Fusion Fortnightly | 2026-05-26
No fluff, all facts.
Helion moves the goalposts on electricity milestone. U.S. DOE approves Zap’s preconceptual design milestone. Thea operates its first full-size and current HTS magnet.
Companies
Helion updates its website, including a new FAQ. Most interestingly, they moved the goalposts on their “net electricity” framing: “In 2021, we used ‘net electricity’ in a headline when discussing Polaris. In hindsight we realized that the term was not well defined within the fusion industry and created more confusion than clarity. Today we prefer to focus on a clearer goal that no one else in the industry has touched: demonstrating electricity from fusion.” In principle this would allow them to create a tiny amount of fusion power and have their magnet system capture a tiny fraction of that and call it success that they “demonstrated electricity from fusion.” This is a baloney metric. By that definition I “demonstrated electricity from fusion” in my PhD research where I fielded thermocouples on Alcator C-Mod, as did just about anyone else who fielded a diagnostic measurement system on a fusion experiment.
U.S. Department of Energy approves Zap’s fusion pilot plant preconceptual design. This is one of the standard milestones as part of this program. Thea had theirs approved earlier this year and more will come. To me, this only says that they have a relatively credible design if they are able to push the z-pinch plasma performance up to where it needs to be.
Thea Energy successfully operated its first full-size, full-current, and full-field planar shaping coil. The company said the magnet reached the fields (6 T) and currents required for its upcoming Eos stellarator.
Marathon releases a new paper on The Value and Cost of Fusion Neutrons. I have yet to read over it, so I cannot comment on the details, but I do agree with the overall framing.
General Fusion appointed Thomas Boehlert to its board. Thomas has a long career as a CFO in various energy and, more recently, mineral companies. He will be the chair of the nominating and governance committees at General Fusion. More shoring up of their board and leadership as General Fusion works to go public.
General Fusion is exploring listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange in addition to the Nasdaq.
General Fusion files Amendment No. 3 to the SEC Form F-4, a 10-Q, and an 8-K. They have some new info on legal and capital structure but nothing on how they are going to adiabatically compress their plasmas.
American Fusion filed its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. While nothing of consequence as progress toward fusion energy, reading through these is a fascinating look into the world of penny stocks and companies that may not be what they seem to be. It disclosed less than $100k of cash at quarter-end and said substantial doubt exists about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern while management pursues a 2026 capital raise. The chairman, Brent Nelson, has a 60% controlling share. The consulting and independent director advisory agreements provide total compensation of $1.68 million in common stock. The share count is determined by market price: if the stock is lower one year later, the company must issue more shares so the recipients still receive the agreed value; if the stock rises, there is no clawback.
Allegations of Sam Altman self-dealing with Helion. Was anyone surprised?
First Light Fusion has some new filings related to its recent round. Adrian Gareth Jones and Theodore Frederic Florent Marie Mollinger were appointed as directors. The documents imply a post-money valuation of about £65M.
TAE and UKAEA announced that TAE Beam UK had been formally established and was fully funded. They’re working together, using their experience building and operating neutral beams to make them smaller and cheaper for fusion energy. To me, this is one of the most worthwhile things TAE is doing to advance fusion energy. Neutral beams have been the workhorse of heating for many fusion experiments but, like much of fusion, have been too big and expensive to be practical for economic fusion applications. Case in point: F4E and ALSYMEX celebrate the completion of the MITICA beam source.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced that the second half of SPARC’s vacuum vessel had arrived and that fit-out work had begun. Brandon gives a nice video tour at the end of the article.
A*STAR and Commonwealth Fusion Systems sign collaborative research agreement. The five-year agreement is to help develop fusion technologies for CFS’ ARC and Singapore’s building of a domestic industry to supply the fusion industry. Reminder that Temasek, a Singapore sovereign wealth fund, is a large investor in CFS.
Proxima Fusion created an Industrial Development Board. The new body brings in senior industrial and energy figures including former EDF chief Luc Rémont, former Bosch CTO Michael Bolle, former VP of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Europe Ann Mettler, and E.ON chair Erich Clementi. Proxima continues to demonstrate its skill in coalition building.
Avalanche announced its new machine, Lando. They proudly announce it is licensed for up to 10¹⁰ neutrons per second, which puts it on the same scale as neutron generators that are already available for commercial purchase. This is a very low rate as far as neutron generation goes; a 100 MW D+T fusion plant would be ~3.6 × 10¹⁹ neutrons per second. It will need 10,000 of these overlapping in space to meet the requirements of DOE’s volumetric neutron source.
Thea Energy adds Paul Wilkins as vice president of policy. Paul was Chief of Staff to a U.S. senator as well as VP of policy at Bloom Energy and Electric Hydrogen.
Kyoto Fusioneering awarded contract by QST to develop tritium extraction and accountancy system prototypes for ITER test blanket system. These are critical technologies that need to be developed to get the tritium out of where it’s bred.
Astral Systems, together with Promation and McMaster University, was awarded CMIE funding through the Scale-67 project. McMaster said the program will receive $500k to develop a fusion reaction-based process for Copper-67, which is used for diagnostic imaging and cancer treatment.
Pacific Fusion moves co-founder Leland Ellison into the vice president of technology role. Leland is a career computational physicist.
Type One Energy brings former ORNL fusion section head Larry Baylor in as engineering fellow. Larry has expertise across a variety of fusion energy systems but he’s most well known in the community as the go-to expert for systems to fuel the plasma with frozen pellets. And apparently, from his LinkedIn profile, he’s good at threading golf balls through a flock of Canada geese.
Government
The DOE is interested in applications for preliminary design studies for a volumetric neutron source. Such a facility would be used to study fusion nuclear materials, which is, in my opinion, the critical technology bottleneck for economic fusion energy.
FIA submits response to NRC’s proposed rulemaking and draft guidance for U.S. fusion regulations. The FIA requests a couple of changes (e.g., clarify what “lost” tritium means) and comments on areas directly requested by the NRC. Axios reports on the NRC fusion review as well.
The recent news of the DOE announcing more than $94 million of Gen III+ SMR pathway awards to eight companies, DOE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation announcing $45.7 million for 19 critical-material projects, and the Department of Commerce announcing letters of intent with 9 companies for $2B to accelerate U.S. leadership in quantum computing, as well as the $800M in federal cost-shared funding for fission announced at the end of last year, has me wondering what is in store for fusion…
China and Russia sign nuclear-related MoUs during Xi-Putin talks. Although details are light, it almost certainly includes collaboration on China’s new tokamak, BEST.
ITER Magnet Cold Test Facility operational. They used to say they didn’t have the time to test the magnets after they are built but before they are assembled with the rest of the machine. Now that the schedule has slipped so much, they have the luxury of time to do so to “strengthen ITER’s risk mitigation and readiness.”
Media
MarketWatch quotes me in an article on TAE-TMTG merger. The author of the article was fishing for evidence that the administration is supporting fusion in a way that benefits TAE and therefore TMTG financially. For the record, I’ve seen no evidence of this and will call it out if I do. The DOE and NRC support of fusion has been fair across the industry as far as I have seen and has been the best support the industry has ever seen.