ignition Facility and fusion start-ups.

Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the Sun and other stars. In a fusion reaction, two light atomic nuclei join to form a heavier one and release energy. Fusion power could offer large amounts of low-carbon electricity, but it is still a research aim. Reactors must heat plasma to extreme temperatures and hold it long enough for fusion reactions to continue.

There are two main approaches. Magnetic confinement fusion holds hot plasma in magnetic fields, in doughnut-shaped tokamaks and twisted stellarators, and ITER is an international tokamak project in France with China, the EU, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the US as members. Inertial confinement fusion uses lasers to compress tiny fuel capsules, as at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and at Laser Mégajoule in France. National programmes such as South Korea's K-DEMO study demonstration power plants.

In December 2022 the National Ignition Facility achieved ignition, releasing more fusion energy than the laser energy delivered to the fuel, and the result has since been repeated. The net gain counts only the laser energy at the target, and commercial fusion power is still expected to be years or decades away. Other challenges include materials that withstand neutrons, a supply of tritium fuel and the cost of power plants. Fusion is often said to leave less long-lived waste than fission, but reactor parts can still become radioactive and must be managed.

A growing private sector now works alongside public laboratories. Fusion start-ups such as Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Helion, TAE Technologies, Tokamak Energy, Proxima Fusion and First Light Fusion, and a trade body, the Fusion Industry Association, are part of that effort. Governments, investors and universities also fund fusion research and the training of the physicists and engineers it needs.

Fusion research began in the 1950s, and decades of experiments with tokamaks, stellarators and lasers have followed. Big projects such as ITER aim to show fusion at power-plant scale, while private companies promise faster, smaller designs. Public and private teams keep publishing records and new reactor designs, and each result is closely watched.

Our NewsNow nuclear fusion feed brings together headlines from reliable sources on fusion power, fusion energy, tokamaks, stellarators, ITER, the National Ignition Facility and fusion start-ups. Follow it for constantly updated coverage of fusion research, funding, partnerships and the race to build fusion power plants.