March 4, 2024
Tests show high-temperature superconducting magnets are ready for fusion | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
See Link: https://news.mit.edu/2024/tests-show-high-temperature-superconducting-magnets-fusion-ready-0304
February 13, 2024
69 Megajoules: JET Sets Fusion Energy World Record
See Link: https://scitechdaily.com/69-megajoules-jet-sets-fusion-energy-world-record/
November 27, 2023
JET completes a storied 40-year run
June 1, 2023
Scientific American Article: What is the Future of Fusion Energy?
See Article: ScientificAmerican_FusionPower
May 10, 2023
Microsoft signs power purchase deal with nuclear fusion company Helion
See Link:
April 24, 2023
Tech Billionaires Bet on Fusion as Holy Grail for Business
See Article: Tech Billionaires Bet on Fusion as Holy Grail for Business – WSJ
April 19, 2023
Wendelstein 7-X Achieves record amount of heating supplied to their Stellarator
See: Link
April 3, 2023
Economist Article: Fusion Power is Coming Back into Fashion
See: Link
December 13, 2022
For First Time, Researchers Produce More Energy from Fusion Than Was Used to Drive It, Promising Further Discovery in Clean Power and Nuclear Weapons Stewardship
October 10, 2022
UK Atomic Energy Authority and Tokomak Energy will collaborate on the development of spherical tokamak technology for commercial fusion energy.
Link to Story
October 2022
UK Selects Site for First Fusion Power Plant
August 2022
Peer Reviewed Journal Article documenting the achievement of the so-called Lawson Criterion for fusion.
For more than half a century, researchers around the world have been engaged in attempts to achieve
fusion ignition as a proof of principle of various fusion concepts. Following the Lawson criterion, an
ignited plasma is one where the fusion heating power is high enough to overcome all the physical processes that cool the fusion plasma, creating a positive thermodynamic feedback loop with rapidly increasing temperature. In inertially confined fusion, ignition is a state where the fusion plasma can begin “burn propagation” into surrounding cold fuel, enabling the possibility of high energy gain. While “scientific breakeven” (i.e., unity target gain) has not yet been achieved (here target gain is 0.72, 1.37 MJ of fusion for 1.92 MJ of laser energy), this Letter reports the first controlled fusion experiment, using laser indirect drive, on the National Ignition Facility to produce capsule gain (here 5.8) and reach ignition by nine different formulations of the Lawson criterion.
July 25, 2022 – Commonwealth Fusion Systems and the UK Atomic Energy Authority announce collaboration to advance commercial fusion energy
Cambridge, MA – July 25, 2022– Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) announced a collaborative agreement to advance commercial fusion energy. This new five-year Collaboration Framework Agreement establishes the terms under which a series of work projects between CFS and UKAEA will be executed to support the development of fusion energy and related technologies. This agreement is the result of a shared mission of both organizations to leverage innovative fusion energy research and the speed of the private sector to support the fastest path to clean commercial fusion energy to combat climate change.
July 19, 2022
TAE Technologies raises $250 Million from investors including big name companies.
Link to Story
December 1, 2021 – Commonwealth Fusion Systems closes a $1.8 Billion Series B Financing
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) announced it has closed on more than $1.8 billion in Series B funding to commercialize fusion energy. This includes capital to construct, commission, and operate SPARC, the world’s first commercially relevant net energy fusion machine. In addition, it will enable the company to begin work on ARC, the first commercial fusion power plant, which includes developing support technologies, advancing the design, identifying the site, and assembling the partners and customers for the future of fusion power.
The Biden-Harris Administration is developing a strategy to accelerate fusion energy– a clean energy technology that uses the same reaction that powers the Sun and stars. On March 17, 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) co-hosted the first-ever White House summit on Developing a Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy. The hybrid event drew more than 1,200 viewers to witness fusion energy leaders from government, industry, academia, and other stakeholder groups showcase progress made and have inclusive conversations about an updated fusion energy strategy.
February 2022
England’s Joint European Torus (JET) produced 59 megajoules of energy for five seconds.
Here is a link to the story.
August 30, 2021
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report recommends that the US design and build a demonstration fusion energy power plant.
Here is a Link to the report.
August 2021
Wendelstein 7-X Stellarator in Germany demonstrates their design is suitable for use in a fusion energy power plant.
Analysis by IPP scientists shows that the twisted magnetic coils of the device successfully control plasma energy losses, indicating that stellarator fusion devices could be suitable for power plants, according to a detailed analysis of experimental results published in Nature (Link) .
Here is a Link to their announcement.