The US Department of Energy will provide US$135 million over the next 18 months for cutting edge fusion research, equal to the total amount it has spent on fusion development over the past 12 years. Those earlier investments helped launch several startups which are developing novel fusion reactor concepts and have triggered US$1.5 billion in private investment.
A magnetic mirror device at the University of Wisconsin
In keeping with President Donald Trump’s priority of developing fusion energy, the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) tech development wing will significantly boost its investment in fusion research, says Adrian Co of Science magazine.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) will provide $135 million in funding for cutting-edge fusion research over the next 18 months, the agency announced on 8 April. That equals the amount ARPA-E spent on fusion over the past 12 years.
Those earlier investments helped launch several startup companies that are developing novel fusion reactor concepts, notes Conner Prochaska, director of ARPA-E. And they have triggered $1.5 billion in private investment, he says. “We want to double down on that,” Prochaska says. “If past is prologue, we think this will result in some very positive movements for the overall fusion industry.”
Fusion scientists seek to harness the basic nuclear physics that powers the Sun. For decades, they have strived to make nuclei of two heavy isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, merge and fuse to make helium and highly energetic neutrons. To make that happen, they need to heat an ionized plasma of deuterium and tritium to temperatures of hundreds of millions of degrees.
