{"id":445972,"date":"2026-05-22T11:58:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T18:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=445972"},"modified":"2026-05-22T11:58:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T18:58:17","slug":"fusion-fantasy-nature-energy-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=445972","title":{"rendered":"Fusion Fantasy (Nature Energy report)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From Master Resource<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Kennedy Maize<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cAll the recent flurry of fusion fascination prompted one long-time observer of the story to quip, anonymously, \u2018The folks who brought us the most expensive way in the world to boil water, fission, now want to double down with fusion.’\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Fusion energy \u2014 yielding enormous amounts of heat from the violent combination of elements \u2014 has long been touted as the holy grail of energy future. That\u2019s wrong, according to a new article<\/a> in the prestigious Nature Energy<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile nuclear fusion power is often hailed as a future source of abundant, clean energy, current dominant fusion designs, magnetic and laser inertial, are unlikely to become competitive due to their expected low experience rates,\u201d concludes the article by a team of researchers led by Lingxi Tang of the Energy and Technology Policy Group, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The policy implication? \u201c[P]olicymakers should not rely on, or fund, fusion power as a core pillar of future clean energy systems unless designs with different characteristics are developed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analysis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article focuses on the current mainstream approaches to fusion \u2014 combining atoms through magnetic confinement or laser-induced confinement \u2014 concluding that they are \u201cinherently large in unit size, extremely complex in design, and require moderate to high customization.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Estimates of fusion\u2019s costs, based on their research, range from $1,400 per kilowatt to $43,000 per kilowatt. These wildly divergent estimates lead the researchers to conclude that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

fusion power is likely to remain uncompetitive relative to other low-carbon electricity supply technologies. This casts considerable doubt on the future role of fusion power in a net-zero energy system and whether current investment levels from both the public and private sectors are justified.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The article is a direct shot at the long-running, often-troubled, multi-billion-dollar, 34-nation ITER project<\/a> in France. The \u201cInternational Thermal Energy Reactor\u201d project, the tokamak magnetic confinement machine, has been under construction since 2013 and now hopes to achieve its first plasma in 2036.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The analysis also targets the Department of Energy\u2019s National Ignition Facility<\/a> at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. In 2022, researchers were able to use focused lasers to achieve \u201cbreak even,\u201d<\/a> producing more power output than the energy input by a tiny margin. That event generated a lot of publicity and optimism at the time, but little has been heard from Livermore since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More recently, several startups claiming they are on the cusp of achieving practical fusion energy have raised a lot of venture capital, without actually delivering energy. All aim for smaller projects, with potentially multiple sales. None have reached the point of having a licensing proceeding at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a requirement before they can be commercially deployed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helion Energy<\/strong><\/a>, based in Everett, Wash., founded in 2013. The company claims it has a smaller approach to fusion, which it terms \u201caneutronic fusion,\u201d minimizing the production of neutrons with a pulsed linear magnetic confinement technology. It has backing from Open AI\u2019s Sam Altman. The company has a 2023 agreement with nearby Microsoft to supply 50 MW of power in 2028 for a data center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commonwealth Fusion Systems<\/a>,<\/strong> a Boston spin-off from MIT\u2019s fusion energy program, developing a down-sized tokamak using high-temperature superconduction magnets to, the company claims, lead to \u201chigh performing, fusion systems at significantly lower cost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company has a deal, details unspecified, with Google, an investor, for \u201can offtake agreement for 200 megawatts (MW) of clean fusion power\u201d in Chesterfield County, Virginia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General Fusion<\/a>,<\/strong> headquartered in British Columbia, with subsidiaries in the U.S. and the U.K., and founded in 2002. The company\u2019s technology, magnetized target fusion<\/a>, combines both conventional approaches to achieving high-temperature plasma as a fusion starting point. In January, the company announced it is going public on the NASDAQ through a deal with a special purpose acquisition company, Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III, to eventually become listed as NASDQAQ:GFUZ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TAE Technologies<\/strong><\/a>, based in California and founded in 1998. The company bases its fusion technology on a hydrogen-boron process, known as known as proton-boron or p-11B. rather than the conventional merging of hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium. This reduces production of neutrons. It aims for a prototype commercial reactor by 2030, which it plans to be in the 350\u2013500 MW scale. The company recently merged <\/a>with the Trump family\u2019s Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. with a self-proclaimed value of $6 billion and a CNN warning of \u201cserious ethics concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recent flurry of fusion fascination prompted one long-time observer of the story to quip, anonymously, \u201cThe folks who brought us the most expensive way in the world to boil water, fission, now want to double down with fusion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Always controversial and often outrageous commentator and mega-billionaire Elon Musk, no friend of fusion, commented<\/a> on Twitter last December:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The Sun is an enormous, free fusion reactor in the sky. It is super dumb to make tiny fusion reactors on Earth. Even if you burned 4 Jupiters, the Sun would still round up to 100% of all power that will ever be produced in the solar system!!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Investors and public policy experts should heavily discount fusion hyperbole. Nuclear fission for new capacity is full of challenges<\/a>\u2013nuclear fusion has far more ground to cover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fusion energy \u2014 yielding enormous amounts of heat from the violent combination of elements \u2014 has long been touted as the holy grail of energy future. That\u2019s wrong, according to a new article in the prestigious Nature Energy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":445974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691823622,691829839,691843235,691826127],"class_list":["post-445972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-energy-future","tag-fusion-energy","tag-fusions-costs","tag-nuclear-fusion","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0-ChatGPT-Fusion-Fantasy.png?fit=1402%2C1122&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1S16","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":353225,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=353225","url_meta":{"origin":445972,"position":0},"title":"Fencing with fusion: The holy grail","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"12\/04\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"In a recent article in The Engineer, Jim Pickles, Tokamak Energy\u2019s chief of material, predicted that artificial intelligence will soon enable the creation of a new materials database that will save millions of dollars and cut years off the global quest for clean, secure, and affordable fusion energy \u2013 the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"(carbon-free) electricity\"","block_context":{"text":"(carbon-free) electricity","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=carbon-free-electricity-2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/0Young-scientist-nuclear-atom-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C625&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/0Young-scientist-nuclear-atom-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C625&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/0Young-scientist-nuclear-atom-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C625&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/0Young-scientist-nuclear-atom-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C625&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/0Young-scientist-nuclear-atom-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C625&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":289873,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=289873","url_meta":{"origin":445972,"position":1},"title":"One year after the laser fusion energy breakthrough: What comes next?","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"12\/04\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"By\u00a0Edward Moses Fusion energy powers our sun, all the stars in the universe, and sustains life on Earth. 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