Nuclear Fusion

16 MW peak fusion power, Q ≈ 0.67 — the benchmark for 25 years.

Peak ion temperature ~10× the sun's core — the heat fusion needs.

3.15 MJ out from 2.05 MJ of laser energy in — the first lab fusion gain.

JET's final deuterium-tritium campaign, from just 0.2 mg of fuel.

Steady-state operation past 1,000 s — the bridge to a power plant.

WEST (CEA, France) held a hydrogen plasma for 1,337 s — about 22 minutes — at 50M°C with a tungsten wall and 2 MW of heating, surpassing EAST's 1,066 s by ~25% for the longest sustained fusion plasma on record.

EAST ran stable plasmas at 1.3–1.65× the Greenwald density limit (vs the usual 0.8–1.0) using ECRH-assisted ohmic start-up — clearing a decades-old barrier in magnetic confinement. Higher density lifts the fusion rate and the triple product toward breakeven. Published in Science Advances (Jan 2026); ASIPP, Huazhong University and Aix-Marseille.

In its 2023–24 campaign, after a tungsten divertor upgrade, KSTAR sustained high-confinement (H-mode) plasma for 102 s and held ion temperatures of 100M°C for 48 s — both device records. The team's next goal is 300 s above 100M°C by the end of 2026.

Eighth ignition shot — more than quadruple the laser energy delivered.

First commercially-relevant machine aiming to pass Q>1, ~75% built.

Full D-T phase under the 2024 baseline; first plasma now 2034.

The 13-tesla, ~1,000-tonne Central Solenoid — the 'beating heart' built by General Atomics to drive ITER's plasma current — is complete and delivered to the site. A key assembly milestone toward first plasma (2034); the full pulsed-magnet system was ~15 years in the making.

Chelan County permits Helion's Orion plant in Malaga, WA — up to 50 MW to Microsoft, targeted by 2028.

Helion secured the licenses to build and operate its Orion plant in Malaga, WA — a Radioactive Materials License and a Radioactive Air Emissions License from the Washington Department of Health — the first US (and world) fusion firm to clear full plant licensing. Under the NRC's decision to regulate fusion like particle accelerators rather than fission reactors, the state DOH is the licensing body. Electricity to Microsoft is targeted by 2028.

Phoenix, a prototype for industrial-scale laser fusion, begins operations — demonstrating end-to-end KrF excimer amplification plus Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) pulse compression at >1 kJ through a 38 m gas optic (record energy and scale for SBS). First step toward the Vulcan laser and the Athena power plant; the gas-laser path targets lower cost than solid-state drivers.

Germany joins the EU 'Innovative Core Technologies' IPCEI, focused exclusively on fusion (not fission) — roughly €2.4B this legislative period, part of >€2B pledged for fusion R&D and pilots through 2029. National projects start 2027; the government's stated aim is to host the world's first fusion power plant.

Adds near-term ~50 MW modular fission reactors alongside its sheared-flow Z-pinch fusion, betting on shared materials, liquid-metal and power-conversion tech. Century platform hit a record 1.6 GPa plasma pressure and FuZE-A came online. Zabrina Johal (ex-General Atomics, US Navy nuclear) named CEO; cofounder Benj Conway → President.

Polaris reaches 150M°C — first privately built machine to do D-T fusion, beating Helion's own 100M°C (Trenta).

CFS published five peer-reviewed papers (58 authors, a Journal of Plasma Physics special issue) laying the physics basis for ARC — its first commercial plant, designed to deliver 400 MW net to the grid in the early 2030s — building on lessons from SPARC.

Tennessee issued the first licence anywhere for a commercial fusion machine on 31 Aug 2026, presented by Governor Bill Lee at the Organization of Agreement States meeting in Nashville. It covers Project Infinity, Type One Energy's 400 MW stellarator plant at TVA's Bull Run Energy Complex in Clinton, and follows the state's first-in-the-nation fusion regulatory framework — built after the NRC delegated fusion regulation to the states. Type One plans to break ground on phase one this year and expects full startup by 2034. A licence is permission to build, not a machine that works: no stellarator has yet produced net energy, and the plant is a decade out.

Pacific Fusion broke ground on 25 Aug 2026 on a ~$1B campus at Mesa del Sol in Albuquerque, to house its Demonstration System — a pulsed-magnetic (pulser-driven inertial) machine the company aims to bring to net facility gain, more fusion energy out than the whole facility draws in, by 2030. On the same day NNSA signed a memorandum of understanding with the company covering high-yield fusion work. The site is projected to add about 200 jobs. Ground breaking is a construction start, not a physics result: no Pacific Fusion machine has yet produced fusion energy.

The US Department of Energy committed funding for UNITY-3 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory — a first-of-its-kind facility to validate tritium breeding blankets, with Kyoto Fusioneering relocating its US headquarters to Tennessee to help build and operate it, backed also by Tennessee's Nuclear Energy Supply Chain Investment Fund. Breeding blankets are the piece every deuterium-tritium power plant needs and no one has yet proven at scale: the reactor must make more tritium than it burns or it runs out of fuel. Announced 11 Aug 2026; the facility is not built, and no operating date has been given.

Proxima Fusion, RWE, the Free State of Bavaria and Max Planck IPP signed an MOU to build Europe's first commercial stellarator fusion plant. It starts with 'Alpha', a €2B (~$2.3B) demonstration stellarator in Garching aiming to be the first stellarator to reach net energy gain (Q>1) in the 2030s; a commercial 'Stellaris' plant would follow at RWE's decommissioning Gundremmingen nuclear site. IPP leads physics, Proxima engineering, RWE plant construction.

ARPA-E committed $135M to fusion over 18 months — more than its entire prior 12 years of fusion funding combined — launching CHADWICK (first-wall materials for a 40-year plant life) and GAMOW (market-aligned fusion) programs.

Avalanche's compact Orbitron device "Jyn" measured apparent ion temperatures above 1 keV (~11M°C, hotter than the Sun's core) — the community's take-notice threshold, hit in a desktop-sized machine.

Pacific Fusion's pulser-module prototype (9 stages, 90 bricks) delivered 440 GW in an 80 ns burst — the highest-power single-step pulsed-power driver ever demonstrated — validating its trigger sync and unlocking a tranche of its >$1B Series A; demo-facility construction starts this summer.

General Fusion's LM26 magnetized-target machine mechanically compressed a magnetized plasma with a lithium liner, tripling electron temperature to ~8.4M°C (0.72 keV) — its first compressional-heating result, a concrete step on the in-progress path to a practical MTF demonstration (1 keV target next). Company-measured; results submitted for peer review.

China's ASIPP completed the world's largest toroidal-field (TF) superconducting magnet for a fusion device at the CRAFT facility — ~582 t, roughly 1.3× the volume and ~3× the stored energy of ITER's TF magnets, with full-parameter high-load testing and 100% domestic production. A size/engineering record — distinct from the institute's separate 35.1 T HTS field-strength record (Sep 2025).