Fusion Industry Seeks $10 Billion Injection of Federal Money

U.S. efforts to develop fusion power technologies need a $10 billion influx to accelerate commercialization and stay ahead of China, an industry representative told the House Science Committee at a hearing last week. Witnesses also advocated for initiatives to grow the fusion workforce and create regional hubs dedicated to fusion.

Bob Mumgaard, CEO of the company Commonwealth Fusion Systems, said the $10 billion ask has been endorsed by the Fusion Industry Association and the bipartisan Commission on the Scaling of Fusion Energy. The commission is co-chaired by Sens. James Risch (R-ID) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and among its members are Mumgaard and the directors of Lawrence Livermore National Lab and Princeton Plasma Physics Lab.

Much of the money would go toward building facilities needed to test promising fusion technologies, Mumgaard said.

Troy Carter, director of the fusion energy division at Oak Ridge National Lab, also said the money could go toward building key facilities needed to qualify materials that can withstand neutron bombardment within fusion reactors and to demonstrate ways of breeding tritium fuel within the reactors, a step to closing the fuel cycle.

Building a tritium-generating facility “might be in the billion-dollar class, but I think we can find ways to do it in partnership with the private sector, as well as looking at [how to] bring it lower,” Carter said.

Mumgaard also noted that China is building a fusion research facility similar to Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s National Ignition Facility, which is the first and only facility to achieve ignition.

“The Chinese have seen that those facilities will pay off. They saw NIF, and they immediately said, ‘Let’s build one that’s a little bit bigger.’ It’s not as advanced. It’s probably a generation behind the technology, but will make up for it in speed, scale and coordination,” Mumgaard said. “That’s their playbook: hard and fast the minute the window opens. We sort of are still debating whether the window is open, and that’s to our detriment.”

Arguing the $10 billion boost would be a key catalyst for existing efforts, Mumgaard said, “We do need to see that shift and the level of commitment [from the federal government] that’s consistent with the ambition and commitment done in the private sector, frankly, and in other countries.”

Private investment in fusion now exceeds $10 billion globally, driven largely by U.S. companies, Committee Chair Brian Babin (R-TX) said in his opening statement. However, research funded by the Department of Energy still plays a crucial role in bringing fusion power to the grid by the 2040s, Babin added. The latest National Academies report on fusion, released in 2021, lays out a strategy to successfully operate a pilot plant before 2040 in order to bring fusion to the grid before 2050.

Witness Will Regan, founder of the company Pacific Fusion, said China is aiming for fusion power by 2031, if not sooner. Regan and Mumgaard both cited estimates from the Commission on the Scaling of Fusion Energy, which said China has mobilized somewhere between $6.5 billion and $13 billion towards commercialization-relevant fusion projects since the start of 2023. Even the lower-end estimate is almost three times the funding appropriated to DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences Program in roughly the same period of time, the commission noted.

Workforce

Witnesses applauded the fusion workforce bill introduced in August by Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA), which would recommend appropriating $20 million for the National Science Foundation and $10 million for DOE each year through 2030 to fund fusion-related education, workforce development, and research opportunities, as well as a coordinating hub.

Witness Stephanie Diem, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and vice president of the University Fusion Association, said her research group wasn’t able to fill an open technical staff position because the work is very specialized. “We have to depend on us finding someone with similar skills and upskill them in our lab,” she said.

Funding would allow fusion employers to build relationships with institutions that supply hands-on training, such as community colleges and national labs, Diem said.

Diem also noted that of the fusion startups driving commercialization, 60% spun out of universities, and 95% of private investment has gone into those university spinouts.

With inadequate federal investment in fusion, “we’re at risk of people leaving for other sectors, but also other countries,” she added. On the same day that one of Diem’s grants ended this year, she coincidentally received a foreign talent recruitment email.

Research security and safety

Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK) asked how much of fusion work should be considered a state secret.

Fusion is declassified partially because, unlike fission, it is not directly related to weapons, Mumgaard said. “The reaction itself is universal and the materials are universal. But the know-how is the key part, and the know-how, coupled to the ability to build things, is the economic engine of it. And so if we really want that economic engine to work, there’s not a lot of reason to have state secrets,” he added.

Rep. Sheri Biggs (R-SC) asked what steps DOE’s fusion energy sciences program and the fusion industry are taking to build a robust safety culture around operations with tritium. Mumgaard said DOE convenes an international tritium working group that shares best practices and takes questions to national lab experts.

“I think the national labs provide, especially Savannah River on tritium, a wealth of expertise, and I think that’s essential to share that as we develop a stance on how we regulate and license fusion devices,” Carter said.