{"text":[[{"start":5.4,"text":"In late August, amid the blinding New Mexico heat, politicians and investors wielding ceremonial spades broke ground for a new facility that aims to trap the Sun in a bottle."}],[{"start":16.38,"text":"Pacific Fusion, a start-up founded and backed by elite scientists and tech entrepreneurs, is building a nuclear fusion test site in Albuquerque that it hopes will be a crucial step towards generating commercial electricity from the same reaction that powers the Sun."}],[{"start":31.08,"text":"For now, there is little more than pale, sandy earth to suggest what might eventually rise there. But politicians attending the event spoke of fusion as a historic transformation, with one Democratic senator comparing its potential significance to humanity’s discovery of fire."}],[{"start":47.48,"text":"Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive and an investor in Pacific Fusion, said on stage that if fusion eventually produced the majority of America’s electricity, “it solves all the problems” created by the energy demands of AI."}],[{"start":61,"text":"That promise of abundant, cheap and clean energy — and of freeing humanity from its reliance on burning fossil fuels — is why US technology groups including Google and Nvidia, billionaires such as Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, energy majors and the Trump family’s media group are pouring billions of dollars into private fusion companies. Helion Energy, backed by Altman, aims to supply electricity to Microsoft by 2028."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":86.96,"text":"In the first eight months of this year, fusion start-ups attracted a record $3.8bn in private funding, according to PitchBook, overtaking last year’s total of $3.3bn, which was itself an all-time high."}],[{"start":100.28,"text":"But while there is broad agreement that fusion science has advanced substantially, experts and start-ups disagree over how soon companies can deliver meaningful power to the grid and whether providing that electricity will make commercial sense."}],[{"start":113,"text":"No fusion experiment has yet produced more electricity than the facility consumes, let alone demonstrated a power plant that can operate reliably."}],[{"start":121.24,"text":"Alain Bécoulet, chief scientist of the publicly funded international fusion research project ITER, says connecting a fusion power plant to the electricity grid “will never happen” within the next five to 10 years."}],[{"start":133.56,"text":"Insiders warn that as competition for funding intensifies, companies are making overly optimistic claims about the cheapness of the electricity they hope to produce."}],[{"start":142.9,"text":"A senior fusion executive who does not wish to be named says it is difficult to estimate costs for a technology that has never operated commercially. Some price pledges amount to companies “just making things up”, the executive says, in order to attract enough investment to continue their research — “the most Silicon Valley-type bullshit you could possibly do”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":162.64,"text":"The dispute is becoming more pressing as fusion companies move from laboratory experiments towards prototype plants requiring billions of dollars in capital. Developers are increasingly turning to governments, institutional investors and public markets, raising the risk that exaggerated claims could misdirect capital and undermine support not only for long-term fusion research but for other sources of low-carbon energy."}],[{"start":186.4,"text":"Some investors, experts and even some executives fear that overpromising could ultimately damage confidence in the wider field. One expert describes the risk as a “Theranos moment” for fusion, comparing the enthusiasm around the sector’s most ambitious targets with the excitement that surrounded the Silicon Valley blood-testing start-up before its technology claims unravelled."}],[{"start":208.12,"text":"‘We don’t have to solve a physics problem’"}],[{"start":210.72,"text":"Fusion is typically explained as the nuclear reaction that powers the Sun."}],[{"start":214.72,"text":"At the centre of the Sun, under pressure estimated to be 250bn times that at the Earth’s surface, hydrogen nuclei are forced to collide, forming helium nuclei. Because the resulting helium nucleus has slightly less mass than the original four hydrogen nuclei, the difference is converted into immense amounts of energy in the form of heat and radiation."}],[{"start":236.32,"text":"Fusion researchers imitate the extreme conditions found in the Sun by heating fuel to more than 100mn centigrade until it becomes superheated plasma — a volatile, electrically charged state of matter — and confining it long enough for its nuclei to fuse."}],[{"start":251.4,"text":"The theoretical prize is huge. Fusion fuel with roughly the weight of a paper clip can release as much energy as 57 barrels of oil. There are no carbon emissions nor risk of the runaway chain reaction associated with conventional nuclear power plants."}],[{"start":267.28,"text":"In 2022, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a leading nuclear weapons research and development facility in the US, made a breakthrough when it achieved so-called net energy gain by producing more fusion energy than the laser energy delivered to its 2mm-diameter fuel target."}],[{"start":285.88,"text":"While the experiment achieved a scientific milestone, the electricity required to operate 192 lasers was not accounted for in the headline results, nor were the wider costs of building and operating the facility."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":299.36,"text":"The experiment produced 3.15MJ of fusion energy, while the laser system consumed about 422MJ of electricity — more than 100 times the fusion energy produced."}],[{"start":311.84,"text":"Still, it provided a proof of principle for fusion start-ups seeking to commercialise. The money pouring into the sector is widening a field once dominated by a handful of heavily funded companies. The number of private fusion companies has doubled to more than 50 over the past five years, according to the Fusion Industry Association."}],[{"start":332.92,"text":"Among them is Inertia Enterprises, which aims to bring the technology from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to market. It raised $450mn in its first major funding round in February."}],[{"start":344.64,"text":"Jeff Lawson, chief executive, says decades of publicly funded research have left the company well placed to pursue commercial fusion. “We don’t have to solve a physics problem . . . Thanks to the US government [over the past] 60 years and $30bn of investment,” he says."}],[{"start":361.04,"text":"Many fusion start-ups promise to deliver “commercial” power within the next decade. In a 2026 survey by the Fusion Industry Association, 32 of 45 respondents said they could supply commercial energy by 2040."}],[{"start":374.56,"text":"“We set ambitious goals because the world needs new sources of abundant, clean, reliable energy today, not decades in the future,” Helion says of its 2028 target to deliver electricity to Microsoft, adding that its timeline reflects its experience building seven prototypes."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":391.28,"text":"But Bécoulet of ITER, the biggest fusion project in the world, funded by 34 nations including the US and China, says that within the next decade experimental facilities could produce substantial fusion power, but probably only in bursts lasting up to about 20 seconds."}],[{"start":407.08,"text":"He says no grid operator will be interested in connecting an unstable power source to the grid. “There is no point. You cannot sell anything out of [an intermittent source],” he says."}],[{"start":417.72,"text":"Fusion will probably only become part of the energy mix in the “very last decade of this century”, he adds. Scientists project that by then the planet will be in a state of climate collapse if current trends continue."}],[{"start":428.4,"text":"There are also doubts about the viability of the planned commercial plants. No plant has been consistently exposed to the extreme heat and radiation produced in a nuclear fusion reaction."}],[{"start":440.12,"text":"Radiation will damage structural components and make them radioactive, restricting maintenance by humans, says Mohamed Abdou, professor emeritus of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA. If components fail in the plasma chamber, for example, the entire reactor has to be shut down. With the current level of technology available, Abdou estimates that the first generation of plants using fusion fuel will fail, on average, every 20 minutes and that replacing a new component in the reactor will take “many months”."}],[{"start":471.24,"text":"A commercial fusion reactor would also need to make some of its own fuel, typically tritium, a form of hydrogen, because it is scarce. But this has only ever been demonstrated in a lab."}],[{"start":482.4,"text":"Steven Cowley, director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in the US, one of the most well-regarded plasma scientists in the world, says he is “confident” that towards the end of the 2030s there will be a pilot plant that can produce more electricity than it consumes."}],[{"start":498.56,"text":"The early plants will be more like “a technology experiment”, he says. He thinks they should be tested for about 10 years and that a commercial plant will probably not happen until around the middle of the century."}],[{"start":509.28,"text":"“I would like to keep that separation between commercial and pilot plants very clear in our mind,” he adds."}],[{"start":516.84,"text":"But many fusion start-ups are attempting to build the two things at once. One former engineer who worked at multiple fusion companies says, “raising capital in fusion is difficult, if not impossible, if you aren’t talking about commercialisation”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":531.46,"text":"Investors say that even with the backing of a patient capital provider, venture capitalists will be looking to make a decade-long investment at the most."}],[{"start":539.2,"text":"Two of the sector’s oldest companies illustrate the level of fortitude required. Canada’s General Fusion, which was founded in 2002 and whose investors include Amazon founder Bezos, in July became the first publicly traded fusion company on a major stock exchange. Google-backed US start-up TAE Technologies, founded in 1998, plans a $6bn all-stock merger with President Donald Trump’s family media group. Both companies appear to have slipped on their ambitions."}],[{"start":564.98,"text":"In 2014, General Fusion founder Michel Laberge was quoted in Canadian magazine BCBusiness saying that the company aimed to sell an actual product by 2022. In January this year, chief executive Greg Twinney told investors that the company plans for its commercial plant to be operational by “approximately 2035”."}],[{"start":585.58,"text":"One of the oldest aspirations emerged in 2010, when the Orange County Business Journal, a Californian publication, reported that TAE’s aim was for enough energy for commercial use by 2020. The timeframe is now the “early 2030s”, according to the company website."}],[{"start":602.04,"text":"TAE said in a statement that “technology, science, capital, demand and regulation are converging” and that cutting-edge technologies “are now power-plant ready”."}],[{"start":697.1,"text":"General Fusion declined to comment."}],[{"start":697.6,"text":"Keeping the lights on"}],[{"start":698.1,"text":"Even if a functioning fusion plant could be built, it does not follow that the electricity produced would be as cheap and abundant as some developers claim."}],[{"start":698.6,"text":"Most proposed fusion plants would, like other thermal power plants, use heat from the reaction to produce steam that drives a turbine to generate electricity. However, unlike gas or coal, which burn fuel, fusion uses huge amounts of electricity to generate and sustain the plasma."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":699.1,"text":"Adam Jackson, a former systems engineer at General Fusion, thinks fusion companies are unrealistic about electricity pricing."}],[{"start":699.6,"text":"In 2024, he suggested to his bosses at General Fusion that they should update the company’s electricity cost estimates, after spotting various errors in the calculations. However, this was not accepted by the company. Jackson says he was advised by one of its managers at that time to “justify what the market wants to hear” and to “work backwards” from a certain pre-determined number."}],[{"start":943.64,"text":"In a peer-reviewed paper published after he left, Jackson analysed a conceptual plant design by General Fusion from 2023. Because the plant itself was consuming energy, only about 40 per cent of the electricity would be available for sale to the grid, the paper found."}],[{"start":944.14,"text":"This means that, to deliver the same amount of electricity to the grid, the fusion plant would need to generate more than twice as much electricity as a conventional thermal power plant, the paper continued."}],[{"start":944.64,"text":"General Fusion declined to comment."}],[{"start":945.14,"text":"Fusion developers generally avoid firm forecasts for the cost of their electricity. General Fusion estimates that the cost of building and operating a fusion plant over its lifetime will be $64-$73 per MWh of electricity it produces. Commonwealth Fusion Systems, the industry’s biggest player backed by Google, has a target of about $50/MWh for its commercial plant, while stressing that the figure is a guideline."}],[{"start":945.64,"text":"In the US, electricity from a new nuclear power plant costs about $71/MWh, while solar from a farm, rather than rooftops, may cost about $38/MWh, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency, an intergovernmental body."}],[{"start":946.14,"text":"As fusion companies move from laboratory experiments costing millions of dollars towards plants costing billions, they are increasingly seeking capital beyond specialist venture funds."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":946.64,"text":"The public is providing more funding. In a recent round, Commonwealth Fusion Systems raised about $1bn from investors including unnamed pension and sovereign wealth funds. Publicly owned US utilities have backed fusion companies. And most fusion start-ups in Europe and Asia are seeking government funding to build their first power plant."}],[{"start":947.14,"text":"Whether newcomer investors have the technical expertise to assess the various companies’ claims is in doubt. One investor who does not want to be named says many banks and public-market investors are where VCs were “perhaps five to seven years ago”, but adds that they are going through their “early learning curve”."}],[{"start":947.64,"text":"The investor criticises government-backed laboratories and international projects for being slow. “They have been used to thinking about ITER as being on the critical path to commercial fusion, pushing timelines well past 2050,” the investor says. “I think that private capital and the public markets, combined with well-co-ordinated public funding, are our best chances of delivering commercial fusion energy before 2040.”"}],[{"start":948.14,"text":"Cowley, at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, says one of the biggest problems with private companies is that they are not incentivised to share their scientific data or experience with others. Knowledge is then lost when start-ups fail. “It would be nice if all this investment in fusion companies were to be really efficiently used so that we can learn from each other and learn from each other’s mistakes,” he says."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":948.64,"text":"Helion Energy, backed by OpenAI’s Altman, is one of the best-funded companies in the sector with $1.5bn in funding but is notoriously secretive. Experts and rival executives say the company seems reluctant to publish peer-reviewed papers on its experimental results. General Fusion and TAE have been more open with their results, both good and bad."}],[{"start":949.14,"text":"The company previously said that this was necessary to protect its intellectual property from “copycats”."}],[{"start":949.64,"text":"Helion’s chief executive, David Kirtley, says that as the fusion industry shifts to commercialisation, “the normal rules of business”, including the protection of its IP, should apply. Publishing peer-reviewed papers “takes time and resources from our team that are better used in fulfilling our mission”, he adds."}],[{"start":950.14,"text":"‘Three decades away’"}],[{"start":950.64,"text":"Nuclear fusion has long had a credibility problem. In 1951, Austrian scientist Ronald Richter claimed that he had achieved fusion on a remote island in a lake near Bariloche in Patagonia. Argentina’s president, Juan Perón, hailed the research as a breakthrough that promised to revolutionise atomic energy."}],[{"start":951.14,"text":"The claim collapsed under scrutiny but helped spur US scientists to investigate ways of controlling the superheated plasma needed for fusion."}],[{"start":951.64,"text":"Fusion physics has advanced enormously since the false claims of the 1950s. But progress has been slow and difficult, giving rise to the enduring joke that fusion is “three decades away and always will be”."}],[{"start":952.14,"text":"Advances in computing and AI are helping researchers model increasingly complex plasma behaviour, accelerating parts of the field. Whether they have brought commercial fusion significantly closer is a harder question."}],[{"start":943.64,"text":"Cowley says decades of research have enabled scientists to “put the Sun in a bottle, and that is pretty remarkable, actually. It’s 250mn degrees . . . and you can hold it in a very stable state, and it’ll do fusion. That’s a remarkable thing.”"}],[{"start":943.64,"text":"But, he adds: “We haven’t put it in a commercial bottle.”"}],[{"start":944.14,"text":"Graphic illustrations by Ian Bott"}],[{"start":956.48,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1789554230_4375.mp3"}