Terrible news that I wish I didn't have to share:

MIT Physics Professor and Plasma Science and Fusion Center Director Nuno Loureiro was killed in his home. While the details of the case are still evolving, it appears he was murdered by a classmate from undergrad who has since committed suicide. Nuno was a talented plasma physicist, a beloved educator, a treasured friend, as well as a father and husband. A GoFundMe account has been set up to support his family.

I thought it was April Fool's Day when I first read this: TAE Technologies will go public via a $6 billion all-stock merger with Trump Media & Technology Group, President Trump’s Nasdaq-listed social media venture. This makes TAE the first major fusion company to be publicly listed. I wrote some quick thoughts on it after hearing the news. TAE going public may makes sense from the perspective of giving their long-time investors the liquidity they have long been seeking and the company's need for a large amount of capital to build its next step device. While a fusion energy company that has been around for over 25 years and a U.S. President's social media company are strange bedfellows, Charles Schwab is a long-time investor in TAE and a friend of the Trump family, so the connection on how the deal came to be could be that he "talked to Chuck".

It will be interesting to watch this play out, to say the least. The public markets could pump this to "meme stock" highs or it could unwind like many SPACs that have come before it. In my opinion, it was probably too early and therefore too risky for TAE to go public, given the present state of their physics relative to what is needed for a power plant. Public markets force progress on a quarterly cadence. Physics and first-of-a-kind machines don't always cooperate with such expectations.

If the AI/datacenter power demands and the massive financing behind them continues to stays hot, the TAE merger may be the first sign of a new era financing for fusion companies. General Fusion is also rumored to be seeking an IPO/SPAC. FusionXInvest provides insight into how the finances work in such a situation. It's a brave new world out there folks.

New York Times reported on China's impressive ramp-up in magnetic and inertial fusion energy development, contrasting it primarily with the U.S. public and private programs: "China’s state-owned nuclear company is preparing detailed fusion research proposals, calling it 'the main racetrack in future scientific and technological competition among the great powers.'" China is not only funding basic research; it’s also building the industrial capabilities that let it iterate faster.

Professor Michael Mauel is retiring from Columbia University. Mike has been a long-time contributor to fusion energy science, education, and community leadership. I was always struck by his enthusiasm and positivity and hope that he continues to participate in the field despite retiring.

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill to formally establish a Fusion Energy program office at DOE, which would formalize the organizational and direction changes already proposed by the administration. This is great news for further solidifying the office!

Thea Energy unveiled the design of its first planned power plant, “Helios”. Thea's main differentiator in the stellarator space is the use of a large array of simple, planar coils to shape the 3D magnetic field. This trades off manufacturing complexity and assembly precision for manufacturing simplicity, control complexity, and having a lot of darn individual magnets, leads, and power supplies. Putting my fusion power plant designer hat on: I like the reduction in assembly precision needed (just need to "trim" each coil with its power supply). I don't like the ~10x increase in the number of superconducting coil current leads; the tokamak core is already a rat's nest of pipes, cables, supports, and shields.

Tokamak Energy announced that its compact ST40 spherical tokamak achieved new performance records in its final 2025 run: It hit 1 MA plasma current for the first time, half of its design value of 2 MA. It also improved fusion triple product by ~33%, but still reaching only ~0.3% of its optimistic performance projections. ST40 will now undergo a $52 million upgrade – with U.S. and UK government support – to add lithium wall coatings and other enhancements. The slow and steady progress of Tokamak Energy with ST40 is consistent with the challenges of bringing up a new machine to its high-performing potential.

South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT launched the “K-Moonshot” project: a national R&D initiative targeting breakthroughs in fusion energy and other technologies. The government committed ~$4.4 billion to raise Korea’s tech capabilities to "85% of U.S. levels by 2030." I wonder how they'll quantify that.

The Department of Energy approved funding for a collaboration between Marathon Fusion and the University of Maryland to develop plasma centrifuges for high-throughput fusion exhaust gas processing. This system aims to significantly reduce the amount of tritium sitting idle in processing systems, increasing the amount of tritium available to scale fusion faster and improving safety.

Focused Energy promoted Debbie Callahan (a key contributor to the 2022 NIF ignition breakthrough) as Chief Strategic Officer and Omar Biabani (former ASML VP of R&D) as Chief Technology Officer.

CFS will be the first fusion company at CES. Hope they give out good swag.

India’s new nuclear law expands licensing to enable private Indian companies to participate across the nuclear plant lifecycle. Fusion is explicitly included in the legal definition of “nuclear energy”, but nothing else is specifically mentioned about fusion.

ITER has begun 4K cryogenic testing of its superconducting magnet coils at operating temperature. This is an important step to ensure that the coil superconducting properties were maintained through the manufacturing processes. Previously, ITER had not been planning on testings the toroidal field magnets at 4K but further project delays have created a window of opportunity to do so. When I was at MIT+CFS, we realized a distinct advantage of HTS over LTS magnets: the HTS magnet superconducting quality could be tested and verified in 77K liquid nitrogen baths, a feat far easier than the 4K liquid helium systems needed for LTS.

A preprint from Marathon Fusion and Fusion Energy Base argues that neutron-driven transmutation in fusion blankets can make fusion economically viable well before “energy breakeven”, by selling high-value isotopes. This is an extension and more detailed examination of Marathon's previous work, showing that neutrons from deuterium-tritium fusion could be used to economically transmute mercury into gold. They explore the design space of different isotope production, plasma Q, and resulting economics. This work points to the economic opportunities in low-Q fusion systems, which could open up the window for simpler concepts like mirror machines. This is an exciting area to watch.

Rutherford Energy Ventures and the U.S. Department of Energy are working together to stand up new, public-private-supported test infrastructure focused on overcoming problems in fusion-relevant materials and technologies.