Fusion Fortnightly | 2026-03-17
No fluff, all facts.
Pacific Fusion opens their doors for others to use its fusion facility. Helion adds litigation firepower. First public fusion company has possible ties to convicted securities fraudster.
Companies
Pacific Fusion launched the Pacific Fusion Users Program and opened Expressions of Interest for external users to access experimental time on its Demonstration System. This is a big move by Pacific Fusion to allow external users access to its unique facility. In the spirit of Open Innovation, it could allow for others to develop materials and technologies that could further advance the fusion industry as well as fundamental science and defense. I’ll put in a call to expose some of my mercury to their fusion neutrons ;)
Pacific Fusion published a five-milestone framework for evaluating progress toward commercial fusion and described its own roadmap. Not much for me to argue with in there. Glad to see more fusion companies explaining what they are doing in an approachable fashion.
Lynn Miller has joined Helion Energy as General Counsel. Lynn’s background is in technology litigation, having spent 14 years as the Senior Litigation Manager at Apple and 7 years as the Associate/Deputy General Counsel at Tesla (“with a CEO who demanded creative solutions rather than legal hurdles”). While Lynn has “ensured IPO readiness” at Plus.AI, she has no other apparent IPO legal experience. That background suggests Helion is prioritizing litigation capability far more than public-markets readiness or fusion-specific nuclear-regulatory expertise.
CFS published a white paper on how U.S. states can attract fusion power plants, highlighting state-level siting, regulatory, and incentives that could reduce deployment risk.
TMTG filed its SEC Form 10-K, which is the yearly report that is meant to give investors a standardized, legally significant picture of the business. Nothing new on the TAE merger in it. But it did lay out the financials for 2025 for TMTG: $3.43M of advertising revenue and $0.26M of subscription revenue from Truth Social and Truth+, $712.3M net losses, and $2.63B of total assets.
Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III filed its SEC Form 10-K. There are no substantial updates about its merger and de-SPAC with General Fusion in it.
Realta and Kyoto Fusioneering form strategic partnership.. While it starts with gyrotrons for heating Realta’s plasmas, it goes far beyond: “the companies will pursue joint engagement of their respective government stakeholders, industry associations, and standards bodies, while coordinating supply chain partnerships for components, materials, and subsystems”.
Studsvik and Novatron Fusion signed an MoU to collaborate on developing a fusion reactor based on Novatron’s mirror-machine concept, including work on materials testing, modelling/simulation, siting, and regulatory licensing support for an industrial-scale pilot reactor. Studsvik brings serious experience from the fission industry. It is paired with Novatron’s cusp-mirror concept that looks a lot like what Lockheed Martin was going after a decade ago and quitely abandonded. Studsvik will show Novatron how much nuclear heating will occur in their magnets in the off chance that Novatron does get good confinement.
Helical Fusion announced the construction site for its Helix HARUKA program will be located on the National Institute for Fusion Science campus, with manufacturing and construction underway toward a 2027 energization test.
Renewal Fuels, operating as American Fusion (as I reported a few issues ago is the original public fusion company) releases a bunch of announcements. Most interesting was their SEC Form 10 in which it is disclosed they plan on achieving a 100 MW D+He3 fusion system before the end of 2026, have filed 20 patents and plan to file an additional 240 by the end of 2026, and over half of their liabilities are due to litigation ($670k). Most interestingly, their majority common shareholder is Justin Costello who, as far as I can tell, “…posed as a billionaire and twice-wounded Special Forces Iraq veteran to dupe investors while portraying himself as a legal cannabis mogul, pleaded guilty Wednesday (Jan 18 2023) to securities fraud” and was convicted. If I’m confuseing this Justin Costello with someone else, please let me know. I don’t give investing advice, but…
Funding
Sumitomo Corporation announced it made an equity investment in SHINE. Sumitomo is a diversified corporation that produces cryogenics, vacuum, and superconducting hardware, which could be used in fusion. It sees the SHINE, as well as its TAE, investments as helping them get into the fusion industry and bring it to East Asia.
Government
The U.K. releases its 2026 fusion strategy. The new strategy is about more public money, a stronger delivery organization around STEP, more explicit supply-chain and skills policy, and a push to make the U.K. the easiest jurisdiction in which to build and finance a fusion project. The U.K. government will invest more than £2.5 billion over five years, with roughly £1.3 billion for STEP through U.K. Fusion Energy, £740 million for fusion R&D infrastructure across magnetic and inertial confinement, and £180 million for LIBRTI, its tritium-breeding facility.
The U.S. Department of Energy announced $293M Request for Applications in support of The Genisis Mission to use AI to advance fusion and other areas covered by the department.
NRC will hold two public meetings on its proposed fusion-machines rule, a standard part of their process.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission published a Federal Register notice for an application seeking approval to transfer a construction permit for SHINE’s Medical Isotope Production Facility to newly formed SHINE Chrysalis, LLC. This is probably just a bit of corporate structuring to make regulations cleaner.
U.K. “splashes” £45M on AI supercomputer for fusion. Those Brits really have a way with the English language. Traditionally supercomputers, with a focus on CPUs, have been used for large fusion simulations. AI supercomputers are more often focused on using GPUs.
The University of Strathclyde opened a new national superconductivity facility with HTS characterization, coil winding, and cryogenic mechanical-testing capabilities aimed at fusion and other energy technologies.
ITER’s vacuum vessel sector #9 arrived on site and entered the acceptance workflow. Looks like it was shipped inside of a house.
Europe and Japan restarted JT-60SA integrated commissioning after installing new components including diagnostics and cryopumps.