No fluff, all facts.

General Fusion SPACs, and ORNL is getting busy with private-industry collaborations.

Funding

In the big news of the week, General Fusion is SPACing. Much like the TAE deal, I believe this is the result of (1) General Fusion promising fusion energy 5-10 years out for over 20 years; (2) private investors getting tired of that story and consolidating into more credible fusion companies that appear to be delivering; and (3) the tailwinds of the AI/data-center energy boom. On the upside: Going to the public markets satisfies the long-time General Fusion investors with liquidity and funds the next step of General Fusion’s R&D. On the downside: General Fusion is now at the whims of the public markets. If they continue on the path of incremental progress and not meeting their promises of fusion energy within X-years, it’s unlikely that the public markets will look favorably upon them. One only has to look to our fission colleagues on how the public rollercoaster can go: NuScale Power SPAC’d at $10/share in early 2022, went to a low of $2/share in early 2024, a high of $50/share in mid 2025 following Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval, and fell to $15/share in late 2025 due to NuScale ending its Utah power plant project in Utah due to customers pulling out from escalating costs. The only way companies like TAE and General Fusion will be able to do well in the public markets as they navigate the hard path to power plants as Story Stocks, i.e., it is the story they tell about their great future that keeps them valued over any fundamental present business value. This works well in bull markets, but when things go south, Story Stocks are some of the first to suffer.

Avalanche Energy raises $29M. Last fortnightly I reported that their Form D filing indicated a raise of at least $14.68M out of a possible $20M. Confirming $29M raised is a positive indicator that the investors are buying their story. I’m very skeptical they’ll be able to make a practical fusion energy generation device from their concept but it could make a compelling compact fusion neutron generator. Now that they’ve got some more money, they’ll get one step closer to finding out.

Public-Private Partnerships

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Kyoto Fusioneering form partnership to test fusion breeding blanket technologies. Unlike most of the private fusion companies out there today, Kyoto Fusioneering was one of the first fusion supply chain startups, focused on developing enabling technologies for fusion rather than fusion confinement devices. This partnership with ORNL is to test Kyoto Fusioneering’s tritium breeding blanket technology in a nuclear environment. I’m thrilled to see the continuing build of public-private partnerships in the fusion energy industry. If done well, these will be accelerants to the commercialization of fusion energy.

ORNL, University of Tennesse (UT), and Type One Energy form partnership for facility to test plasma facing components. Type One Energy is a stellarator company. This new partnership with ORNL and UT is to develop technology to handle the extreme heat fluxes that exist at the boundary of magnetic fusion devices, primarily tokamaks and stellarators (back when I was contributing productively to fusion energy, this was the area I focused on). The plasma facing components, along with fusion nuclear materials, are the most challenging material science problems in fusion. ORNL and UT are centers of excellence in this area and should make a great collaboration with Type One Energy. Unlike Kyoto Fusioneering, which is aiming to sell fusion technologies to primaries, Type One Energy is a fusion primary developing its own confinement device; I’m curious to see how technology developed in this public private partnership will be licensed and how much will be available outside of Type One Energy.

First Light Fusion wins UKAEA contract to prove Natural Lithium Shielding concept. Lithium is needed in the deuterium-tritium fusion blankets to produce the tritium fuel. There are many different lithium-containing blanket concepts, each with their own trade-offs. Because of how natural (i.e., not isotopically enriched) lithium behaves under fusion neutron loads, pure lithium blankets tend to need to be thicker than all but lead-lithium blankets. In devices with space constraints, like compact tokamaks and stellarators, reducing blanket thickess helps improve other design considerations. In devices without space constraints, like many intertial fusion concepts, thicker blankets like those with natural lithium may be a better choice.

Government

In news that will surprise nobody: Chinese research report draws roadmap for development of high-temperature superconducting materials (English translation), aiming to make the country the leader in the technology. This type of superconductor is what essentially every magnetic fusion energy company is planning to use. It is a thin film technology that naturally fits it with China’s ability to commoditize and outcompete the rest of the world like it has done with solar panels.

The first sections of the ITER Engineering Basis Handbook have been published, including the Forward, Acknowledgements, Introduction, and The role and distinctive features of ITER. Looks like they are going to roll out more sectrions through 2026. While it is easy to throw stones at ITER for being too big, expensive, and slow, a tremendous amount of great fusion science and engineering has been developed in support of ITER. I anticipate that this Handbook will be a great resource and I look forward to seeing it be fully published.

European Parliament holds Fusion Energy in Europe: Call for Action hearing with the Fusion Industry Association participating. Included in the discussion were calls for fusion to be regulated differently than fission in the E.U. (like the U.S. and U.K. are doing), to allow member states to implement rules, to have milestone-driven public funding, and public-private partnerships.

PPPL launches STELLAR-AI platform, which is part of their participation in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Gensis Mission.

South Korea finalizes 2026 Nuclear Fusion Research and Development Implementation Plan. This is the formalization of South Korea’s plans I reported on a few weeks ago. In addition to standard things like workforce development and developing fusion technologies, it appears South Korea is going beyond their present tokamak-focused program to include the spherical torus, reversed field configuration, and stellarator.

Germany’s Merz: Nuclear fusion to make wind power obsolete. It’s wild to be how far we’ve come in the last 10 years that politicians are making statements like this now, let alone heads of federal governments. If fusion is successful it may displace a bit of wind, but there likely will remain places where wind energy makes economic sense.

The UK’s STEP prototype fusion plant entered public consultation. For all of my readers in North Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and South Yorkshire, this is your chance to shape the early stages of STEP, which is to be built in West Burton. Joking aside, it’s great to see public engagement on real fusion projects.

Companies

Xcimer is planning on picking their site thise year.

Renaissance Fusion operates PVD for first time. This is an important step for them printing their own custom HTS magnets.

It is the 10-year anniversary of when we first started talking about SPARC and the entity that would become CFS. I cannot believe it’s already been a decade since the “SPARC Underground” came out with our plans to the lab and the world. Worth a watch to see how far we have come!

Regulatory

Type One Energy Submits Initial Licensing Application to have it regulated under the byproduct materials framework, which treats it more like a particle accelerator and less like a fission reactor. This is a critical step to them being able to build and operate their stellarator with tritium and produce a significant amount of fusion power.

Education

Dennis Whyte’s Fusion Design class final presentation on their Technology and Econmic Case for a Fusion Volumetric Neutron Source where they explore both a mirror and a compact stellarator as options to generate large fluences of fusion neutrons to test fusion nuclear materials and components. This class is one of the best in fusion energy education; SPARC and ARC trace their origins back to the class. Dennis provides a unique balance of very strong fusion physics and engineering fundamentals while helping direct the class to explore areas that the broader fusion community has neglected. The class is called 22.63 because that’s MIT’s course number for it.

Journal Club

Cataloging Legacy Data from the Tritium Systems Test Assembly Program. This describes efforts at Los Alamos National Lab to document research performed at the Tritium Systems Test Assembly from 1984 through 2001. I find it tremendously positive that they are going through the efforts to cataloging all of the work that was done as part of this program and hope it is being done elsewhere. It also points to a large issue I have with unsteady support of technology development: the shortsightedness of budget cuts cannot only slow down, but likely reverses progress. Ending programs cuts off the lineage of experience and knowledge transfer from one generation to the next, forcing future generations to invent things over from scratch. Big efforts like fusion energy need sustained pushes, through good times and bad, to maintain forward progress.

Review on ASDEX Upgrade operation with tungsten plasma facing components. Contrasting the above, attempt at capturing legacy data before it’s lost, the team at the German tokamak ASDEX-U published a great review on their operational experience with tungsten, capturing the information and experiences of those involved while they are still working on it.