Engineering the future of fusion

The generation of power from nuclear fusion is not a new concept. For more than three-quarters of a century, we’ve known that stars such as the sun compress hydrogen atoms together to create helium. When these light atoms are fused together, energy is released. Nuclear fission, which is the process used by the current nuclear reactors connected to the grid, generates power by splitting heavy atoms apart to release stored energy. While fission results in nuclear waste, fusion is much cleaner. With our growing energy supply concerns, fusion power has the potential to provide abundant clean energy for centuries. However, we have yet to achieve the continuous and controlled fusion process necessary to efficiently derive power from it.

Fusion power is no longer a physics problem, but an engineering one. Controlled nuclear fusion has been achievable since 1951, when the world's first successful fusion experiment was performed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory using a Z-pinch machine. However, transforming a laboratory experiment into an industrial process is difficult at the best of times. This is especially true when you’re essentially extracting energy from an artificial sun.