The sun in your arms: who is the closest to conquering thermonuclear energy
Interest in thermonuclear energy is growing exponentially, not only among scientists, but also among people and organizations with money. These include the oil majors. For example, the Italian corporation Eni is part of a pool of investors who hope to build a commercially viable thermonuclear power plant by the early 2040s. Investments in thermonuclear research have increased significantly in recent years, which has coincided with quite major breakthroughs achieved by scientists from various countries. See the Izvestia article about the prospects for economically sound thermonuclear energy, which countries can receive the coveted "Grail" sooner, and why investors have become more active over the past few years.
We have the sun at home.
Since thermonuclear fusion was discovered in the 1950s, the energy of the conversion of hydrogen into helium occurring in stars, including the Sun, has been constantly in the "someday in the future" position, being something like a philosopher's stone or a perpetual motion machine of modern science. Science fiction writers were constantly writing about her, she was always "somewhere nearby", but there was no decisive progress. Technically, the task was the most difficult — to ensure the heating of various hydrogen isotopes to 50 million degrees and maintain these temperatures for a long time.
An experimental thermonuclear reactor, the Liven stellarator, was proposed and constructed in the Laboratory of Plasma Physics and Plasma Accelerators at the Lebedev Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences (since 1991 — the Russian Academy of Sciences), headed by Professor M. S. Rabinovich. For the first time in the world, plasma capture and magnetic retention was carried out at the installation.
By the early 2010s, skepticism prevailed in the "eternal future" sector. Physics turned out to be more difficult than expected, and large-scale installations required huge budgets. Most of the iconic installations (TFTR in the USA, JET in the UK, JT-60 in Japan) either closed or required deep modernization. However, then came a series of important improvements. Thanks to the commercialization of high-temperature superconductors (HSTP), compact magnets with fields of 20+ Tesla have been created. This made it possible to reduce the size of the reactors by several times at the same power. The transition from carbon walls to tungsten and beryllium coatings significantly reduced the accumulation and leakage of tritium. Finally, numerical models of plasma turbulence and machine learning algorithms have emerged to prevent plasma disruptions in real time.
As a result, a real boom of new projects began in the USA, China, Europe and Russia. This work was mostly not very noticeable until 2022, when in December at the Livermore National Laboratory in America, a reactor based on laser-inertial fusion produced positive energy output for the first time in decades of operation of such devices. Soon, this record began to be broken over and over again, and by 2025, Americans had reached 8.6 megajoules with a laser operating cost of 2 megajoules. At the same time, the Chinese managed to keep high—temperature plasma in their reactor for more than 1,000 seconds on the EAST tokamak - until recently, the figure of tens of seconds was considered excellent.
It is worth noting here that the optimal operation scheme of a thermonuclear reactor has not yet been determined. There are three main models: tokamaks and stellarators based on magnetic plasma confinement, as well as laser fusion reactors based on inertial confinement. The tokamak, the oldest of the working circuits, is an ideal "donut" (torus), with powerful magnets on the outside. It is easiest to achieve the required plasma temperature in a tokamak, but it is capricious and turbulent in this scheme. The stellarator is an adjusted tokamak model with a complex "crumpled" shape. It is ideal for continuous round-the-clock operation, the plasma in it is "calm", it is not threatened by sudden current disruptions. The main disadvantage is the incredible technical complexity of production. Inertial fusion is based on constant microbursts provided by a laser. So far, the latter can only work a few times a day, whereas dozens of times per second are needed.
It's a long way from commercial work
Achieving a scientifically positive energy balance, when more is released from the plasma than was spent on heating it, has already become a reality. But an engineering positive balance is important for business: a power plant must supply more electricity to the grid than all its auxiliary systems consume, from cooling superconducting magnets to operating lasers and pumps.
The transition from physics to economics is hampered by three engineering barriers. The first is the degradation of materials. In the process of D-T (deuterium-tritium) synthesis, a stream of high-energy neutrons is released. They bombard the reactor walls, causing their embrittlement and inducing radiation in the structure. If the interior cladding of a commercial reactor has to be changed every couple of years, the cost of maintenance will destroy any profitability. The industry needs new alloys capable of withstanding long-term neutron stress.
The second barrier is the fuel cycle. Deuterium is easily extracted from seawater, but tritium is practically not found in nature. The world reserves of this isotope are measured in tens of kilograms, and the price exceeds $30,000 per gram. The future power plant should produce tritium independently by irradiating a lithium shell with neutrons. So far, this technology has been developed only in computer models.
The third limiter lies in the removal of heat. A thermonuclear reactor is, in fact, a supertechnological boiler. The fusion energy needs to be converted into a coolant to turn standard steam turbines. The integration of a plasma chamber with a temperature of 100 million degrees and a water circuit requires engineering solutions that have yet to be scaled to industrial dimensions.
Stability Award
Taking into account such difficulties, the question arises about the justification of the costs. It all depends on the place that thermonuclear generation occupies in the global energy mix.
The main advantage of synthesis is energy density. One kilogram of thermonuclear fuel (a mixture of deuterium and tritium) is capable of producing as much energy as burning 10 thousand tons of coal. Unlike hydrocarbons, this process does not emit carbon dioxide.
Compared to traditional nuclear power plants, thermonuclear fusion eliminates the risk of core meltdown. The synthesis process is so difficult to maintain that with the slightest malfunction or power outage, the plasma will simply cool down in a fraction of a second. The reactor does not leave behind long-lived highly radioactive nuclear waste that requires burial for tens of thousands of years. Only the structural elements of the reactor itself become radioactive, but their half-life is limited to decades.
Finally, unlike wind and solar generation, a thermonuclear power plant provides a stable base load. It is capable of operating around the clock regardless of weather conditions, eliminating the need for giant battery parks that increase the cost of energy from renewable sources.
Capital is coming to the rescue
The realization of these advantages led to a change in the financing model. For decades, thermonuclear research has remained a monopoly of states. The symbol of this approach is the ITER, an international experimental reactor in France. The project suffers from chronic delays and inflated estimates: its cost has already exceeded €25 billion, and the production of the first plasma has been postponed for the next decade.
Disillusionment with sluggish megaprojects has triggered a boom in private initiative. According to the Fusion Industry Association, by mid-2026, the total volume of private investment in the sector exceeded $7.5 billion. Venture capital funds, technology billionaires (including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos) and, significantly, traditional energy corporations are channeling money into the industry.
Italian Eni has become one of the largest investors in the American startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has spun off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. CFS relies on high-temperature superconductors to create a compact SPARC tokamak. The classical oil business considers thermonuclear fusion as an insurance policy in case the global economy completely abandons fossil fuels. Unlike green renewable energy, which causes serious discontent among citizens and political forces of various countries, "energy of the future" is neutral and so far everyone likes it.
The United States still holds the lead in terms of attracted capital (TAE Technologies, Helion Energy, and CFS), but China is closing the gap at an aggressive pace. Relying on government grants and regional funds, Chinese startups are attracting record amounts. In 2025-2026, Neo Fusion raised more than $200 million to develop compact installations, and Shanghai-based startup Energy Singularity was the first in the world to successfully launch a tokamak built entirely on high-temperature superconductors. Beijing and Washington are competing for the right to be the first to patent a commercial design. At the moment, China is investing more in the sector than all other players combined.
The EAST Reactor
In Europe, British Tokamak Energy (spherical tokamaks) and German companies developing laser systems are promoting their projects. Russia maintains a strong position in the academic environment and is a supplier of a number of key components for ITER, as well as developing hybrid installations (synthesis-division) based on the Kurchatov Institute.
Dates and forecasts
The increase in funding has forced analysts to reconsider the old industry joke that thermonuclear energy is "always 30 years away from us." Expert consensus forecasts are becoming more definite.
The management of Eni and representatives of start-ups assess the timing of the start of commercial operation of thermonuclear power plants in a similar way. The end of the 2020s and the beginning of the 2030s will be the period of launching demonstration installations. Their goal is to prove the possibility of continuous generation and achieve engineering positive balance.
The introduction of the first commercial plants with a capacity of 50 to 200 MW is expected in the first half of the 2040s. At this stage, the main task will be to reduce the normalized cost of electricity. The first kilowatts of fusion electricity will be expensive due to the high capital costs of building stations. Analysts from relevant agencies predict that the economic profitability that allows thermonuclear fusion to compete with gas generation in terms of price will be achieved by 2050, when the industry will enter mass production of reactor components. The investments that investors are making today are aimed at monopolizing the intellectual property of the market, and the country that tames the "solar" element first will gain a tremendous advantage, perhaps surpassing the benefits from the early introduction of artificial intelligence.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
